My neighbors hung out a wind chime the other day. They’re really very friendly, outgoing people who always call out a pleasant, “Hi!” when our garage doors are open at the same time. So, what possessed them to cast me into Wind Chime Hell?
Am I really so eccentric that I’m the only one whose nerves start jangling in proportion to the amount of dinging and donging coming from one of those contraptions? I really doubt it. So somebody remind me. What was it that made wind chimes seem like a good idea to anyone — buyer, seller, gift-giver, whomever?
Let me describe a wind chime from my perspective, and then maybe you’ll understand my bad reaction to the hateful things. The one at my neighbor’s back yard gate gets going in any light wind and somehow manages to only hit two notes out of its six possible sounds. So I hear a “Ding-dong, ding-dong” doublet sound just like some prankster ringing a doorbell over and over and over and over again. How’s that for nice? I suppose I should just shout out to my neighbors, “Hey, your wind chime sounds like a broken doorbell,” but maybe they’d just stare at me like I was nuts and say, “No, that’s beautiful music, made by Nature.”
You see, I fear there’s a great gulf between me and the average wind chime fan. I’m a musician who occasionally plays for real money. As such, I know that if I were to play two notes over and over and over and over again, I’d not be asked back to play at that particular nightclub anytime soon. Of course, some wind chimes hit more notes than my neighbors’. Most chimes have 6, 7, or 8 tubes of metal that each play a unique note. So, all right, maybe 8 notes. Now, the musician in me says, “Hey. A piano has 88 keys. A guitar can hit a couple dozen notes. So, how is it that 8 notes are okay? If a musician in one of the big acts I’ve worked with (John Lee Hooker’s band, The Drifters, The Kingsmen, The Beaters) played only eight notes over and over and over and over again, he’d get fired after the first five minutes.
So, why do people think it’s cool to put out a device that repeatedly gongs just 7 or 8 notes, flooding the neighborhood with ding-dong racket? Do they not listen first, and hear the sound of birds chirping, insects buzzing, leaves soughing, and breezes luffing past their ears? I’m thinking that’s it. If you don’t pay attention to the natural sounds all around you, then you might think adding the clangor of a metallic device somehow improves your neighborhood’s soundscape.
I don’t.
And now the inevitable next step has been taken by the mindless forces of capitalism run amok: my local supermarket has begun selling the diabolical contraptions at the end of Aisle 3. It was bad enough when every hardware store started selling them, but now you can just grab one quickly without thinking, in between loading your cart with trans fats and salt. Take it home and hang it up with even less thought, then forget about it. Or give it to someone as a gift and they’ll hang it up and forget it.
Meanwhile, I hope the birds can learn to tweet between ding-dongs, because at the rate wind chimes are spreading, soon there won’t be any places you can go without hearing a wind chime chorus.
So, let’s face the ding-dong truth: wind chimes are noise pollution.
Couldn’t you just ask your neighbors to move the chimes? Seems like a fair request if stated diplomatically. As for the sound of them, don’t you think those things might be a matter of taste and not necessarily a valid means of judging the character and intelligence of someone who likes them? Even among professional musicians, there is a wide range of what constitutes “good” music. I’ll bet that in a fraction of the time it took to write your article you could have invented some very creative way to deal with the annoyance your particular sensitivity causes you. And if this is the most annoying thing in your life, you are living in paradise. Oops – now I get it. This is a satirical piece about tolerance. Very clever.
Gee, um, er, you’re right, Stella. Sometimes I guess I don’t even know what I’m writing about. And that’s the ding dong truth.
Perhaps I was being a bit facetious. And you’ve got a point: the fact that I haven’t beaten down my neighbors’ door and demanded the wind chime’s removal to a far corner of their yard suggests I’m fairly tolerant, doesn’t it?
Nonetheless, I’ll stick to my point that crass commercial interests have begun to crank out these things on a military-industrial scale, and have begun a campaign of foisting them off in places like supermarkets where shoppers make split second decisions without much real thought about where the noisemaker will wind up, or what it really sounds like.
