I have been attempting to play a bamboo flute (EE) for a while and recently bought a sweetheart folk fife in “D”. The fife is a fun little instrument to play, but when I play it for any length of time I begin to feel paranoid about the super-loud, ultra-high pitch sound flooding through the slum apartment I live in. If you know what you’re doing, people might put up with it for a while; they may even enjoy it. When you suck as bad as I do you have to worry about someone kicking down your door and bludgeoning you with a lead pipe. 
I’ve tried going to the local cemetary where people are less likely to complain, but the vibes there don’t help out. My only solution is to limit my playing to sporadic 10 minute outbursts. When it gets warm enough around here to go canoeing, I’ll bring my fife and torment the loons. How do you practice without paranoia?
-You signed no promisory note to be quiet when you were born, and a degree of noise from you should be a realistic expectation of your neighbors-after all, you have to listen to them too! Call it reciprocity, quid pro quo or good for the goose=good for the gander, etc., but you have a right to make some noise. Temper this with judgement as to time and place, achieve a mutual noise balance with neighbors (as noisy as them, but not much more) and your music will likely be just a part of the local soundscape. Moreover, a few noisy tools at your disposal can help build a mutually respectful audio relationship with neighbors and give them second thoughts about blasting heavy metal music through your walls, floors or ceiling at 3:00 a.m. or parking a boom car under your window while its occupants groove to the boom.
Good Luck
If you’re practicing during reasonable hours, say after 8 a.m. and before 9 p.m., I don’t see how any reasonable person could object. I’ve played my fifes in slum apartments, and it wasn’t any worse than the couple downstairs fighting, or the kids with their radios, sirens going past, car horns, whatever. Life is noisy.
I like the cemetery idea. Robert Johnson practiced guitar late at night while sitting on a tombstone. A little graveyard dirt in your pocket is supposed to help your playing (or maybe improve your luck with the ladies, I can’t remember which).
Now fifing while canoing - that’s another story. If you scare the fish away, I might row over and dunk you. 
The only times I’ve caught flak were (1) when playing at 5:00 a.m. (bad idea in Saudi Arabia) and (2) When I played too close to a bad-tempered drunk. Let common sense be your guide, and enjoy yourself. And a cemetary is a PERFECT place to practice…I love doing it and in fact got a gig out of doing so (the guy who maintains the cemetary hired me to play a birthday party). You have just as much right to make a little noise during reasonable hours as the diesel truck roaring down the road.
Dave
I was practicing in the wee hours of the morning yesterday, and began to worry that it was bothering the neighbor, but then he started practicing his electric guitar.
Walden
Just before I moved into my current flat (apartment),a friend told me that my downstairs neighbour to be saw him in a pub.the conversation went something like this; “I hear that your mate Kevin’s moving in upstairs to me”
“Oh, aye”
“He’s a quiet lad isn’t he?”
“Oh, aye. Apart from when he plays his saxophone at 3am-that’s when he gets his best musical ideas.”
“*@%!!” 
One time, I was practicing in my bedroom when two women in the foyer of the adjoining apartment were talking, and one burst out (so I could hear, of course) with “gddmned merfing Irish s**t!”
And I had been playing quietly. At least I wasn’t the one sharing my rap music with the neighborhood. It did put me off my playing for a week, though. I like to think that the power of the Pure Drop caused my rap-playing neighbors to move. 
Now I just let 'er rip. Screw 'em. It’s more music than they’ll ever produce.
I’ve arranged to live where nobody will bother
me or vice versa.
–If only I could, Jim; if only I could.
We’re in a really cheap and rather squalid
apartment; it’s a duplex. The fellow across
the wall plays guitar in a heavy metal
band–but he never plays at home
and I think he’s deaf, so I can’t bother him.
We’re going to move into a house soon, too.
Whenever we lived in an apartment in Birmingham, the young neighbors used to crank up their music pretty loud on a Friday nite. If my husband would be home on leave, he would sometimes complain to me about them, but I always reminded him that the neighbors were quiet otherwise, and ALWAYS turned it down by 10:00 p.m.
We live in a townhouse now, and an elderly couple live next door. I have never had a complaint, and we are all still on speaking terms, so I guess a) my playing isn’t loud enough for them to hear b) they are somewhat deaf c) they can hear it, but they enjoy it (I prefer to think that’s the one ) or d) they prefer listening to my playing compared to the ear-splitting shrieks of our Sun Conure Buddy. I quit playing after 9:00 p.m., (which I think is reasonable) and Buddy goes to bed at 9:00.
ANYTHING beats a car alarm going off at 5:00 a.m Saturday or Sunday morning!!!
Mary
I am in a house, but I still feel paranoid about playing my Sweetheart folk fife in D (BTW - it is a seriously fun little fife). Here’s an example showing why:
4 Year old Son (I just finished playing a jig on my flute) - “Boy daddy, you sure sound good tonight”…I’m obviously leading him down the right path! 
4 Year old Son (After finishing the same jig on my fife) - “Daddy, that was kind of loud and squeaky - Could you play your flute again?”. 
I’ve grown to hold the opinion that unless you live alone in a sound proof box, fifes in D are best played outdoors. I play mine on my lunch break because I can fit the sucker in my pants pocket when I go out, and it won’t set off the metal detector when I come back in.
Eric
I suggest you find a fife with a small round “renaissance” embouchure and small toneholes. A decreasing conical bore would help too. These instruments play at only a 3rd of the volume of a large embouchure-cylindrical bore fife.
Thomas Hastay
Thomas - I’ve had both Ralph Sweet’s folk fife in D (conical bore, but more Prattenish sized holes - relatively speaking) and his renaissance fife (smaller holes, cylindrical bore - just like the flutes back in the renaissance period). Surprisingly, the renaissance fife is the harder of the two to play quietly. The folk fife has a rather sweet first octave, but I think any D fife gets harsher the higher up you go. That second octave & up is flat out unpleasant in small spaces.
Perhaps there are other makers out there that can make a D fife quieter in the upper octaves, but I’m not sure it’s possible from a physics perspective.
Eric