Creative Processes in Irish traditional music: a bodhrán-playing perspective

Robert Brian Sheehan

This is the web-based written component of an arts practice research project carried out from May to August of 2022 as part of the MA Irish Music Studies programme at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance (IWAMD) at the University of Limerick. The project set out to explore the broad topic of creativity within Irish traditional music through the embodied means of my own bodhrán playing. In particular, I set out to see to what extent the creative process of switching between ways of gripping the bodhrán stick (“grip switching”) could be embodied effectively in my bodhrán playing. As well as this written component, which contains multimedia elements such as video and music notation, this project is also presented as a thirty minute performance of traditional Irish music where I accompany an accordion player to demonstrate and explain some of the findings of my research.

Documentation of the Research Process

The core method of research for this project was my artist practice of bodhrán playing. Daily private practice sessions of embodied bodhrán research were documented in my handwritten journal, and with short video clips. These clips were compiled into two long videos (seen below), indexed by clip number and date, to produce a total of over six hours of footage. This footage is not intended to be viewed in its entirety, but it is referred to elsewhere on this website. A visual summary of my embodied research is given by the first video here; six hours of footage compressed into twenty seconds.

My handwritten journal was provided to the examiners at my performance.

A Summer in Twenty Seconds

Tip

Tip

Documentation of the Research Process

A Summer in Twenty Seconds

Daily Footage Part 1

Daily Footage Part 2