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Okay, so in this case, we’re the “noisy neighbors.”

We recently moved from Manhattan into a brownstone in Park Slope. Our new place has outdoor space (that we pay a premium for) and we’re definitely planning to utilize the space during the summer months. My husband and I both work until 7pm so the only time to take advantage of the backyard is in the evenings as we tend to travel on the weekends. Over the past week we have been out back gardening (trying to beautify our new outdoor space) until about 10pm and one weeknight we had friends over until just before 10pm. I would say that 99% of the time it will just be me and my husband out back and when we’re out there we often play music, but at what I would consider a reasonable level (for example, I can’t hear it when I enter the apartment and close the door). Coming from Manhattan, we’re used to playing music and in most cases being some of the quieter people in our old building. We understand that we live near a lot of families with young children now and we’re trying to find a balance between enjoying our outdoor space and being respectful of our neighbors.

We received a complaint from one of our neighbors that we are being too noisy and that music is meant to be kept indoors in our new neighborhood. As I said, we want to be respectful of our neighbors and certainly don’t want to start off on the wrong foot, but we also want to enjoy our space. When we signed the lease on our apartment nodoby mentioned a “music indoors” rule.

So, here’s my question, is playing music at reasonable levels until 9 or 10pm disrespectful? If so, what would be a reasonable time to play music until?

We would like to come to some sort of arrangement with our neighbors where we stop playing music at some designated hour, but that we still have a right to play music until that point in time without complaints or dirty looks on the street. We think that requesting that music stay indoors at all times is somewhat unreasonable. Would love to hear your thoughts…