The Lilting Banshee – four years of playing bodhrán

The pandemic created a space in my life for learning and playing the bodhrán. I had virtually no previous music training. Added to that, I was born with a hearing impairment that led me to think learning a musical instrument wasn’t really possible.

During the pandemic, I spent hours and hours listening to tunes, learning to distinguish the different parts. Most tunes have two parts: A and B, but some have many more, like Kid on the Mountain, a five-part slip jig. Learning something while relying mostly on my sense of hearing was new to me.

It took me a year and a half, more or less, to be able to keep the beat. Luckily, we were in lockdown most of that time, so I wasn’t in a position to throw off other musicians. My husband has played music most of his life and took up the tenor banjo at the same time as I started the drum, so we played together. And I learned to use a metronome.

Four years on, I am publishing this recording of me playing along to the Lilting Banshee. I finally like how I sound accompanying a jig! I think my style is influenced by my teacher, who taught me online from Ireland while he was locked down and unable to gig and teach.

Having learned phrases and time signatures (3/4, 4/4, 6/8, 9/8, etc) that I can use to accompany music, I’m now starting to listen more deeply. I am paying more attention to pitch and how to mirror it on my drum through hand pressure on the back of the skin.

The bodhrán is considered to be a talking drum because so much of its potential comes from changing the pitch through handwork.

I added a few photos from a trip to Ireland to the recording:

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