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Hello and welcome to this tuition video on the baron and bones. My name is Mel
Mercier and with the help of flute player Seamus Egan we hope in this video
to open you up to some of the musical and rhythmic possibilities of percussion
in this case the Irish baron and the bones and their role in Irish
traditional music. We're going to talk first of all about the baron and how we
use it to accompany a jig. The drum itself is a member of the frame drum
family. It's a baron not because of the drum itself really but mainly because
of the technique that we use to play it which is very specific and very
peculiar to Irish music. It's a goatskin drum although some people use other
heads mounted on a frame very very often with a crossbar on the back although
it's not absolutely necessary to have a crossbar it can be played without which
we'll show later on in the video. The first thing I'd like to show you is how
we use the stick in the right hand. Later on in the video we'll talk about the use
of the left hand on the drum but for now that's just going to really remain
kind of dormant. So there are a couple of traditions at home and playing the drum
one that is practically died out now although there are still some exponents
is the one where we just use the hand and we don't use any stick. Now we're not
going to be talking about that in this video but I would like to borrow it as
an aid to getting to a point where we can understand the use of the stick
because essentially the technique is the same. So what we first do is make sure we
have a firm grip on the drum at the back which you achieve by applying pressure
on the outside of the hand against the rim or against the the cross bars and
the inside against the skin so that the drum can actually be held freely like
this with a certain amount of pressure against the inside of the lower arm.
Sitting the drum on the thigh and pulling it back towards the ribs and
applying a certain amount of pressure towards oneself gives a very very firm
grip. So if we take our hand and point it towards the front rim of the drum, take
the fingers and bend them back so they're pointing at the sternum. Move the
hand towards the drum and begin with the down-up motion.
Now at the moment I'm not applying any accents or anything it's just the basic
up and down movement, most of which is coming from the wrist, some of which is
coming from the lower arm as well. There's a certain pivot action which
we'll use when we put the stick in our hand as well. So we need to remember
that action and now grip the stick. There are several ways of gripping the stick
and in fact there are several types of sticks. This stick is very personal to me
and is generally larger than most sticks that you'll see baron players using.
The length of the stick is not really that important, what's important is the
balance so that there should really be some extra weight at both
ends of the stick. So again pointing the fingers towards the outside rim of the
drum, we hold the stick somewhat away from the centre towards the front in a
grip that's like a common grip for holding a pen or a pencil. So it's this
kind of grip, taking the stick, this front end of the stick and pointing it
back towards the sternum. You see that the hand is back in the same position as
it was before. So now we've got this end of the stick as the striking end and we
will start to play that up and down motion again. Now it's important at this
stage to disregard the other end of the stick. It's very very important in
baron playing but initially it can be more of a hindrance than a help even to
think about it. So we're just going to concentrate on keeping the second end of
the stick away from the drum and just using this front end here. So again that
down-up motion is as follows. Again the wrist action is the same, there's a
certain amount of lower arm movement.
Now we're going to change this slightly and because we eventually want to get to
a point where we can play a rhythm for a jig. Now jigs are generally in the form
of AABB, a musical form. Each section, both A and B, is generally going to be
eight bars long and each bar is made up of six beats. So we say that it's in six
eight time. Now the six beats themselves then are divided into two groupings of
three. So we get a kind of feeling of one two three four five six one two three
four five six one two three four five six. And the other important thing at
this point is that the threes in this music are not straight ahead threes. It's
not that ga ga ga ga ga ga. There's always a little bit of swing. So that's
important to get the feel, to get the feel of the music right. So again we're
going to play a six and again just use that down up down up motion. But we're
going to give it a certain accent. We're going to give an accent on one and four
in the bar. So it'll be one two three four five six one two three four five
six. One will fall on a down beat, four will fall on an up beat. So let's try
that. One two three four five six one two three four five six one two three
four five six one two three four five six. Now it's important to try and accent
that four, that fourth beat, which is an upbeat. So that would be one of the
initial difficulties. So we need to try and bring this, the stick, slightly
harder against the skin.
One two three four five six one two three four five six one two three four
five six. And remember that swing element. So the next step then is to
change very very slightly that rhythm. And what we're going to do is leave out
the second beat, so that we have beats one, three, four, five, and six. So it'll
sound like this.
One two three four five six one three four five six one three four five six
one three four five six one three four five six one three four five six one
three four five six one three four five six one three four five six now that's
the the the direction of the strokes remains the same so that one and three
are on downbeats one two three four five six one two three four five six down
down up down up down down up down up down down up down up moving on from that
we move to probably one of certainly the essential ingredient in in both
baron and bones playing but probably the most problematic for beginners and that
is the whole issue of what we call the roll this is where the other end of the
stick comes into play this end of the stick through that motion when that
motion is right this other end of the stick begins to come around and strike
the baron so I'm going to try and show that now I'll try and play it very slow
and then eventually play it up to speed for you so you know how it sounds
starting with what we had one two three four five six one two three four five
six one two three four five six one two three four five six now remember when
playing the role that you've got to still keep all the accents going and we
still need to keep that upbeat accent on four going as well so let's have a look
at that again it's very very difficult to get people to understand this and
play it except through telling them to do all of the previous things I've
talked about to get the right feel for that then the other end of the stick
naturally begins to come into play and as that happens you begin to feel that
it's right and then it's a question of controlling it so let's have a look at
it again one two three four five six one two three four five six one two three
four five six one two three four five six
so I'm going to speed it up a little bit now so you begin to get a feeling of
of what it should really sound like.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
So you see as it begins to get faster,
as we begin to play it more at the tempo
that jigs will be played,
instead of a sixth feel, we really get a two feel.