Wind chimes fall pretty far down on my list of noise pollution: Barking dogs; leaf blowers; someone’s loud music; fireworks from the baseball stadium up the street; cell phone conversations…
“…in dollhouse rooms with colored lights twinkling, strange music boxes sadly tinkling, drinking the sun shining all around you – my my they sigh, my my they sigh…”
Donovan
Just light some incense and eat a brownie. Everything will be fine.
The Wind Chime Murderer
Our conversations about the pros and cons of wind chimes pale in comparison to a note I found online. It would seem a man by the name of Frances McQuimby, who lived in a suburban neighborhood, put up a wind chime one day. It was a tinkly little thing that he’d impulsively put in his shopping cart at the supermarket while on a quest for margarine and some other sundries. He brought it home and hung it under an eave on the back of his house.
The next morning, according to the court record, his next-door neighbor, a Mr. Harry Fletcher, rang his doorbell at an early hour and with much unpleasant language, demanded that he remove the wind chime, which had kept Fletcher up all the previous night.
McQuimby declined and the wind chime stayed in place. However, the next morning, McQuimby noticed that his wind chime had disappeared in the night. Although he told his girlfriend he had heard nothing unusual in his back yard during the previous night, he nevertheless went to Fletcher’s door at an early hour and in unpleasant terms, accused the man of having sneaked over the fence and stolen the chime, especially since the string holding it to the eaves had been neatly cut and not shredded as an animal or natural force would have done.
Fletcher simply told McQuimby what he could go do to himself and slammed the door. Incensed, McQuimby went to his local hardware store where wind chimes were on clearance sale and purchased a chime that had thick steel tubes as tall as a man, with a wooden striker weighing more than two pounds and a hanging triangular wind sail nearly a foot across, which produced a gonging sound guaranteed by the manufacturer to wake the dead. This he hung under an eve on the corner of his house closest to his neighbor, along with a security light that would come on when anyone approached it.
Neighbors testified that the wind chime remained silent for several days until an Autumn storm rolled in one night and set it gonging. This apparently pushed Fletcher beyond his limits because, as another neighbor explained:
“In the morning I heard two men shouting at each other in anger, and then there commenced a loud, BONG-BONG-BONG noise that compelled me to go and investigate. Going around to McQuimby’s back yard following a nearly continuous bonging, I discovered Fletcher standing over McQuimby’s prostrate form, repeatedly and brutally bludgeoning his head with the biggest and heaviest of the tubes. He shouted in a maniacal rage, ‘How’s that sound McQuimby?’ over and over again as he pounded his victim’s skull into a pulp. I was afraid to intervene, so I hurried home and called the police.”
Fletcher pled not guilty by virtue of temporary insanity induced by loud gonging noises in his head and was acquitted.
Wow… that story about the wind chime murderer only proves you can “catch more bees with honey”… Alow me to “chime in” with my two cents, for what they are worth…
Perhaps you could buy a quieter wind chime for your neighbor as a gift. Let him know that you noticed his only played the two notes anymore and therefore is broken. Out of appreciation of your thoughfulness, he might feel compelled to hang your wind chime up in place of his own. This would also aford you the opportunity to purchase one that had more notes, and therefore produces a sound more pleasing to your ear.
You could even purchase a new hook and help him hang it on a corner of his house further away from yours so you might not even hear it.
Then you could be open and honest with him, letting him know that wind chimes really are not your thing, but you understand that he likes them.
See… with a little two way understanding, it’s really not that hard to “get along”… You can be both tolerant and pro-active, all at the same time.
Ahh… the old topic of neighborly dispute. Unfortunately, sometimes it is easier for us as human beings to think of our own situation before considering others. As in the case of the wind chime story above. Perhaps the wind chime owner thought everyone might like the chime as much as he did. Perhaps the abusive neighbor thought the chime was hung to spite him. Regardless, preventative communication or even ongoing communication can solve most problems in life when done in a considerate and thoughtful manner.
outdoor enthusiast
Andrew
Please stop hurting your neighbors with the noise of clanging metal. Record the noise and use headphones.
Or, Roxy, how about not recording the clangorous thing at all? How about just taking it down and putting it in the recycle barrel? Then you can listen to the birdies sing tweet, tweet, tweet.
