The best bodhran "player" in the world could turn up to any decent Irish session and be completely unable to add anything at all to the tunes. All the rhythmic and percussive drive needed to play this music is already present in the tunes. This is a point completely misunderstood by bodhran owners. You spend five minutes learning to bash the skin instead of scuffing it, you get the bodhran video and you think you're going to be an asset to a session in a trice. Get real. The people playing the tunes have spent hours, days, weeks, months, years learning their instruments and more years learning tunes, and here you are are bashing a frickin' goat skin on tunes you don't know for all its worth after a few short-cut hours. Do yourself a favour. Leave the drum at home and learn to play an instrument.