One, two.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
One, two.
So now we're at a point where we can
talk just a little bit about phrasing
again, and we can put together
a phrase of eight bars
that we can then play with eight bars of a tune.
So again, to remind you about the phrasing,
generally jigs, and as we see with reels as well,
the eight bar phrase is really like the smallest phrasing group.
Sometimes the melody of tunes will suggest
that there are actually four bars and four bars
but we'll just think of it now as being eight bars.
And again, that eight bars, which we call A, is repeated.
So we have AA, and then we move to another eight bars,
which we call B, and that itself is repeated.
So we have the AABB structure.
Four phrases of eight bars each.
So it's a 32 bar structure, which we can call a round.
And just while we're on the point,
when musicians play this music, generally what they'll do
is they will take a round, or what we call a tune,
and repeat that itself so that we can get
our four eight bar phrases, all repeated,
and maybe repeat it again, and then straight into another tune.
Normally another tune of the same type, be it a jig or a reel,
and the same process is repeated.
So you build up what musicians call a set of tunes.
So you might have two reels or three reels,
two jigs or three jigs.
And certain tunes generally play together
because they run well into each other,
or they complement each other.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
One, two.
Thank you.
It's very, very difficult when teaching somebody
how to play the baron to explain to them exactly
how to play the role.
What you generally end up doing is going through
all the steps we've gone through
and hope that they get the angle of the stick right
and the motion right.
And then generally what seems to happen
is that the role begins to happen for them,
and then it's a question of them controlling it.
But just as an aid in that process,
we're just going to try this little experiment.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
One, two.
Up to now in the video,
we've just concentrated on the right hand technique.
But at this point, I'd like to move to the left hand
and talk about one of the most significant developments
in Bauron playing that's happened over the last 25 to 30 years.
And that is essentially the use of the left hand
against the skin to produce certain effects.
One of the most obvious of those is changing the pitch
or the relative pitch of the drum.
Now, we can do that in two ways.
The first way is by changing the size of the head
or the area of the head that we're actually playing on.
And we do that in the following way.
Up to now, I've been playing all my downstrokes,
more or less, in an area very close to the center of the drum,
which is in the cup of my hand.
My hand is making a slight little cup,
and my downstrokes are, if you see the shadow,
just about here.
I'm going to continue to play there.
And when I play there, the part of the head,
the most important part that's resonating,
is this area here.
If I move my hand down,
the size of the head that's resonating becomes greater,
and the pitch should theoretically become lower.
If I move my hand up and play in this small area here,
I'm playing on a smaller head,
and the pitch should be higher.
So, playing the jig rhythms that we've already talked about,
I'm going to try and demonstrate that.
This technique is very, very effective
when you're accompanying a musician,
because you can use it to outline phrasing.
Tunes, as we've already said,
generally fall into an AABB pattern.
So, I'm going to show you how to do that.
Generally fall into an AABB pattern.
And very often, the range of the tune,
or what they call the tessitura of the tune,
changes in the B section.
So, in the A section, the tune has a certain range.
In the B section, it has a different range.
So, we can change the skin sound,
the Bauron sound, to match that.
So, for instance, we can go in an A section
from this kind of sound
into a B section with this sound.
And we can also use it to make smaller divisions
of phrasing within the tune.
The other way to achieve a similar effect
and change that relative pitch or tone of the drum
is to keep the area we're playing on,
the head area constant,
but to change the tension of it.
The tighter the tension,
the higher the sound will be.
So, again, keeping my hand in this
more or less central position here,
I'm going to apply pressure to the head,
which you will probably see here.
You should see the head coming out a little.
So, if I just do it without playing,
it looks like this.
Out and back in.
And most of that pressure is coming from the wrist,
turning, pushing against the bars,
and from the lower arm,
and to a certain extent, right up the arm.
So, as it stands at the moment without any pressure,
it sounds like this.
If I put some pressure on it,
it sounds like this.
And there are an infinity of degrees between those two.
Every baron will have its own notes and its own ranges.
So, if I use this now and move gradually
from pressure to pressure,
it'll sound like this.
And back again.
Pushing again.
And relaxing.
I can use that in the same way as I use the other technique
of varying the area of the head,
again, to complement the structure of tunes.
It's also extremely effective on another level,
which is to give an accent to beats
that you particularly want to reinforce.
