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

[ivhon.livejournal.com]

When I was playing with Eddie in Kansas City on a bi-weekly basis, there was no time to actually tune the drums mid-performance. The other bodhran player and I would keep a pot of water between us and a couple dishrags inside of it and generally wet the drum down after every 2nd or 3rd song.

I don't think you need to worry about leeching the natural oils out of the drumhead. Even if the oil is being moved around a bit on the head, it's not actually going anywhere.. don't forget, it doesn't desolve in water ;) And as lorencillo said above, your drum does, in fact, gain lots of grease from your hands.

As far as the "what else can I do" stuff.. Well, I've conditioned one of my bodhrans with lanolin and used baby oil for the other one. When you do this, you're basically just softening the skin. Basically, it makes the drum a bit more resistant to the elements.. which, if you don't have a tuning ring, is a good thing.

La.

[sylke.livejournal.com]

Well, I did rub a little mineral oil into it, and it's been so much happier ever since. I'm not sure how well it'll do now in more humid atmospheres, but if this means I can practice it at home more easily, I'm not sorry I conditioned it. :) Thanks for the advice, I needed a voice I trusted on bodhrans to say it was okay to add just a wee bit of oil.