JohnB,
Sure, a good percussionist can make any 2 sticks sound great, but surely the joy of the lagerphone is in the creating and learning to play. It really only requires a reasonable sense of time/rhythm and a little creativity - if you can walk and count to 4, your're there! Keeping it simple is the key. I'm teaching my 6 year old daughter to play a steady continuous backbeat on beats 2 and 4. With a nice, crisp acoustic guitar we're swingin'! Isn't a bodhran a drum?