Hi all…is scoiltrad gone or is there some problem with the site? I haven’t been able to get onto the website lately at all
I heard they went out of business 
Patrick.
That’s what I’ve heard too… gone without a word. 
Too bad - I was able to pick up a few good tunes from them, along with some invaluable feedback. But sometimes the lessons were a bit too expensive.
Gone owing money too.
Well, at least I got eight lessons along with some assessments for the lessons. But it’s so weird that they’d leave without saying anything in response to their website going offline.
upiper71
I’d had a very nice exchange w/Conal O. He was very articulate in his feedback. IMHO, I felt the cost was quite affordable. One of the hicups I expereienced was getting a description of a technique, but not understanding what the instructor meant. I really needed to hear it. Had the instructors been able to send very short mp3’s back w/their assesment, I feel the lesson would have been perfect (in an already imperfect cyber environment).That way, there isn’t a back and forth with emails. A little of this (email questions)… I could see a teacher being able to deal with, but multiply that w/10 or more pupils, and enter in the snowball affect! Not to mention, trying to teach sans a student in front of you is difficult to say the least.
I wish Conal and the lads well. Perhaps, they’ll cyber teach on their own? I REALLY HOPE they didn’t go belly up owing.
In the near future, Fiddler/Master teacher James Kelly will be giving tunes and private instruction from his web site. A shameless plug: As a piper, tina, and flute player I’ve benifited greatly from my interaction with James. As soon as he is offering the lessons I’ll post that here.
Hmmm… what I got for an assessment was exactly what you describe - Eoin would make some comments, point out some flaws or ideas for a particular piece of the tune, and then he’d play that little bit of it… all on an MP3, and then he’d e-mail that file to me.
…
Copyrights don’t just evaporate due to an entity closing their doors… virtual doors or otherwise.
I wouldn’t do it.
…funny after I worte it I thought I should’ve been more specific since cyber is the land of the misunderstood. Conal, for lack of time or gear…didn’t send me any correction clips. Maith thú to Eoin for having that together. Either way… Conal was great. Best of luck to them boys!
Yes, they DID go belly up owing. They owe me, and they owe some other people, as well. Judging from the fact that they refused to answer emails for months prior and since, they aren’t much concerned by it.
I think most of you, who have used the individual lessons, assume that everyone got at least the download, and they think we’re grousing that we didn’t get the assessment.
That’s not it at all. Most of us purchased a 10-lesson beginner pack, which Conal would only permit us to download 2 lessons at a time. He would not give you the link to the next download until you had sent in an assessment.
Except for the initial two lessons, we didn’t get the product we purchased.
Unfortunately, he would not reply to anyone’s emails, would not do the assessments, and would not provide the link to further downloads. He would reply to some people taking the individual lessons, but not to us. This went on for months, until he finally vanished.
I have written to his own email address, and the email was received, yet have received no reply at all. Not even an apology–and I think that is what bothers me the most.
I cannot imagine that it would be so difficult for Conal to simply give people the ELECTRONIC FILE they paid for. It’s a FILE. We’re not asking for books or flutes or physical inventory he doesn’t have. We’re not asking him to expend effort in doing assessments, which he clearly doesn’t want to do. We’d just like the darned FILE.
How difficult could it be to just give people what they paid for?
Not cool, but here is a way it could be done
- Get the complete lessons for flute/whistle and upload them as a torrent-file (one could use a vague name in an attempt not to attract others) to a Bittorrent tracker.
- Announce the upload in the whistle- or flute scoiltrad thread.
- Then Peggy and anyone else that feel they have been cheated out of some lessons would have a chance to download what they paid for.
Seeding copyrighted material is not legal in most countries but it would be hard to do any legal action against someone downloading a torrent (it just a click on a hyperlink and one can’t know the content of the file until it’s been downloaded, then of course it was deleted 
). It is also possible to seed the file anonymously, at least long enough to get things going. If others decide to keep seeding it, then it’s their problem.
Cheers!
/MarcusR
Torrent-file??? 
Do you think they could just go on a CD?
I’d be happy to send someone a box of them!
…
Once you got the file down you can do what you want with it, put on DVD, CD, your HD or even vinyl (if you got a vinyl-engraver).
Bittorrent is just a good and fast way to share things over the net, especially when it comes to copyrighted stuff, as no one actually needs to share the whole thing as long as all the bits and pieces are out there. The torrent file on the tracker is just a pointer that coordinates the download.
To distribute CD’s or host the files on a website one would have to take a serious risk of being sued.
Info on Bittorrent
/MarcusR