Lonnie Ezell

Voila!

Finis!

It’s a wrap!

That’s right – this bodhran is done. More or less. All of the crucial parts are done, and it plays like a drum. There are a few things left to do, like taping the head, applying a bit of lannolin or neatsfoot to condition it a bit.

The Sound

The sound is pretty good, especially considering the skin has not been played in yet. The front of the skin is nice and smooth. I don’t know who is responsible for preparing these heads, but they did a pretty good job, it seems like. After soaking in water a couple of times (I didn’t like the tension the first time around) the back of the hide is a little bit rough, so I’ll need to go through and sand that down a bit to reduce the hand sliding noise.

It also needs to be taped. In a bad way. In case you’re not familiar with it, many of the high-end bodhrans come with the edges of the head wrapped in what is basically electrical tape. I was unable to find any at Lowes that was wide enough to use. At least, I couldn’t find any that wasn’t duct-tape gray. Not exactly the look I was going for. All the store had was the 3/4″ tape and I would prefer 1-1/2″ or 2″ wide tape to do this, so that may end up as a special order.

What does the tape do? It helps control the overtones and helps to focus the sound of the drum. If you hit  a drum that hasn’t been taped, you’ll hear the good thunking bass, but you’ll also hear a lot of higher-frequency sounds, or ringing. The tape helps to get rid of that. This makes it sound better, punchier, more focused. It also gets the drum out of the high frequency range occupied by the human voice and the acoustic guitar, which makes it easier to mix in both live and studio situations.

Other Details

First off, being able to tune this thing is awesome. If I ever buy another bodhran, you can be sure that finger-tunable is on the list of must-haves. If you are getting ready to buy your first one… put that on your must-have list. Well, maybe save it for your second one, where you have actually saved up for the good one.

If you look closely where the skin head meets (oops – was that politically correct?) meets the tuning ring, you’ll see something warm and fuzzy sticking out. What is that? you ask. I ended up stapling a strap of leather along the top of the tuning ring. I originally got this idea from Hedwitschak Drums.

When I first saw him do this in one of his videos about making the bodhran, I thought that was kinda weird. Then I thought it was a great idea, because I really hate the harshness of the rim shots on most bodhrans. Well, it seemed like the leather would help that sound better. And it does. Much better. The rim shots now actually seem to fit in with the rest of the drum strikes.

According to Christian Hedwitschak, though, it does a lot more. To quote from his web page:

This leather strip works like a buffer zone. I makes the whole drum a bit less frail for de-tuning and allows the drum skin to swing out better in the edge area. It also softens a bit the rim shot sound, takes away some ringing overtones and avoids a possibly squeaking of the skin.

Now, I have a feeling that I used thicker leather than he uses, but so far I’m loving it. Granted, I’ve only played it for about 15 minutes. That was all the bashing the wife could stand listening to. <smirk>

To Boldly Go

I gotta say, this has been an awesome experience. There were many times along the way that I wasn’t sure if this was going to work out. Or be playable when it was done. Each time, though, I pushed through and kept believing. I kept listening to that inner voice who said, “It’s okay. Everything is going to work out.” And it did. Sure, there may be flaws, but that’s the nature of the beast. That’s a part of the learning process. And I’m not embarrassed by the flaws. Instead, I look at the entire drum and go.. you know what? I made this. And it works.

From here, it’s time to learn how this bodhran wants to be played. It’s time to put in more practice time and get where I wouldn’t be embarrassed to sit in a session. I don’t need to be a master player. I just want to be good enough that the song is better for having a drum in it. I want to enhance the song, not drive it. And not put another notch in the belt of all of those other musicians that cringe when they see a bodhran player sit down in the session.

The journey has just begun.