Playing without being heard - Keeping playing volume down

A place where discuss about secrets, tips and suggestions for practicing on congas and to improve your skill and technique ...

Postby salpica » Wed Jan 03, 2007 1:29 am

Hello Congeuros,

I was wondering what everyone does when they want to play late at night when everyone else is asleep. Is there some way of muting the conga heads so as not to make as much noise. I know drummers have rubber pads that they can practise on when they don't want to be heard. Do conga players have anything like that?

Thanks everyone.
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Postby pidoca » Wed Jan 03, 2007 6:07 am

G'day Salpica.

The best way that I have found to keep the volume down is not to play. But that kind of defeats the purpose.

The other alternative is to get a towel (thick) on the congas. one towel for each conga. There is also a material that you can get from hardware stores. It is a rubberised material; amognst it's many uses is to stop rugs from moving on polished floors; or as place mats. The material looks like perforated rubber. Hard to describe. If you really can't find it I will take a photo and post it.

Cheers
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Postby Charangaman » Wed Jan 03, 2007 10:06 am

It's difficult, I am lucky enough to have a room which I have soundproofed to a reasonable standard and can play in pretty much whenever I want.. I even have ensemble midnight jam sessions ..

Maybe you have a cellar or storage cupboard you could squeeze into..?

Thing is, to me if your anxious about neighbours and it's on your mind then you won't really be playing with freedom..
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Postby jorge » Thu Jan 04, 2007 4:29 am

When I lived in an apartment in NYC, I found that putting a pillow inside the drum was as quiet as putting a towel on top of the skin. You may want to put a few small pillows inside, experiment and see how quiet you need it to be. The feel of the slaps on the skin is better with a pillow inside than with the towel on top. With 2 drums like this and a pair of headphones, you can almost feel like you are playing for real. If you are worried about people living below you, you might need to put the drums on a thick rug to keep the sound of your hand hitting the drum from being conducted through the floor.
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Postby Thomas » Thu Jan 04, 2007 11:49 am

Have pads especially made for muting congas, but I don't know the brand anymore, but something like "the luis conte bla bla bla" (its not from meinl)!
But pillows inside of the drum have the same effect with real skin on skin feeling!
Charangaman, would be interessted what you've done to soundproof your room, some advices?
All the best,
Tom!
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Postby Charangaman » Thu Jan 04, 2007 1:33 pm

Hey Thomas..

Nothing too professional or extravagant.. The room has double glazed windows and aswell as curtains I hang a large duvet, the door is covered in used egg boxes which are obviously a cheap fix .. - many eggs were consumed!

The ceiling, I covered in cork self adhesive panels which are relativley inexpensive too.. All sorts of things can be done with hanging rugs/materials/screens etc..

These steps do not provide any acoustic benefits, probably they are detrimental but the aim is only to insulate my sound.. I am blessed to have this space and I use it every day..
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Postby troels » Thu Jan 04, 2007 3:09 pm

Charangaman wrote:Hey Thomas..

Nothing too professional or extravagant.. The room has double glazed windows and aswell as curtains I hang a large duvet, the door is covered in used egg boxes which are obviously a cheap fix .. - many eggs were consumed!

The ceiling, I covered in cork self adhesive panels which are relativley inexpensive too.. All sorts of things can be done with hanging rugs/materials/screens etc..

These steps do not provide any acoustic benefits, probably they are detrimental but the aim is only to insulate my sound.. I am blessed to have this space and I use it every day..

Besides from playing the drums I have a degree in sound/acoustics. And for a fact I can tell you that to prevent sound from traveling from one room to another you need heavy "dead" material like concrete, drywall etc.

Soft materials like blankets, egg boxes etc. doesn't prevent sound from traveling through ceilings and walls, but they do make the sound environment in your practice room much nicer - preventing too many reflections in the room.

Troels




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Postby Charangaman » Thu Jan 04, 2007 4:33 pm

Yeah It's a D.I.Y effort no doubt, I'm sure the cork tiles are helping because I get no complaints.. What do you think?
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Postby troels » Thu Jan 04, 2007 5:55 pm

Charangaman wrote:Yeah It's a D.I.Y effort no doubt, I'm sure the cork tiles are helping because I get no complaints.. What do you think?

Nothing wrong with DIY! :)

From a technical point of view the effect of the cork would be almost non existent when it comes to preventing the sound from traveling through the ceiling - but as I mentioned before, it softens the sound within the room.

My guess is that removing the cork wouldn't make any audible difference for people outside the room, but most definitely in the room.

The way to go is to mount another ceiling (let's call that ceiling B) under the existing one (let's call that ceiling A) made of two layers of drywall panel + insulation material. Ceiling B must be put up on a frame mounted between the walls in the room and thereby not attached directly to ceiling A. Ceiling B must be mounted at least 10 centimeters under ceiling A to be as effective as possible. You can support the ceiling B frame construction with steel wires fixed in, and hanging from ceiling A. Last but not least it is very important to seal the small gab between the edges of ceiling B and the wall with some kind of elastic seam compound.

