Oh, yes: and then you can use the spoons as God intended. 
Yeah, like pretend youāre a Cardassian, or something.
djm
Yep, I vary the position all the time. Sometimes while Iām playing. As you can see my avatar, the set in my left hand has the non-moving bone choked up quite a bit, while the moving bone is at full length. You donāt want to choke up on the moving bone much, or it wonāt have enough momentum to ādance.ā I also kick them apart (like scissors) while playing for a different sound, and sometimes have both middle and index finger between the bones instead of just my middle finger. Some bones sound terrible in one position, but are very nice in another. Natural bone bones are the most variable.
Iām not sure what you mean by āoptimum space.ā Whenever I move them, I adjust the angle, tighten or loosen the ring finger, whatever, so theyāre at a good spacing. But I vary the spacing too ā you can hold them very tight and close for a fast choked, rattling sound, or hold them further apart for a loose, slappy sound.
When Iām playing, I rarely hold them at full length and completely flat (not ākicked outā at all). That position is mainly for accents ā or maybe when youāre not amplified and the rest of the band is. In an Irish context, I usually play just one pair of bone bones, choked up quite a bit. A lot of inexperienced bone players hold them in ONLY that position, full length and flat, all the time! Talk about a headache.
Hereās a picture of me playing with the Tanglers, as you can see, both sets of bones are choked up a bit:
I just noticed this CD-ROM tutorial for spoons on the Scoiltrad site:
http://www.scoiltrad.com/tasteOfIrish.asp
(scroll down)
Susan
BoneQuint, that looks like the Percy Danforth grip on those bones. I have never actually seen any one live use that grip, BTW, every one that is any good always has a different grip than anyone else I have seen (except for our percussionist and I taught him so he uses my grip).
I play real bone bones (split from the shinbone of an Irish ox) and they are pretty obnoxious if you let the fixed bone down much.
I choke up the front bone until the tip the moving bone hits lies just below the flesh of my hand. With that position, I can also change the angle of the fixed bone slightly with my middle finger, quietening them down to a very subtle ātickā up to an almost obnoxious volume for the loud, rowdy tunes.
For jigs, I have to move the fixed bone so that I hold it between the thumb and fore finger to get it to sound properly with the slower arm motion. I havenāt quite gotten down the double time thing that Mel Mercier does with jigs yet (it happened once during a jam, but I havenāt been able to duplicate it again), so they have to be fairly lively jigs for me to cope with them on bones.
I am glad I asked. Thanks so much. The picture helps a lot. I had no idea that they werenāt held roughly equal all the time.
You had mentioned optimum space in the earlier post, as not being as much as an inch, but not nearly touching either. That is what I meant.
Thanks again! 
How would you define the āPercy Danforth Gripā?
Check out my ābones gallery,ā with sound samples. Click on the picture of each set of bones to hear me play them.
http://www.tohu-bohu.com/bones/gallery/
I think all bones players should practice trying to play as quietly as possible ā itās fun to play at just a whisper-quiet level. Itās also VERY beneficial to play triplets as slowly as possible. Iāve finally gotten to the point where I can play triplets as slowly as three fast single taps. Thatās a great advantage, because thereās no tempo that I canāt play a triplet in.
The thumb under the index finger and middle finger across the bone. Percy Danforth uses that grip to lock the bone in place.
I lay the bone along the fleshy part of the base of my thumb next to the wrist. Then, I lay my middle finger with the first pad centered on the fixed bone and press the bone into my thumb. My ring finger touches the moving bone so that I can turn itās movement on and off with just a little pressure. Sliding my middle finger a little more towards my thumb will angle the fixed bone so they hit at an angle, giving a softer click.
With the pressure of my ring finger, I can get either one, two, or three clicks per arm motion.
I like the effect in the moody modes of tunes of the three click for the pickup, followed by one loud one on the downbeat on three of the phrases of a turn of a tune, then pick up more on the last going into the major sounding part of a tune. It makes the moody mode sound ghostlyā¦
The wrapping is to control slippage, I take it Quint? Seems like it might dampen the sound some.
Kewl site btw!!
Nope, itās purely done for sound. The wrapping isnāt in your hands, itās on the end where the bones hit each other. Youād think it would just make it sound dull and dead, but itās still resonant, but quieter and warmer or ārounderā sounding. If you play the leather-wrapped sound sample next to the non-wrapped Danforth bone sample, you can hear what I mean.
Bumped to restore juxtaposition with āInstruments that irk youā thread 
.
Yet again, per Rogerās example.
Wow, am I glad I found this thread before making a fool of myself. I recently heard a neighbor playing bones. I really liked them and purchased a couple of sets. Man, I think I screwed up bad. All I wanted to do was get something I could play and have fun with, you know, play for the sake of making music (at least my version of music). I thought I would learn and practice till I felt I could play well enough to join in a session. I really have no desire to be an outcast or merely tolerated in a session. Or, worse yet, I couldnāt stand the thought of my playing RUINING a session for the real musicians. Donāt worry, the bones have been moved to the back of the shelf for good, mine will not show up at a session. My wife proof read this post for me, she thought it sounded tongue in cheek, believe me itās not. I only wish Iād read this a couple of months ago.
Aawwā¦what can I say? Donāt let anyone thwart your pleasure in making YOUR music!
Have you tried any other instruments? No doubt, if your on this site,you must have considered Whistle before?
It would be a great shame if you couldnāt find some instrument that you could express yourself with.