I agree with you. Listening to the birds or any sounds of nature is very soothing. I have neighbors nearby who have 4 cars. Morning noon and night my peace is interrupted by their car horns. Whether it be locking or unlocking the vehicle, or blaring the horn for a child to come out, I am tired of the blaring horn. I am now considering purchasing a wind chime to see if it helps in any way.
Neighbor noise just seems to be a part of the urban and suburban landscape. Others on this thread have suggested chatting with neighbors about such things, so that might be a start, although some people just don’t seem to respond. An alternative strategy might be to buy such a humongous wind chime that you and your neighbors are all deafened by it. Then no one would hear anything. Just kidding. Seriously though, think twice before you add noise pollution to try to block other noise pollution. Two wrongs do not make a right.
Ancient Chinese Buddhists believed that wind chimes could drive away evil spirits from their temples and invite good spirits to linger. Perhaps, they were actually onto something as even today people find the look and sound of decorative wind chimes makes them feel more at peace and lightens their hearts.
Jeremy, more power to you if you can stand the sound of them. To me, they’re a jangling, nerve-grating experience, often perpetrated on me by neighbors who don’t concern themselves with my preference for birdsong, wind whispers, and other faint and tender sounds. Clang! Clang! Tinklety clang! Just doesn’t fit with my personal listening tastes, that’s all. I think it’s fair for me to call them noise pollution because they’re something one person creates that is a problem for another person.
Personally, I’ve always had a facination with weather, wind currents, nature, etc. Although the wind chime itself may not be 100% natural, the sound produced by them are the direct result of the wind, much like the sound of the wind blowing through the trees.
The sound of the birds can also be altered by man made devices known as bird houses and bird feeders which could cause large groups of birds to congregate in one location for extended periods of time… causing, as one of the above authors defined, “noise polution”.
I would even venture to mention the other kinds of polutions that might be left behind by this manmade gathering of freshly fed birds, lasting much longer than the resonating gong of a quality wind chime.
In this light, the wind chime might be the preferred way to enjoy nature as you would not have to spray down your portch, deck, or car afterward.
Wind Chimes are also politically correct. Their music is 100% natural, used no electricity, produced no wastes or by-products. As a “GREEN” industry, it should be promoted as the wave of the future! (not to belittle their glorious and long history already mentioned by authors above)
Nature Lovers of the world… Chime On!!!
I struggled with the issue of clanking windchimes in my neighbors apartment for several months, wondering if it was just petty of me to complain about being woken up in the middle of the night from a cacophony of random jangles. Finally I decided that indeed if I was not allowed to run a clothes dryer or play music that can be heard outside my apartment during the night hours, why could they chime away with impunity? So I finally asked the management company to have it taken down. However, in fairness, I am quite willing to compromise. They can leave it up all day, as long as they take it down all night.
Mike, I agree with the point you bring up. Things like music you play, and other types of noises, are considered illegal if they can be heard in other people’s homes. Somehow, wind chimes are not recognized as the same kind of illegal noise pollution — yet.
There is money to be made here. Wind chime covers. Little tubes made of a dampening fabric like felt. One could slide them up over the chimes like a condom when the sun goes down. I see personalized logos, colors of the rainbow, hello kitty or star wars themes…endless possibilities.
Stella, you right. If capitalists get involved in wind chime squelching to the extent they’ve gotten into selling the damn things, then some good may come. How about a birdcage cover for the whole thing? You know, those things people put over canary and parakeet cages to get the dear little tweeties to SHUT UP so somebody can take a nap.
I hate wind chimes. My ears are a bit more sensitive to certain things than other members of my family. The high pitch that wind chimes sometimes give is enough to cause me some pain, though it’s not as bad as when my dad sneezes. Close enough though.
I’m personally glad I don’t live anywhere near wind chimes here. I haven’t seen any neighbors in my area use them.
I live close to the ocean up on a hill. It is extremely windy. Our house lots are the size of postage stamps. My neighbors have a large tubular type wind chime. It clangs constantly. If I sit in my yard to relax it hangs only 12 to 15 feet away. This is noise pollution. I can hear it over the television and it keeps me awake at night. Some people are so rude. They know it bothers us but they don’t care. Just sayin………….
