Music that's just a mouse-click away

When can you be sure you've come of age? When the barman no longer asks for ID? When your car insurance bill no longer equates with the GNP of a small African nation? Or these days, might it be marked by a cyberspace christening?

Traditional music came of age a long time ago, but it has well and truly joined the information superhighway fast lane now, thanks to the combined creative efforts of three musicians whose love of fiddle, pipes and flute have propelled them right into the vortex of the World Wide Web.

Kevin Glackin, Conal O Grada and Eoin O Riabhaigh decided to put their mouse where their music is, combining forces to launch the first online traditional music-teaching website. It is a bold venture, and not one for the fainthearted. Teaching traditional music online is not simply uncharted territory; it is akin to navigating through arctic tundra with little more than a divining fork for guidance.

Flautist Conal O Grada came up with the idea of Web-based music lessons two years ago. Last year, the trio entered a competition for ebusinesses based in the Gaeltacht, and with both O Riabhaigh and O Grada based in Ballyvourney, Co Cork, it seemed as though their time had come. Milaois Na Gaeltachta ran the competition, sponsored by Crucible Corporation, a venture capital company. Last December, they found themselves the bedazzled recipients of a £25,000 first prize, plus £10,000 in services and £5,000 worth of advice from business consultants Farrell Grant Sparks. With the help of such nurturing incubation, within a few months Scoiltrad was born.

Kevin Glackin describes the impact of the award on their efforts. "It was great in that it acted as a kind of catalyst for us," he offers, "and it put the skids under us to get on with it."

The combined creative capital of Glackin, O Riabhaigh and O Grada went a long way towards convincing investors that they were up to the job. Glackin is a member of the Glackin family of traditional musicians from Clontarf and teaches music in Rathmines DIT. O Grada plies his trade on the B Mus course in UCC. O Riabhaigh has played and taught the pipes to scores of students.

With a rake of teachers already providing lessons throughout Ireland, Glackin and the others knew that the potential audience for Scoiltrad was far more likely to exist outside this island. Watching the hoards of students who make their annual pilgrimages to the Willie Clancy Summer School and to countless other similar events, they knew there was an untapped market abroad, peopled by players and potential players, in search of that scarce commodity: quality teachers.

Scoiltrad was launched on March 15th. Its central strength is the delivery of individual assessment and feedback to students on their playing, based on the students' study of online video, audio and musical notation of a selected tune. Once logged on, the student selects his/her skill level (beginner, intermediate or advanced) and proceeds from there to learn a tune. Once practised, the student records his or her performance in MP3file format and downloads it to the tutor for feedback.

The first week has been an education for all involved, with technical difficulties bedevilling even us hardy Irish Times scribes. It must be said that many of these difficulties were related to other site faults rather than to the Scoiltrad site itself. Nonetheless, our untrammelled enthusiasm for the idea met with a number of blank cyberwalls as we tried and failed to take an intermediate flute lesson. Our guest student, Colm Ryan, warmed up his flute, inhaled deeply and logged on. Step one was easy. Tapping into www.scoiltrad.com was a breeze. Parting with the requisite £25.25 (or $30) was even easier, using the online secure payment system.

Then the fun started. Having waited patiently for 35 minutes while the lesson downloaded, Colm was greeted by little more than an MS Word document. Not a trace of a tune score or a video clip in sight. Later, with the help of a CD containing said lesson, he tried again. He needed to download a copy of Realplayer to run the lesson. Fine. This can be downloaded for free from the Web. Except that everybody else was downloading it for free too, so the site was in suspended animation. He waited, but nothing happened.

While this was not the fault of Scoiltrad, it seemed that the tangled Web was conspiring to prevent Colm from diving headlong into the class. What he did learn, however, was that it's far wiser to download Realplayer (preferably during off-peak hours) before proceeding with a Scoiltrad lesson. "It's not unexpected really, in that it's relatively new technology," says O Grada of the initial technical problems. "For example, often people haven't read the resources section fully, and so they may not have installed all the software. So, for example, they may not have restarted their computer after downloading `Quicktime', so it doesn't work, or they mightn't have `Winzip', which they need to unzip the downloaded file."

Meanwhile, in the US, where phone lines are a tad faster, and computers a mite speedier than ours, lessons progressed at lightning speed, within days of the site launch.

Bill McKenty, a resident of Springfield, Philadelphia, decided to put paid to the stereotype of Philly as merely a soul music haven. A veteran of flute and whistle of some 20 years, McKenty has been playing the uileann pipes since last September. He has never set foot in Ireland, but his enthusiasm for the music is palpable. Bill's e-mailed reaction to his first lesson (completed and returned to Scoiltrad via an MP3 file within hours!) reveals not only a eagerness to play, but a willingness to suggest tweaks and nudges which should help to improve the smooth delivery of each lesson.

"I took the lesson 'cause I'm new to the pipes, and my teacher has emphasised that I need to seek out broader instruction. The Macromedia presentation is very slick and rich, lovely aesthetic design. To me, the value of Scoiltrad is the assessment side of it. It's where you're gonna have to emphasise personal instruction and interpersonal relationships to satisfy users so that they'll come back and refer Scoiltrad to friends and get the ball rolling. I would like to see Scoiltrad be very successful and for it to grow, because there is a great need for it."

Eoin O Riabhaigh's feedback to McKenty emphasised the passion as much as technique. "Treat some of these ornamentations and variations like a mud bath," he suggests. "They're there to enjoy, so lie back and roll around in it for as long as the tempo allows!"

It is early days yet, but Scoiltrad looks poised to gather a gabhail-ful of students around the fire from the unlikeliest of locations. Its net will be cast wide, as it adds further musical instrument options and tutors to the roster over the coming months. Michael O'Connor, respected flute player and traditional music historian, welcomes the lateral thinking of Glackin, O Riabhaigh and O Grada.

"In the past, your development as a musician was dependent on the availability of a good teacher locally," he notes. "And that's why there were always pockets of good music. Having players of the lads' calibre involved in this is fantastic."

O'Connor, historian that he is, is quick to see parallels between Scoiltrad and earlier forms of music transmission.

"Back in the 19th century, Patsy Tuohy started off a mail order business from the States with cylinders!" O'Connor smiles. "So there's a precedent there. If there are more people playing, you're bringing in more talent, which has to be a good thing. If it's left with the inner few, it's never as healthy. It has to move on and develop, and fusing the latest technology with the music is a great way to get it across."