This project could very easily be done by two band mates as a DIY project over a weekend, and is the way to go if you want (most of) the sound to stay in the room. Almost the same procedure applies when it comes to walls - in other words: The best result is obtained by making your practice room "a box in a box" (and no, this has nothing to do with egg boxes :;): )

Troels




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Postby Thomas » Thu Jan 04, 2007 8:42 pm

Thanks for the helpful advices guys!!
All the best,
Tom!
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Postby jorge » Fri Jan 05, 2007 4:05 am

As Troels is saying, soundproofing a room is a big and expensive project, and is different from improving the acoustics inside the room. Charangaman, you are lucky to have a room which seems to be pretty well soundproofed naturally. The cork, duvets, curtains, and egg cartons may all affect the acoustics inside the room, but are NOT the reason that your neighbors outside the room don't hear much. As Troels said, they probably contribute little or nothing to the soundproofing, since that kind of soundproofing requires both heavy mass insulation (like multiple layers of sheetrock, cinder block, or thick solid doors) plus sealing all air communication between the inside and the outside, even small holes and cracks. For moderate sound levels you probably don't need to do this, especially if you have a basement space which has earth around it that insulates much of the sound naturally. If a door to the rest of the house seems to be the major sound leak and you want a relatively inexpensive solution, you can replace the door with a very heavy solid wood door, and seal it all around with weather stripping, for a few hundred dollars. Depending on the walls, floors, etc, this may or may not make a significant difference in the sound level outside the door. For very loud music, rock bands, drum set, etc, you may need a room-within-a-room, with floating concrete floor, second ceiling isolated from the original ceiling, solid and sealed doors, and careful caulking of all holes and cracks. This generally requires professional acoustic expertise and a serious budget. You can check out many discussions of these projects in some of the acoustics websites online at:

www.studiotips.com/

or

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2....3d2aeff

or you can buy books on acoustics. Two books I recommend are:
F. Alton Everest. Master Handbook of Acoustics, here:
http://www.amazon.com/Master-....1360972

and Rod Gervais. Home Recording Studios: Build it like the pros, here:
http://www.amazon.com/Home-Recording-Studio-Build-Like/dp/1598630342

These are both well respected, very readable books that will get you started understanding how to build a soundproofed room. Although they are written about building recording studios, rehearsal / practice studios are very similar in their acoustic design.

Bottom line, put pillows, towels, lo que sea, inside your congas, get some good headphones, y mete mano.




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Postby Charangaman » Fri Jan 05, 2007 11:41 am

Great to have such knowledgeble sound men on board!
It's an ongoing process with this room and finance unfortunatley dictates as always..

Well it's good to know that I may have inadvertantley improved my acoustics :D

And either the neighbours are too intimidated to complain or are enjoying the sounds, either way - I shall maintain.. Many thanks for the expertise...
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Postby deadhead » Sat Jan 06, 2007 3:15 am

some times I wear some thick cotton gloves when I'm practicing and trying to be quiet. Its hard to get good slaps, but if your just working out your hands doing some speed exercises or something like that it deffinately helps. Open tones actually sound pretty nice tho. I know they make padded head covers for djembes, it seems like they would work fine on congas as well, but you definately wouldn't be able to get good sound out of it. Best thing to do is to talk to your neighbors and give them your phone number, have them call you when your being too loud, rather than calling the cops.
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Postby Amber » Thu Jan 11, 2007 11:46 am

Hi,

my problem are the neighbours living down to me. I was thinking about buying some thick, fat rubber mat to put it under my congas to improve things. Now they are standing on some thin small carpet. The floor itself is plain wood, the kind of floor you have in old european houses. What do the profs think, will this be of any use, at least against the vibrations from bumping on the instuments? For big investments like doubling the floor I have definitely not the money.

Thank you for advice!

Best regards, :p Amber
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Postby jorge » Thu Jan 11, 2007 6:03 pm

Hi Amber,
Downstairs neighbors are a little harder than other neighbors. You have to control the sound transmitted through the air from the drum itself, plus the additional sound that is directly transmitted from your hand to the drum shell to the floor to the space downstairs. Pillows or towels in the drum will help the first kind a lot. For the directly transmitted sound, your idea of a thick rubber mat on top of the rug would probably work fine. The best kind of rubber would be a thick, compressible, dense, closed cell foam material like what they use to make mouse pads. I don't have any experience with this to know what thickness would be adequate, probably a half inch would work. A thinner pad might work, but you would have to try it and see.

A negotiated diplomatic solution is definitely preferable to a military solution. For example, scheduling your playing for times when the neighbors are doing other things or are out would help. Involving them in the process by telling them what you are doing to control the sound and asking them to tell you if the sound level is ok or too loud would also help.




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