Irish traditional music

The Bodhrán

Post author:Lindsey
Post published:June 22, 2017
Post category:Bodhrán

The bodhrán, though not particularly well-known to people unfamiliar with Celtic music, I imagine is a beautiful Irish frame drum. I have one actually, and can kind of play it. Kind of. Anyway, the way it works is that goat skin (or some other kind of animal skin or a synthetic material) is stretched across one side of the drum’s frame (which is made of wood … something a residential cleaning company Hamilton ON would appreciate), and the other side is left open to allow the musician to place his or her hand on the inside of the drum against the skin to control the timbre and pitch. The drums can range from 25 to 65 centimetres across, with sides somewhere from 9 to 2o centimetres deep.

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Irish Traditional Music

Post author:Lindsey
Post published:June 10, 2017
Post category:Irish Traditional Music

Also called Irish folk music, or Irish trad, this is the genre of folk music that developed in Ireland. As we’ve already seen, Ireland is a country rich with musical culture, and what kind of blog would this be, indeed, if I didn’t explore the traditional music. It all started in Gaelic Ireland, that is, Ireland from the prehistoric era to the 17^th century. According to W. H. Grattan Flood, there were at the very least ten instruments being used in Gaelic Ireland. To make things a little easier for everyone (like when you just pitch in for a limousine service to get you to prom so you don’t all have to take separate vehicles), I’ll give you the modern English descriptions, and put the Irish names in brackets. So! First of all, there were two types of harp, one smaller (cruit) and another larger one that usually had around 30 strings (clairsearch). (more…)