Sandy, sorry to hear what you’re hearing. Maybe if you tell your neighbors what you said here, or mail them a note, they’ll respond. Otherwise, what they’re doing is probably illegal. You could call the cops.
I live in a grouping of townhouse condominiums and recently this “super nice” woman moved in and immediately put up her wind chimes. In the past few months, I’ve been kept awake by the obnoxious noise they create -rendering me sleepy and dazed at work. To me this is the height of oblivious selfishness – which to me means this new neighbor is anything BUT “super nice”. This blog is helping me muster the courage to ask her to either move it to the far side of her unit where I won’t be able to hear it – or to take the thing down. Thanks Mr. Hopp!!!!
Marsha, you’re welcome. People generally respond favorably to a polite request with a simple explanation like, “It keeps me awake at night.” No lengthy discussion about details. Give it a try. But between you and me, I sympathize with everything you said.
That Fletcher story was pretty interesting. Not sure if the story is true though. Of course killing the guy with the chimes is the wrong thing to do (lol) but I can understand his irritation. I for example have lost alot of sleep and relaxation due to noise pollution from neighbours (mostly dogs) and then I have to go to work the next day, come home tired, rinse and repeat until I’m a nervous wreck or move to another place.
These people simply don’t comprehend that some people are disturbed by their barking dogs/chimes/whatever. Even if they’re ‘nice’ people they think I’m overreacting; sooner or later their dogs are barking again, and I hate having to confront people about these things. I can put up with occasional barking, but not after I’m in bed and not 2 hours straight during they day with literally not more than 10 seconds between barks. Even a few seconds can get very irritating when you’re sick of the noise.
In pursuit of research on how to describe the sound of wind chimes, I stumbled across this page today. Very entertaining! Personally, I love wind chimes (especially ones that are hand tuned to produce a harmonic sound) and much prefer them to, let’s say, the incessant bark of an annoying neighborhood mutt. But if my neighbor complained about mine, I’d definitely take them down. No sense in causing conflict. Or spending 10 years to life for murder with a musical weapon 😉
Actually Meridian, I’ve got to admit that the sound of wind chimes can be quite pleasing in small doses. It’s the repetitiveness that really gets to me. And don’t get me started on neighborhood doggies. I used to live in one neighborhood where everybody let their dogs out in the back yard when they came home from work in the early evening. I called it “Yappy Hour.” But that’s a subject for another blog post. You’re quite right about ten-to-life although I may have been exaggerating a bit on that story. I am a fiction writer, after all.
Yappy Hour…I like it. Clever!
Yep, I browsed your blog and saw that you’re a fiction writer. Good for you! Am working on a piece of fiction myself. Started out writing it as a story for my son, but it morphed into a project that looks much more like a book. I can’t believe the amount of work that’s gone into it. It’s given me a hearty respect for people that write fiction for a living!
I’m writing this listening to the neighbor’s wind chimes tinkling away and wondering if anyone would see me if I got out the ladder, walked down to their house, got up on the ladder, took the wind chimes off the shepherd’s hook on the deck, and disposed of them in a safe and sanitary manner. What burns me about these cacophonous irritants is that these same neighbors were asked once before, and nicely, I’d hasten to add, to please move them from the side of the house where the bedrooms are (we are in a townhome neighborhood and the layouts of the homes are identical). I’m highly sensitive to noise and the darn things can jolt me out of a dead sleep if they start clanging. Additionally, I can’t enjoy having my windows open during the day, or going out on my patio without having to hear that constant “ping! ping! ping!” They are a menace to good relations with one’s neighbors.
I will never understand how people fail to consider others close by them when deciding, arbitrarily, that everyone else must listen to the sounds they find pleasing. If my dog barked incessantly, the neighbors would expect me to quiet her. I feel the same way about wind chimes. Quiet, please.
Kymm, sorry to hear that your neighbors didn’t respond to your first request to move the chimes. It’s probably worth another politely worded request. After that, you could probably ask the police to enforce your town’s noise ordinances. Usually, any persistent sound that can be heard within a neighbor’s house is illegal. Strictly speaking most if not all wind chimes are probably illegal by that definition.
My neighbor just hung a wind chime up too, and now we hear invasive chime music all day and all night. We do not wish to hear wind chimes, and yet we must, how is that acceptable?
