Fiddler reaches global audience with iPad teaching app

An award-winning teenage violin sensation has added a hi-tech string to her bow.

In December, Mairéad Hickey, 15, from Cork, developed a music education application for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch to teach beginners a set of traditional Irish airs.

Developed with Marion Roche Martin, a former Cork Institute of Technology student, the Irish Fiddler app is proving a global hit.

Irish Fiddler has notched up some 500 downloads in America by people with Irish roots. It has also proven popular in South America, particularly Brazil, and even in Japan.

Mairéad, who lives in The Lough in Cork, has been playing violin since she was two.

Under the guidance of Cork School of Music teacher Adrian Petcu and Cill na Martra-based fiddler Connie O’Connell, she has won eight all Ireland titles for her fiddle playing. Mairéad is the current National Concert Hall Young Musician of the Year.

In her formative years, Mairéad learned some of her violin skills by watching videos. But the student said she always wanted to use the latest technology to teach others.

“And this app is a perfect way to do it, I think,” she said.

Mairéad flew in from France, where she is studying music for a year, to help launch the app at the CIT Cork School of Music on Monday.

“It’s aimed at beginners and children, but it can be used by anyone really,” she said.

“You need the basics of violin playing, like how to hold the instrument, but you can pick it up really fast.”

The app uses a combination of video tutorials featuring Mairéad, along with colour-coded printable music, to support students as they learn how to play three traditional Irish tunes, The Kerry Polka, Britches Full of Stitches and Maggie in the Woods.

When a student has mastered the tunes, Mairéad shows how to put them together into a set or medley so that they can be played in a session.

The conception and development of the app all took place in Cork.

DeCare Systems Ireland completed the application development, the video was shot and edited by StandPoint Media and Marion Roche Martin, a former CIT student, produced the application.

Mairéad, who is a fourth year student in Mount Mercy, has been a student of CIT Cork School of Music since 2003 and is spending her transition year studying violin at the Nantes Conservatoire.

She is already considering a follow-up app for more advanced players.

* Irish Fiddler can be downloaded from the iTunes store, priced €1.59.