This is something that I think I have a reasonable grasp upon however I'm interested to see what others think.

Ultimately I think that the basic striking of the drum is simply a range of variations on the central theme of whacking the goat. The reason for defining styles for me is because it is useful in determining parameters that can be used as a descriptive device for teaching, relating events, discussion or other uses.

My understanding of 'style' in the usual context of 'top end' or 'kerry' is that it is a technical definition - a matter of technique as opposed to a 'musical style' based around the manner of interpreting the music using the drum.

The techniques do affect the sound from the drum of course, so is there a wider semantic of 'style' that includes the musicality as well as the technicality? Is there a difference between 'playing-style' e.g. top end and 'player-style' e.g. I want to sound like x Player. If so, does player style then split into player-sound and player-contribution, the former being the unique combination of player and instrument and the latter being what they bring to the music

To my mind player-style is very different from playing-style. Player-contribution encompasses the player's musical background, teachings, zen. The player sound comes from drum preferences, Tipper preferencesm the player's plysical approach to the drum and the 1001 things that go to make one player sound different to another.

The thread arises from seeing posts over time for example asking 'what style does Johnjoe play?', invariably there will be the answer 'top-end', yet he plays using a variety of techniques & tools selected in the moment that defy a stylistic nail-down. You play like Johnjoe by being Johnjoe and as far as I can tell, his skin is well-filled for now.

So at the heels of the hunt I'm asking What is Top end, what is Kerry, what are the various 'styles' out there, do you agree with these 'styles' being defined as techniques or are there qualitative stylistic outputs associated with technique?

I'm inclined to opt for 'Top End Technique' and 'Kerry Technique' and leave the word 'style' to refer to the qualitative softer-skills of personal or regional musicianship

I'm not sure that this is terribly well worded or even if there's a real question in there but I am interested in how people understand 'styles' and what that means to them.

Cheers

P

Alright p

Well i think you define a style by the person and drum characteristics.
Regarding the Bodhran as an instrument which can be interpreted by free-form methods, lends itself to personal expression.
This interpretation seems to me to have come on exponentially in more recent years due to the progressive playing that now is so prominent in music today.
Parameterisation of style definition is quite accurately coverd by
Bodhran type
Tipper type
striking technique

Parameters that i think would be interesting to looking into more would be those characteristic of the Player

age ?
Ethnicity ?
gender ?

My initial thought are that all could have influence at some level.

B

Hey Paul,

Funny thing - I was just thinkin about this earlier today...

It started off when I was turnin a custom stick for my friend. I was making it to suit his 'style' of playing. But his 'style' is quite different to anyone else I hav ever seen. So I thought, What is his style then? Is it Top-end - yes, but, it is a different type of top-end to others. So I thought, maybe Top-end and Kerry are categories, with a hybrid category in between. Then a style is a persons particular way of playing that category...

Deep stuff, eh?

Cillian.

Hey
glad this is being addressed. I'd say there are a lot of personal styles, that cannot be easily categorised, and a wide variety of techniques is used. Even the Kerry technique and the top end technique are not "either or" but can be mixed. And there are many other techniques out there. Martin O'Neill and his way of holding the Tipper comes to mind, Tommy Hayes as well. And actually every other established player seems to hold the tipper slightly or not so slightly differently. So a lot of techniques out there, I know someone that plays with the BBC Symphonic Orchestra that incorporated the left hand into his rhythmic playing, fascinating stuff. So all these techniques than can be used to make your own style, so yes, it's more a player-style than playing style.
All the best
Rolf