Comments from bodhran players about SOK drums.
i will be short. just buy it , you will be delighted with his sound.
try to listen marcas o’murchu first album and harry bradley first album to hear his sound with flute.
sound of o’kane bodhran is different of other bodhran , even of those with lambeg skin also. ( mc auley , rolfs bodhrans-from germany).
marin
Hi uilleanfinlander
maracirac is basically correct the purchaser of the drum will get a nice instrument.
O’Kane drums have a nice fast respose and respond well to top end playing and the skin can take being tuned up to a pretty high pitch. My only quibble with them is that the skins tend to be a little harder than I prefer (Belgarth and Metloef skins have biased me towards soft skins).
Is the drum second hand or new?. If it is new it may be one of Seamus’s sons making it - Murrough O’Kane is on the forum - maybe giving him a PM to check as I believe he is the one doing most of the making now (I may be mistaken in that though).
As an aside - this might interest you or your friend.
David
My new SOK drum arrived just.Amazing feel and sound indeed.
i am glad that our suggestions was usefull for you, and that you satisfied with o’kane bodhran.
marin
Hi,
Sorry just found this post now.
My younger brother “Diarmaid” was helping out my Da with making bodhráns after he finished his PGCE (Teaching Degree in Technology & Design, over in Manchester) and he returned to Ireland to help my Father when my Da was very ill with cancer, a few years ago.
Diarmaid got married last September and moved back to England last July, where he and his wife live together, so judging by that time-scale uilleannfinlander, your bodhrán was “all Seamus” if that makes any difference.
Like always, as we were growing up, back when we lived at home, we would ask Da (Seamus O’Kane) could we be involved in helping (probably more of a hinderance at times though) to make his bodhráns, so we got to see the whole design and development stages of making his drums, and also the continual experimentation and development process of the tensioning systems for bodhráns that he has been continually developing for over 30 years (slightly longer than I have been alive anyhow).
My father has also a wealth of added knowledge of additional curing techniques that he has learned over the years, and these secrets have never been, and most likely never will be let known outside the immediate family.
I can understand now, why a select few of us in the immediate family who were allowed into the bodhrán making loop, were never allowed to make known these curing techniques, when I see how some other makers / promoters of makers, falsely claim to have invented certain things that I have seen that they clearly haven’t, and I completely understand now why these secrets have been guarded from them.
Out of good faith my Father even went to the trouble of letting people know where he sourced his skins from, only for some to use it against him IMHO, by name dropping such as “the skins used by Seamus O’Kane” and the likes, but what they do not know is that much more intricate curing techniques are then used, and moreover, they don’t know what these techniques are, when the skins arrive at our homeplace.
This is certainly not my Father speaking, but merely a very apparent observation I have made.
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a “scathing attack” on the bodhrán making people, but most people (here in the traditional Irish music world in Ireland) know what the craic is anyway, and there are a lot of decent people out there just making bodhráns to the best of their ability and are good, hard-working people, and fair play to them for their continued hard work. Just credit where it’s due is what I say.
Anyhow, really glad you got your bodhrán ok uilleannfinlander, and are happy with it.
Best,
Murrough