Any of you folks on these boards plan on being in Milwaukee for Irishfest?? I'll be headed there for a weeks worth of lessons in the intermediate bodhran class and I'll be looking forward to meeting one or some of the Tank Commandeers! Hopin' for some nice sessions,meeting other bodhran players and good ideas to further progress with my goat skin romancin'. Dan

Hey Dan,

I look forward to meeting you at the Summer School - I have some interesting stuff to cover, hopefully you'll get lots of useful new material to work on!

There will also be some backup material and support on bodojo available shortly after the class, but I'll explain that next week.

See you then!

Paul

Hey, I'm planning on being there...can't wait. It's my first trip and I'm excited about learning new things for the bodhran as well as finally putting faces to some of the names I see on the sites. See you there!

Jennie

Hi Jennie,

you'll have a ball!

The past few years have had some great sessions in the evenings after the classes - there's a new Session venue this year so I can't speak about this place directly but the craic will be good no matter what. It's well worth staying on for the festival weekend too if you can!

which class are you in?

See you there

Paul

Hey Paul, I signed up for both the intermediate and advanced figuring anything I could pick up will be a plus!

Jennie

Hi Jennie

you're keen - you'll be sick of the sight of me!

The intermediate bits that I'll be doing are mostly an introduction to the top end single-end sticking technique and led a lot by what the users need.

The advanced is that plus a lot more work on developing those skills in detail and their applications. Rolls and double downs are important and we'll be spending time developing those. I've been working up exercises and rudiments - there are similar kinds of exercises in the bodojo technical section

The advanced class will also have a melody players dropping in. I've asked Randy Gosa from Cé to join us, Randy plays banjo and guitar, both of which are relevant to the bodhran as providing the 'bridges' between the drum and the melody instruments. The banjo is very useful to study also from a point of ornamentation. The superb Amy Richter (polkahontas) has agreed to help me out in the advanced class so polkas are on the menu. Thank you Amy

We'll also be covering useful ground like 2 drums in a session, Tuning, warming up, stick selection, drum design. There's a lot of ground to cover in the few hours we have but it should be a lot of fun and you should leave with lots of stuff to think about & work on. There'll be follow-up material and class notes on a new section of bodojo after the classes are over.

I'm looking forward to making the trip, I'm just trying to get my ducks in a row here before I leave on Friday (Lacrosse festival first).

See you there

Paul