Vis Maior

So I bought Rock Band today (yay) and after playing for a few hours the downstairs neighbor complained that we were "bouncing a basketball". Does anyone have any good ways to dampen the sound of the drumkit? We have hardwood floors.

Thanks!

<3

Most likely it's just the base pedal causing the issues. I'd probably try to put the drum set up on something and cushion it from the floor.

A carpet doormat.

Although when I drum I'm not stopping on the base pedal. I used to when I first started out, so as you get used to it, the movement will become more natural and quieter.

I had some friends who put like.. a small towel or something - any kind of padding or cloth really, over the drums to dampen a bit of the noise. Some sort of carpet mat under the entire kit would also help with the bass, as mentioned above.

Socks on the drumpads.

rockband.scorehero.com

You can find allllllll sorts of things to do with your drums here. I would highly recommend ditching the stock pedal though, because it most likely will break before long. Even the RB2 ones.

My friend who has children deals with them playing Rock Band all the time. The layout of his house is such their playroom is directly over his office. He eliminated the problem by placing drum set on a doormat sized foot gel pad. I'm not sure where they sell these, but they are the pads you sometimes see people using at cash registers etc, where they have to stand for long periods.

Sound obviously travels better through solid objects, as you stated you have wood flooring, which wont soak much of the sound up. You need gel pads for the bass kick, putting that on a pillow will become annoying as you get to more difficult levels. A gel pad, something with more substance should do the trick. They are most likely hearing the sticks on the pads. Try putting something soft on the ends of the sticks, even cotton balls help. Then obviously you can put something soft to cover the drum pads to, but you need to be careful, cover them too much and of course they aren't going to pick up the sticks hitting them as well.

Doing either of those should reduce the noise it makes. Walk outside the room and go into another adjacent room, or outside as long as you have 1 wall dividing you and the room with rock band, while doing this have someone else beat on the drums. You should be able to get a good measurement of what the person downstairs is hearing.