Yes, you hold the tipper the way a right-handed person holds a pencil. To get the interesting "backbeat," start curling your wrist towards yourself. Pretty soon, the lower end of the tipper will whip up and strike the skin, giving you the backbeat. Experiment with the tipper, holding it in different spots along its length, until you get the backbeat.

It seems to me that by the time you get the backbeat going, you are holding the tipper the way most left-handers hold a pencil - with their fingers curved toward themselves. ---------- The recipe for Bodhran Tips sounds like something from one of those California restaurants where they send the busboy out to scrape something off a tree and call it an expensive Italian mushroom.