I concur (as a bones player of 16 years) with the ideas of holding the bones Iāve read here:
one between the index and middle finger pinned to the palm with the middle finger and immobile; the other between the middle and ring kept in place by the friction of the skin plus the first joint of the ring finger slightly overlapping the first joint of the middle finger - this second bone being allowed to move relatively freely.
The two should curve away from each other.
You can also vary the pitch somewhat by varying the amount of each bone which is below the point where it is held by the fingers.
You can vary the sharpness of sound (and, thereby, get away with practicing a bit more at sessions) by moving the bones between the fingers: bones played when held in adjacent finger spaces sound sharpest and cut through any other instrument; bones played with one empty finger space between them (for example, the fixed one between index and middle and the free one between ring and pinky) sound more hollow. With the fixed one between the thumb and index and the free one between the ring and pinky, the sound is even more subdued.
I also agree with the wrist angle and āwhippingā motion. My wrist is about a 45 degree angle when I play. I teach others by telling them the motion is akin to looking at your wristwatch, quickly flashing it to someone else, and snapping it back for you to view it again.
I also play with both hands at once, something Iām told is not a very Irish trad way of playing (perhaps more Old Timey).
Have fun! And get bones made of real bone (I use the Lark In the Morning polished ox bones); the weight is helpful in producing the precussive effect, and they allow you to have a larger range of variation between sharp, shrill sound and more hollow, mellow sound when spacing them further apart.
Hereās a song that I posted on the thread about āinstruments that āirkā ā¦ā
Very appropriate hereā¦
Somehow this song seems appropriate for this threadā¦
Spoons
In the tavern one night we were sitting,
Iām sure ātwas the last week of March;
From our drinks we were cautiously sipping,
To ensure that our throats didnāt parch.
We played music both lively and decent,
To bolster our spirits and hopes;
While we gazed at the females adjacent,
And remarked on their curves and their slopes.
āTil this gent wandered into our session,
And decided to join in the tunes;
Without waiting to ask our permission,
He took out a large pair of soup spoons.
Our teeth in short time we were gritting,
As he shook and he rattled his toys;
And the companyās ear drums were splitting,
With his ugly mechanical noise.
Hopping spoons off our heads to provoke us,
He continued the music to kill,
Whether hornpipes or slow airs or polkas,
They all sounded like pneumatic drills.
Then he asked āCould we play any faster?ā
As his talent he wished to display,
With a grin on the face of the bastard,
Like the cat as she teases her prey.
Our feelings by now were quite bloody,
And politely we asked him to quit-
We suggested a part of his body,
Where those spoons could conveniently fit.
This monster we pestered and hounded,
We implored him with curses and tears,
But in vain our appeals they resounded,
In the desert between his two ears.
When I went out the back on a mission,
He arrived as I finished my leak,
He says, āThis is a mighty fine sessionā,
I think Iāll come here every week.
When I heard this with rage I was lippinā,
And no more of this torture Iād take,
I looked āround for a suitable weapon,
To silence this damned rattlesnake.
Outside towards the yard I did sally,
To find something to vanquish my foe,
I grabbed hold of a gentlemanās Raleigh,
With 15 speed gear and dynamo.
Then I battered this musical vandal,
As I shouted with furious cries,
āMy dear man your last spoon you have handled,
Say your prayers and await your demiseā.
With the bike I assailed my tormentor,
As I swung in a frenzy of hate,
Til his bones and his skull were in splinters,
And his health in a very poor state.
And when I was no longer able,
I forestalled any last minute hitch,
By removing the gear-changing cable,
And strangling the son-of-a-bitch.
At the end of my onslaught ferocious,
I stood back and surveyed the scene,
The state of the place was atrocious,
Full of fragments of man and machine.
At the spoons playerās remains I was staring,
His condition was surely no joke.
For his nose was plugged up with ball bearings,
And his left eye was pierced by a spoke.
At the sight I was feeling quite squeamish,
So I washed up and went back inside,
Then I drank a half gallon of Beamish,
For my throat in the struggle had dried.
Unpolluted by cutleryās clatter,
The music was pleasant and sweet;
For the rest of the night nothing mattered,
But the tunes and the tapping of feet.
At an inquest the following September,
The coroner said, āI concludeā,
āThe deceased by himself was dismembered,
As no signs could be found of a feud.ā
For the evidence showed was defective,
As reported to me by the Gards,
He indulged in the foolhardy practice,
Of trick sighting in public house yards.
So if youāre desperately keen on percussion,
And to join in the tunes you canāt wait-
Be you Irishman, German or Russian,
Take a lesson from his awful fate.
If your spoons are the best silver-plated,
Or the humblest of cheap stainless steels,
When you play them abroad youāll be hated.
So just use them for eating your meals.
My website is finally ready to debut, check it out: Bones.JeffLeff.com. Among other annoying pursuits like bones playing, I also like dredging up long-lost threads.
Well, like a lot of things, it depends on who is playing them. For example, Jeff kicks butt on the bones, especially in old-timey jam sessions. (If this is the Jeff that was at Lark Camp). However, in the wrong hands, they can clutter up the pulse of a good ITM session.
Yes, it isā¦great Camp, eh? It was my first time. Iām going to write up some stuff about the Grey Larsen whistle class soon, as well as posting a few sounds and pictures (thereās audio from the old-timey sessions on my web site. Which, by the way, included Grey Larsen on fiddle, heās a strong fiddler with a large, interesting repetoire).
Did I meet you there? Refresh my memoryā¦
Yes we met in a great atmosphere, I was playing clawhammer banjo in the old timey session at Camp 1. I think I also talked with you in the diner line one night.