BODHRÁN EXPLORERS ONLINE
September, October 2021 Booking Page
BODHRÁN EXPLORERS: THE SESSION
These workshops will be rooted in Irish traditional music with a wee bit of Scott’s and English folk for good measure! We will focus on tunes that are likely to crop up in a traditional music session and how to approach them on Bodhrán. We will work through a selection of tune specific patterns and ornaments that you can use as a foundation for building your own interpretation and dig a little deeper into the musicianship required for backing tunes on bodhrán effectively.
There will be a weekly playlist of tunes available with a selection of regularly played jig’s, reels, slides, slip jigs and hornpipes to get familiar with and build your practice around.
BODHRÁN EXPLORERS: WORKSHOPS
Bodhrán Explorers is a series of workshops for bodhrán players with some experience of playing, a desire to learn more and challenge themselves. Anyone who has participated in either my Creative Approach to the Irish Bodhrán course or my 6 week How To Play Bodhrán course is very well placed to join this group to develop their skills on bodhrán.
In these workshops we will journey through a range of in-depth technical and musical skills. Contemporary and traditional repertoire will be explored in detail, with forensic attention to form and technique being a basis for each session. You will have listening and practical work to take away, and past sessions have covered syncopated patterns and irregular time signatures, soloing, improvisation, and patterns inspired by other world rhythms.
In this workshop we will explore a selection of syncopated slip jig patterns to bring energy and elevation to your accompaniments on bodhrán. We will explore the two main types of rhythmic syncopation- accenting the off-beats, and playing across the beats.
Triplets, or rolls can be a lovely addition to a bodhrán groove though it can sometimes be tricky to know where and how to apply them for best effect. In this workshop I’ll give you the tools to break down a pattern and apply single ended or double ended triplets to almost any beat, and develop your single ended and double ended triplet chops.
The bodhrán is increasingly seen as an expressive and virtuosic voice in the ensemble of traditional Irish instruments. As a result, the bodhrán is often featured as a soloist. In this workshop we will look at what makes a good bodhrán solo, and how to balance structure and improvisation to build and develop your own ideas for soloing.
Riverdance took the world by storm throughout the mid 1990’s and brought traditional Irish music and culture to a global audience. The bodhrán, and other Irish percussion instruments are a hugely important part of the Riverdance sound and in this workshop we will unpick some of the more interesting tunes from the musical score.