Drums Keep Pounding a Rhythm To the Brain

I live right next to a high school. Almost every morning, at 6:30am, the marching band practices. Well, I assume it’s probably the whole band as all I can hear are the drums. The constant…incessant…non-predictable beating of those drums for an hour. And then, once school is over and the band doesn’t have somewhere else to be, I get to hear them again…although, as often as not, there is often a brass section that helps mitigate the melody-less beats that are so omnipresent in the mornings.

I don’t remember it being this bad before. Well, maybe once. At that time they were practicing right across from my house and doing the George of the Jungle Dum Dum dum-dum da-dum-dum over and over again.”But CJ,” you say, “why don’t you just close your windows?”

That’s the thing, you see…they ARE closed. I’ve lately taken to wearing ear plugs, but I hate that I also miss those other household noises that I need to hear when they happen: smoke/CO detector, phones, doorbell, cries for help, outdoor shenanigans, etc. It’s definitely not a good long-term solution for general home-wide safety.

What sucks is that although Albuquerque covers this sort of din in its noise ordinance:

No person shall use any drum, bell or other musical instrument resulting in sound levels more than 5dB above the ambient noise level when measured on any receiving noise-sensitive property or, if an apartment, within any other dwelling unit or common area accessible to residents of the apartment, or to conduct such activities in the nighttime so as to be plainly audible within any dwelling unit which is not the source of sound.  At no time shall such sound be allowed to cause or contribute to an exceedance of the limits set forth for the receiving property as established in Table 1, § 9-9-12.

They also provide fora VERY annoying exclusion:

This section shall not apply to any person who is participating in a school band [emphasis mine – CJ] or duly licensed parade nor does this section apply in the daytime to bells or chimes used by schools or religious institutions.

So…what’s a person to do? I do remember fondly what it was like to be a teen in high school participating in school activities. I have nothing against that…so long as it keeps in step with the community. If they are learning their music, they likely have a gym or auditorium they can practice in. If they are learning a marching routine, then afternoons seem a right fine time to do it.

I mean, as annoying as it is in the afternoon, it’s the morning session that kills me. I don’t normally get to go to bed until 2-3am, so the 6:30am commencement of band practice is not at all welcome. How would you more conventional work-a-day people feel if you had to hear that at 2am or so? You’d be pissed. Well…so am I.