Jacob McCauley

For many of us, it has been months or over a year since we have been able to participate in a jam session. Sessions are not just a fun activity, but they are essential to our learning and development as Bodhrán players. This is where the virtual session idea comes into play. The goal of this workshop is to give students a chance to play along with various types of tunes at varying tempos and level of difficulty so everyone has a chance to build up their comfort level as we eventually are able to jam together in person again. The benefit of doing this over Zoom is it is all done in the comfort of your own home so there is much less pressure. I will be playing along with each tune so you have the option of playing along with me or adding your own accompaniment. As all workshops are recorded, you will be able to go back to play along again as many times as you’d like.

Now that we have had a chance to apply some of what we learned in the previous Virtual Session workshop, we will look back at some of the tunes/sets played in the session and discuss some of the accompaniment options used as well as discuss some of your own ideas. Please feel free to make note of any tunes from the Virtual Session that you may want to go over and we can try and include those as well. The goal of this workshop is to expand our thought process to realize the often-multiple options we have for tune accompaniment and how there is essentially many different approaches that can be taken while still providing a tasteful accompaniment.

Jacob will be teaching the Bodhrán course at the upcoming 18th Annual O’Flaherty Irish Music Retreat just outside of Dallas, Texas. For more info please see here: https://oflahertyretreat.org/instructor_role/core-classes/