The 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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