What if I recorded the wind chimes, then played them in a tape loop through speakers from my porch, all day, all night, so that it invaded my neighbor’s home at the same volume as his chimes do mine? Would that be acceptable?
The premise that wind is involved, and that chimes make pleasant sounds, is completely irrelevant. I don’t want to have to hear my neighbor’s chimes wafting through my life day in and day out — that’s fair by any standards.
People are ignorant. For years now I have asked our neighbour across the road to remove her useless wind chimes at night as the sporatic tinkling wakes me and my husband and disturbs us so we cannot get any restorative sleep. I have told her if she likes them so much at night she should hang them outside her own bedroom window for her own pleasures. All to no avail. Now she has included a Feng Shui fountain on her front porch which has the sound similar to that of a man urinating into a toilet. It is constant, non-stop….it’s a real pisser! She says its all about Feng Shui and her peace and balance and has hopes of fulfilling her life of whatever it is she is missing. Obviously if she believes this is going to improve her life but a functioning brain would be better! All it has done is create one hostile neighbour. The other night both my husband and I woke to her incessant noises again and so I knocked on her door and asked her to shut the offending noise off. She twittered about and left me standing there. When I rang her door again she said she was trying to find something to cover it! I told her that was not the solution and so took her chimes and handed them to her then leaned over her railing and pulled the plug on her toilet noise making fountain. The next morning I had the cops on my doorstep telling me I was not allowed on her property. In fact the cop even challenged me over the noise and told me I was not a noise expert! Like he is? If waking me in the night almost 7 nights per week isn’t enough to say “it’s too noisy for me”, then what? He said no other neighbour has complained. Well, sound travels differently and I keep my windows open at night. This has now become the crime….to sleep with your windows open. The offending neighbour won’t hear her noise because it’s at the front of her home, not in front of her bedroom window. Maybe she’s deaf?
I hate wind chimes with a passion. I am a very tolerant type of person,but the sound of these wind chimes that disturb the peace and quiet whilst in my garden can send me into a raging nutcase. I took my neighbours chimes down when they went away on holiday for two weeks ,using an extended pair of snips on a ten foot length of wood. The chimes were then handed back to them on their return, happly they were ok with that, and I have had no problem since. The other day,a few more doors down ,wind chimes are in the garden clanging away in the high winds we have been having recently. I am at my wits end with this, but have an idea, if you cant beat them, join them. In my shed I have five world war 2 shell cases in brass, Iam in the process of making the Mother of all wind chimes and hang them on a six foot pole from my shed.
This is such an excellent article and excellent replies by the blogger. My neighbors have three of the cheapy kind hanging from the eaves on my side of the house. We almost came to fisticuffs over the blaring boombox they would put on their front or back porch during Spring and Summer, depending on which yard they were gardening in. I called the police, and the husband and I got in a screaming match across the property line.
Now winter is here and the wind blows all the time pretty much in winter and I have to listen to these chimes, that are a constant reminder that the wind is blowing. I cannot ever forget while I sit here and work that the wind is blowing because the chimes are almost horizontal in the wind. Why must I hear this? Why must something they want to listen to be mandatory that I hear also?
Ava, sounds like you’ve got some hard cases next door. I’m sorry to hear that. Most towns and cities have noise ordinances that make it illegal to produce any sound that can be heard from inside a neighbor’s house or on the street. This is usually put to the test by a police car driving by and the officer rolling down a window. If the chimes can be heard from the street, then the local police could probably help. I wouldn’t suggest such a thing unless you have first had a “friendly” talk with your neighbors, but in this case it sounds like you’ve already gotten beyond that point.
That Frances McQuimby seems fictional, as I can find no other mention of it.
People need to realize that the human nervous system didn’t evolve to cope with non-nature-generated noise, be it electronic or mechanical. Things like subwoofers are blatantly crass, but there are many annoyances in discrete contexts. Wind chimes are like listening to a bad xylophone band practicing for hours on end. You shouldn’t have to listen to a good band practicing, either.
“Wind turbine syndrome” is especially insidious. Just because something doesn’t register past a certain decibel threshold is irrelevant to its net effect on the ability to sleep and relax. Many noise ordinances are too abstract and don’t account for subtle yet harmful effects.
