bodhranic empathy

Subject: bodhranic empathy
From: leeneia
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 10:09 AM

I'm just back from a week-long trip to visit family up north.

Sometimes on the mudcat I see serious dislike of the bodhran, and I never understood it. I have gone to many concerts by excellent Irish groups, and the bodhran solo was always a highlight. Well...

We spent an afternoon at my sister-in-laws wee apartment on Milwaukee's east side. The landlord had not turned the heat on yet, and I had my choice of two chairs, neither of which was big enough. In addition, my sis-in-law was playing a CD she had picked up in Ireland. It featured the shopkeeper's little sister, who sang every cut in a sweet, husky, little-girl voice. That style was new and cute about twelve years ago. Now it's getting old.

Once upon a time, I worked in a public library, and there was a six-year-old girl named Tammy who came in often. Tammy was blond, plump, and probably not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. She did have an unusual and charming trait - a sweet, husky flute-like voice. On Tammy it was never irritating because it was natural. On somebody aged twenty to thirty, it's not natural, it's a gimmick. Gimmicks are okay, but not for every single cut! Not for three hours in a cold apartment! Aaargh!

(Not every little girl has this voice. My own niece at the same age would shoot from the low alto range to a sopranino squawk in the space of one sentence.)

To get back to the CD -- for most of the cuts, our piping vocalist was accompanied by a bodhran player who didn't seem to realize that the rawhide on a bodhran doesn't sound good when it's too wet.

ATTENTION WORLD! If you want to be a bodhran player, then you need to learn how it's supposed to sound. You need to pay a lot of attention to how wet or dry the skin is, and if it's too wet or dry, you need to correct it. You also need to learn to do something besides thump it.

Suppertime finally came, and I had the chance to get soaked in a thunderstorm on the way to an Italian restaurant. Fortunately the restaurant wasn't playing any music.

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: Big Mick
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 10:16 AM

If you are serious about playing this instrument, you will get a tunable and you will pay serious money. You will pay attention to technique. The bodhran, like the whistle, is easy to play, but difficult to play well. It is a support instrument, for the most part, full of subleties, and the great players understand they support the tune, not lead it.

Mick

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: Leadfingers
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 10:25 AM

The main reason Bodhrans get to be the butt of so many bad jokes is that there are a few too many people who , without any real feeling for music , decide that it is an 'easy' thing to play , so that they can join in at sessions . While a competent player can definately add to the sound , a bad player can really muck things up . As Mick said , its like whistles - VERY easy to play badly but they do need a lot of practice to play well .

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: Dead Horse
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 11:45 AM

.........and they usually come in threes (or fours or fives etc.)
ONE IS ENOUGH, DAMMIT !

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: Scoville
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 12:00 PM

The bodhran is NOT easy. I know one or two very good bodhran players and they have worked very, very, hard at it, and are always welcome because we all know they know what they're doing.

You want easy, get one of those plastic shaker eggs.

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: Big Mick
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 12:03 PM

I think that is what we said.

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: Amos
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 12:10 PM

IF you want to see bodhran empathy at its flaming miraculous maximu, catch Pam Swann cutting loose. She makes the very cosmos rattle for joy. 'Course she does that even without a bodhran, but watching her play is like seeing a miracle in progress. Awe-inspiring, no mistake.

A

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: Tim theTwangler
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 12:14 PM

Trouble is chaps how do you get good at it if there is such a lot of ignorant prejudice around?
I was lucky because I met a chap at the place were I hten worked who was a god steady player who had had lessons from a quite famous guy.
he gave me the basics and I practised by playing along with all the old Dubliners and Fureys and well you know the sort of thing.
Mostly when I go anywhere and they are on the Irish at a session the reception I get is pretty nagative despite the fact that normally the rest of the players are not actualy up to my standard.
Ist about time you buggers grew up and gave any one who loves the music enough to learn to play it an even break.

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: Les from Hull
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 01:48 PM

The best bodhran players know the tune they are playing, not just the rhythm.

(I was using ieSpell to check my spelling before I posted, and it didn't know 'bodhran' - but it did offer me 'birdbrain'!)

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 01:59 PM

Tim:

You're right in a way. People have to start playing before they get good. It's just a shame that in most cases the learning curve seems to be very gentle for the bodhran. I get to a lot of Irish sessions, but of the dozens of bodhran players I hear, only two have ever really made any real musical contribution. The rest have been indifferent (which is ok) or an impediment (which isn't).

I suppose you could say the same for any instrument, but people who play fiddles and boxes and so on seem to progress more quickly or to change to an instrument they can manage.

Best Regards

AB

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: Declan
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 03:31 PM

It may seem obvious, but if you want to play a percussion instrument the first thing you need to do is to understand the rhythms of the type of music you want to play. Going to sessions and listening intently to the music is one way of doing this. Practicising at home playing to records also helps - but be conscious that many bands play traditional tunes at a much higher speed than you will usually find in a session. It may be that some peole just don't have rhythm - if this is the case another instrument might suit you better, although most require some degree of rhythm.

