Your choice of bodhran beater can have a dramatic effect on the sound produced by your drum. From hard tippers with teardrop or ellipsoid heads to split tippers and hot rod dowel beaters, there is an array of choices available that will produce various tones.

Skilfully played bodhran can create the effect of urgency or even joy, but mastering this instrument requires years of practice to reach these heights.

Head

Finding the right size of head is essential to your success on the drum. Experiment with different sizes until you find one that feels and plays best for you; firm yet responsive pressure should result in a responsive head; it should support slow melodious tunes or faster-paced reels and jigs alike! A quality drum will accommodate all styles of playing.

Some bodhran owners use electrical tape on the rims of their instruments to deter unwanted vibrations from rebounding off and into their skins, especially for lambeg skins that are so thin as to almost be transparent.

Advanced bodhran players can modify or dampen the tone of their drum by pressing against its back skin, making this an invaluable tool in maintaining high-quality drums that often lose tuning due to atmospheric conditions.

Skin

A bodhran features a skin of mammal origin (usually goatskin), stretched over its circular drum shell. Wood strips cross this skin, creating sound through holes at its center hole. Bodhrans rose to prominence during folk music’s revival during the 1960s; today their popularity remains.

When playing the bodhran, one hand is placed against its back skin to alter or dampen its sound and alter the tone of the drum. In older styles, however, its crosspiece was held without dampening its skin at all.

Some bodhrans feature cross bars within the frame to support the skin, although these are becoming less prevalent among professional modern instruments. Instead, most professional bodhrans incorporate mechanical tuning systems similar to drum kits which enable drummers to tighten or loosen skin by using a tool known as a hex key depending on atmospheric conditions.

Some bodhrans come equipped with split tipper beaters featuring brass or steel weights attached at their ends, producing thicker sounds than the standard single sloped tipper. Buyer beware – these tips have needle sharp ends which could damage drum skins if used repeatedly.

Beater

Bodhrans were traditionally played with one’s bare hand; today however, beaters, commonly referred to as cipins, are used instead. A beater should ideally match the length of an outstretched baby finger for maximum comfort when used. Made of either wood or ebony material and weighted accordingly to reduce wrist pressure.

These essential tools for any bodhran player come in various sizes and shapes. Some feature ribs to aid grip and can even feature adjustable metal weights glued onto their tips for optimal playing styles; wider apart produces brush sound while closer together produces hard clicks.

Bodhran lessons can be an effective way to accompany dance music such as reels and jigs, while this tutor will start by walking you through proper techniques for holding both drum and stick, before progressing to basic rhythm patterns for playing bodhran.

Frame

The bodhran rests on a player’s knee, and is struck with one hand using a tipper or beater stick – sound production ranges from sharp urgent taps to melodious ringing beats in skilled players’ hands. Pressure applied behind the skin also affects tone and pitch – subtle touches may indicate sadness while an aggressive strike might signal action or urgency.

Early bodhrans were untunable, but with renewed interest in Irish traditional music came the development of tunable drums which allowed for new playing styles and allowed players to adjust them with screws for fine adjustments of sound quality. An internal tone ring, borrowed from banjo design, tightens or loosens skin tightness via screws allowing fine adjustments of sound quality of each individual bodhran.

Traditional Bodhran playing style was to strike it with one’s bare hand, however now its playing can more resemble that of a melody instrument and using a tipper can reduce wrist strain. Furthermore, many makers use brass or steel weights glued onto their beaters to produce thicker sounds on the drum.

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