In that case, you apply a pressure to the head
just on that beat.
For instance, without applying any pressure,
a single beat sounds like this.
If I apply pressure as I strike the skin,
it'll sound like this.
So, if we apply that to our jig rhythm,
we can do things like this.
Which begins to add a colour
and fill out the whole sound of the drum.
That brings me to another slight variation on the jig rhythm.
Up to now, we've been emphasising
one and four in the bar.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
Now I want to show something,
a slight variation on that,
where with twelve beats in the bar,
or twelve beats between two bars,
what we do is, we emphasise every four.
So we have one, two, three, four,
one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.
In the same time as we have one, two, three, four, five, six,
one, two, three, four, five, six.
And that works like this.
If I start off with our usual six,
and play two bars, it'll sound like this.
But by emphasising the first beat of every four,
I get something like this.
This is as it was.
And now.
And I'll go back and forth between the two.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
One, two, three, four.
You'll notice, that I'm helping that accent
by changing the position on the drum that I'm striking.
So, I move from the front to the back.
So the first of four is here.
And also, I'm applying that pressure we've spoken about
on the first of every four.
So here it is again.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4.
And the next thing we can do with that
is put the roll at the beginning of every four.
If we go back to putting the roll at the beginning of every six, it sounds like this.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
At the beginning of every four, it sounds like this.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4.
1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4
1, 2, 3, 4 5, 6
1, 2, 3, 4 5 1, 2, 3, 4
1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4
In the first section of this video we spoke about the jig and we spoke about
the way a bar was broken into two sections of three beats each. Now we're
going to look at the reel and in the bar for a reel we have two groups of four
beats each so whereas before we had one two three four five six one two three
four five six we've now got one two three four five six seven eight one two
three four five six seven eight one two three four five six seven eight one two
one and two and one and two and. So in the same way as we did with the jig we'll
build up to a point where we can play an eight bar phrase and we start off again
with the down-up motion just using one end of the stick and eventually introduce
the role as it's played for the reel which is slightly different than it is
played for the jig. So again starting from a position where our hand is in the
center of the drum and we're playing just in that cup of the hand we start a
fairly slow down-up motion. Now we'll begin to accent the first note of every
four one two three four five six seven eight one two three four five six seven
eight one two three four five six seven eight. The next element we're going to
employ is the whole idea of the importance of what we can call the back
beat in this music. If you remember that the bar goes one and two and one two
three four five six seven eight one two three four five six seven eight one and
two and one and two and and that the where the and is there is what we can
feel as the back beat of the bar and often if we emphasize that it can give a
certain lift to the music and lends itself to the way the tunes are anyway
so to do that the first thing we'll do is we play the first two beats of every
four beats towards the front of the baron and the third and fourth beats of
every four towards the back of the baron so it'll sound like this one and two
and one two three four one two three four one two three four one two three
four one two three four one and two and one and two and now we're going to use
the technique with the left hand that we spoke about already where we apply a
certain amount of pressure for certain beats in this case we're going to apply
the pressure on that back beat to help give it some accent so it'll sound like
this one two three four one two three four one two three four one two three
four one two three four one two three four one two three four five six seven
eight one two three four five six seven eight the next thing we'll do is as we
did with the jig we're going to leave out the second beat so we have one three
four five six seven and eight so it'll sound like this one two three four five
5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
The next thing we'll do is just make a very short phrase out of that. So what we'll do is
basically a four-bar phrase and
And it'll go like this
One more time
Again always pushing on the skin to give that emphasis to that backbeat
So now we're in a position to build up an eight-bar phrase and again
I'm going to ask Seamus to come in and play some variations so that I can show you different ways of
Applying some of these rhythms to the tunes
One, two
In the jig the roll is over three beats. In the reel it's got to be over two beats.
So we go from
To
And one and one so that beat becomes the on beat or the beat of emphasis
So tying that in with what we've already done. We can do something like this
And you'll see that that the the roll actually happens on what we've called the backbeat up to now so it gets a little push
One, two
Let's try another one
One, two
Thank you
One, two
So for a jig we might do something like this. We'll go from that initial
One, two, three, four, five, six
One
So you can see it's a question of placing that roll in different places
and also using single beats.
One, two, one, two
One, two
We can also play the rim on the upbeat, which is a little bit more difficult.
The other way that we can use the rim is to actually play predominantly on the rim itself, like this.
With this baron, I'm hitting the very corner of the rim.
Each drum will have its preferred spot to play. Sometimes, if the rim is thick, it's a little bit better to play slightly in
where there's still a certain amount of wood, so you get that hard sound, but you still get the resonance.
Now, a nice thing we can do when playing the rim like that is, using one or two fingers at the back of the drum,
we can push on the skin and change the tension, and that will change the sound that we make on the rim, like this.
One, two
To conclude, what I'd like to do is to employ these particular techniques, and a lot of the other ones that we've already spoken about,
and play a short baron solo for you.
One, two