Drum question

[sylke]

For any of you bodhran players out there... Is it normal to have to moisten my drum head between each song? My drum isn't tunable, and in the cool, air conditioned house I live in, it stays very, very tight. I'm getting a little tempted to actually put a drop of oil on it. I know you're not supposed to oil drum heads, and late at night at Pennsic the air was so humid (and I imagine there was dew, too) that it was *too* moist and the drum was too floppy to play, so it's not like it's too tight all the time, but I don't want to dry it out by constantly leaching out any natural oil by sprinkling it with water every 10 minutes. Any ideas or thoughts?

Comments

[lorencillo.livejournal.com]

Are you wetting down the front or the back? I've been playing a non-tuneable for about eight years, and generally what I do is before I start playing, I turn on the faucet, run my hand through it, and then rub my hand across the inside of the head (the non-playing face), concentrating on the skin close to the rim. I repeat this various times depending on how tight it was to begin with. Then I leave it to soak in for maybe ten minutes, and I usually don't have to mess with it again for at least thirty minutes or more.

What I've found is that, even if the wetting down is "leaching out natural oil," which I'm not at all sure is true, the sweat and skin oil from my hand on the non-playing surface more than makes up for it. In fact I think there's been a net increase in oil content over the years from all the skin contact. At any rate, the tone of the drum is better than it was when I got it, so I seem to be doing the right thing.

For that matter, I knew a guy in a group out of CA called the Wicked Tinkers who had a drum with a very thick head, and he used to soak rags in water and wring them out over the playing surface, and he sounded fine, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.