If you have the basic rhythym right (and be sure to listen to the session and not the tune playing in your head!), I don't think you'll be unwelcome at any session (if the people there are reasonable). Try to find ways of not playing too loudly while you are learning. As you get better you can increase the volume, but never play so loud that you are drowning out the lead instruments playing the tune you are accompanying. The bodhran is a backing instrument (except in solos) - this means you stay in the background.


As you go on you will pick up technique - either by listening to other players or through lessons, instruction videos or whatever.

In applying the techniques, make sure they don't knock your rhythm out before you have mastered them fully.

No matter how good you become, don't show off at the expense of the tunes.

And the jokes are only jokes - there are jokes about most instruments, just grin and bear them. As an Irishman I know you can get used to them. As Kieran Halpin put it in his song "Too long away", learn to "suffer the jibe and the jester, and laugh at their joke through it all".

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: Ernest
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 03:36 PM

To quote Ian McCalman: Good bodhran players are great - bad bodhran players are plentiful!"

Couldn`t help quoting this...

Apart from that I have heard a few very good players (J. Kelly from "Flook", Ivan Smith for instance) and I know a few competent players. Luckily I rarely met reeeaaalllly bad ones.

Regards
Ernest

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 03:45 PM

and the bodhran solo was always a highlight.

I can't take to a bodhran (or perhaps any drum) solo for more than say 30 seconds. I need a melody to give the interest to a rythym.

I do like the bodhran in good hands though - Leadfingers has summed my feelings up,

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: Barry Finn
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 04:48 PM

If you're a bodhram player & you want to play at sessions make sure that the musicians around have a decent sense of timing. It's a pain when the guy playing guitar on one side of you thinks that everyone's playing a march & the gal to the other side of you is playing a polka & the rest of the group is actually a slide. Then there's your one on the long neck mandolin who doesn't know that the strings need to be streched in order to get something close to what sounds similar to a cord. One fiddle is really nice but really 12 of them with four trying to bounce harmony off each other & two of the others on speed, spare me, please. Then you got the yobos on the accordians doing ommpaa all nite & what's really bothersome is the concertina players all competing with the accordians for volume & they're can't find seats so they look like they're playing horizontal yoyo's, while the 2 pipers act as if they're playing pigs, tune up why don't you & then you got some flute player drooling on your drum & god I hate that cause I have to stop, clean off the drum head, retune, geeze get a grip.

Us bodhran players are getting sick & tired of getting the piss taken out of us. So to the rest of you musicians who feel as if you've got the high almighty job of telling us drummers what to play & how to play it, tend to your own instruments. You don't see us trying to tell you how & when to play an instrument that we don't play ourselves, you don't hear us trying to jump in & lead off the session every other tune or two or three & you won't catch us trying to speed up the rest of you, no, we're the one trying to hold to all toghter for you when that happens. Is it our fault that no one can hear the singers, we usually will hold back while the rest of the group drowns them out but do tell you guys to stop playing & get in your face, no. And aren't we the only musicians that take turns with each other, knowing that to many bodhrans can spoil the soup but you think it's ok to play 6 guitars, 12 fiddles, 3 flutes, 4 penny, whistles, 2 pipes, 7 accordians & 3 concertias.
All that being said, we really do enjoy playing with the rest of you & we like the fact that you all enjoy the puch & drive that we add to the music. But don't diss us, look what we've done to those African sessions, they're now known as drumming circles & those Native American sessions, drummers & singers only, maybe 1 or 2 flutes.

Thank you all for the kind remarks & the well needed words of advice, we so greatful for your guidence & informative instructions
& if you happen to see us at a session please feel free to buy us a drink or show us how hold a beater or apply pressure to the back side of the skin. Now go back to playing on your own & blow your nose or pick your teeth or kindly scratch your ass or squeeze, squeak or squeal whatever it is that you play so divinely.

With tounge in cheek (flutists you can fire now)

Barry

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: leeneia
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 05:36 PM

I agree.

I've had some sleep, so I don't feel as cranky now. Not that I have changed my views on singers in their twenties who insist on sounding like they're six.

A person who loves to sing can sing different songs different ways. As I go about my chores, I sometimes sing as many different ways as I can. It's part of loving to do it.

When we were in Milwaukee we visited the Spice Store on 3rd Street, where the Usinger's sausage store is. They were having a small Octoberfest in the street. I bought some 3rd Street Central European seasoning, and now I'm going to sprinkle some on a pork roast and present it to the DH when he returns, fingersore and weary, from the cube farm.

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: Effsee
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 09:21 PM

Are you sure you're on the right thread leeneia?

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: erinmaidin
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 10:01 PM

I have the utmost empathy for bodhran players.....nuff said

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: erinmaidin
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 10:02 PM

I also have great empathy for lepers, cripples and anyone in govt.

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: erinmaidin
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 10:02 PM

I can play the bodhran...but only as a last resort!

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Oct 06 - 11:20 PM

Well said Barry. I see you have obviously visited the Bear in Faversham (grin?), but you must have been on a night when the banjos (and the acid-heads with Djembes) stayed at home...

Subject: RE: bodhranic empathy
From: Folkiedave
Date: 06 Oct 06 - 04:27 AM

If you need to play a bodhran make sure it is in perfect pitch.

Throw it into a skip without touching the sides.