Jim C: Boy, don’t get me started on subwoofers. Another way to mangle the ears. I like your idea of a “bad xylophone band” rehearsing non-stop. I predict they will not get many gigs until they learn to play more than six or eight notes.
I just did a search on neighbor’s annoying wind chimes and found this. How lucky I am that my neighbors decided to put up some very loud chimes. I’m with you, I want to hear nature sounds. Someone is suggesting I give the wind chimes a spritz of spray adhesive. I love it!!
Of course, talking to neighbors about your problem with their wind chimes is the best choice. On the other hand–true confession time–I once jumped the fence with a pair of scissors at 4 AM and clipped the string that held the wind sail (bottom thing that flies around crazily in the breeze) and the chimes quit clanging. The neighbors never noticed. After all they probably had tuned the damn things out long ago.
I was checking the internet for advice on dealing with these damned things, found your site. I live in the North East of Scotland where balmy breezes don’t blow, but where the wind is never less than five on the Beaufort Scale. My neighbour has windchimes and they ding dong bong bong 24 hrs of the day and night. I politely asked if they could move them from practically underneath my daughters bedroom window as she was getting no sleep. The response was “really” so they reluctantly moved one ten feet down the fence! and then complained they hear her boyfriend close his car door outside their bedroom window, he now parks elsewhere. They rarely use their garden so why why why do they have these damned nuisances. I am assailed with noise whenever I step outside. All enjoyment of my garden is gone, even opening a window is fraught as the tinkle tinkle ding dong is constant. My neighbour is now known in the street as Mrs Beaujangles. I will soon be known as the neighbour who is now in an asylum.
Maggie, I’m sorry to hear of your noise problem. I don’t know about the North East of Scotland, but here in Seattle it is illegal to make a noise that can be heard inside a neighbor’s house. Car doors are a common, non-repetetive noise, but constant wind chimes are another level of sound. If your neighbors can’t be reasonable, then a visit by a police officer to your home could help you confirm that the noise is unacceptably loud and continuous. From there, you could discuss again with the neighbors and/or send an officer to have a chat. In fact, in Seattle, it is illegal to make a continuous noise that can be heard from the street!
Thank you Tom, I wished I lived in Seattle, I don’t think our Police would be at all concerned at my complaint and would probably write me off as a prat. Today the sun was shining really honestly here in Scotland, so I was in the garden with my hubby, sun shining wind still ablowin and the chimes achimin, I did say rather loudly “for cryin out loud am gonna take a pair of scissors to those damn things” my husband gave me a dig in the ribs and pointed and there through the fence was Mrs Beaujangles, I felt bad for all of a minute and then thought damn it. Two hours later when Mr Beaujangles came home the chimes were taken down. Now I have a neighbour who will think badly of me, but I was thinking badly of her, this is how feuds start. I hope she isn’t Sicilian. 🙂
by the way it is 6.20 pm here not as posted 9.18am. 🙂
Have you ever noticed that the bigger and noisier wind chimes get hung further away from their living space and closer to yours? Both of my next door neighbors have wind chimes — must be a dozen total and the loudest are within a few feet of my bedroom windows on one side of my house and right off my back patio on the other. Neither will budge them. Out of sheer desperation one windy night I put a rubber band around the loudest offenders. Yep, the next day police showed up at my door warning me about trespassing on my neighbor’s property. Huh. What about them trespassing on my right to a little peace and quiet in my own home? Something is seriously wrong here.
I have noticed that the louder ones do tend to get placed away from their bedroom and nearer to yours. People can be so thoughtless. And as your neighbors have shown, cruel too.
Tom, I found this site because I was researching this – a neighbor two houses down put up several chimes that are SO LOUD. It just kills me to have to speak up be noted in this neighborhood as one who is sensitive and easily disturbed. It’s hot here in Arizona and I will need to have a bedroom window open on cool nights and that clanging will keep me awake.
I thought of sending an anonymous note, but believe I will just send a brief, extremely courteous letter giving my name and address.
The thought that you and others see this an as issue too if encouraging. Those who see it as a non-issue are just not in our particular situation.
John, I think your strategy is a good one. I hope it works.