Niall Vallely's CD-ROM

[Leah Velleman]

I had some questions about Niall Vallely's style, and a few bucks to spend, so I bought his CD-ROM. Which, amazingly, still exists and is in print. To get two things out of the way: (1) It no longer works on a Mac. Apple has changed their file system since the 90s, and non-vintage Macs won't even recognize the disc. You can probably do some kind of technical witchcraft to it, or you can open it on a Windows or Linux machine. (2) As an intro to the instrument, it's fine, but we've got better ones now with better video quality and more context.

 

But if you're interested specifically in how Vallely plays, there are some good tidbits here. He goes into a lot of detail about his fingering system and his system of ornaments. All of the ornaments have good tiny clear videos showing how to play them on all the commonly-used notes, and he plays them both slow and full-speed so you can get a feel for the timing. I went in wondering "how does he play those rolls?" and now I know pretty well how he plays those rolls, so mission accomplished.

 

I dunno. This is probably just a weird historical curiosity for most people. But it feels weird that resources like this are becoming unavailable as people die, presses go under, and media and file formats change. This one is still just barely available if you have the right kind of computer or don't mind a trip to the library to use theirs, which I think is cool.

[JimR]

Is this a CD, with just music, or is there video as well?

[Leah Velleman]

Mostly video.

 

Think of it like a very old-fashioned website, but you get it on a CD and not over the internet. You put it in your computer* and a program comes up that shows you text and video clips. Tiny, tiny video clips, because everyone used to have extremely low-res screens.

 

*Well, what you actually do is you find your one weird friend who still owns a computer old enough to have a CD drive, and then you put it in their computer.

[Don Taylor]

10 minutes ago, Leah Velleman said:

*Well, what you actually do is you find your one weird friend who still owns a computer old enough to have a CD drive, and then you put it in their computer.

You can get an external drive that simply plugs into a USB port, I have one and have found it handy occasionally.  They are quite cheap on Amazon.

[Leah Velleman]

I have one! It's just USB-A, and now the computers in the house only have USB-C. That's how obsolete I am, is even the shiny new thing I got to deal with obsolete media is obsolete.

[Joe G.]

Somehow, while I wasn't looking, even audio CDs essentially became obsolete. For whatever it's worth, I've got a copy of Niall Vallely's CD-ROM that I can't play on my Mac. If anybody wants it, I'll send it to you if you cover the postage, etc.

[SIMON GABRIELOW]

I still have a chunky computer that will play all that stuff and later developments of discs too..Even floppy discs! ( With adaptors that plug in)!

So it may be still possible to somehow take the files off disc and instead put them  in a folder on computer instead. Maybe it will work but maybe not can never guarantee it..but I have few 'older' programmes myself that do still work.

[Don Taylor]

3 hours ago, Leah Velleman said:

I have one! It's just USB-A, and now the computers in the house only have USB-C. That's how obsolete I am, is even the shiny new thing I got to deal with obsolete media is obsolete.

There are lot of USB-A to USB-C adapters available, just make sure that you pick the right genders.

Edited February 22 by Don Taylor

[Luke Hillman]

4 hours ago, Joe G. said:

Somehow, while I wasn't looking, even audio CDs essentially became obsolete. For whatever it's worth, I've got a copy of Niall Vallely's CD-ROM that I can't play on my Mac. If anybody wants it, I'll send it to you if you cover the postage, etc.

 

I'd be thrilled to take it off your hands. I've neglected learning anything about ornamentation, and this sounds like a good resource. I even have an external CD drive AND a USB-C adapter!

[Joe G.]

I believe Mr. Hillman is the Niall Vallely CD-ROM Sweepstakes winner. Boy howdy, that was quick!

[DaveRo]

For the past few years many browsers will not use the file:/// protocol, which means they cannot display a website on a local disk. Firefox is one. Is that what the problem is?

 

There are several solutions - there may be a configuration switch, or use a different browser. You could also copy it to a webserver.

 

Edit: I think that's wrong, I was thinking of browsers on mobile devices where I had this problem. I think PC browsers still allow file:///

 

Edit 2: It is html and does run in a browser - see the comments at the bottom of here.

Edited February 22 by DaveRo

[Ken_Coles]

So I clicked on DaveRo's link. I thought "I'm pretty sure I have this CD..." Then I saw who wrote the page!  😎  I used to be pretty useful around here (in the static page days).

 

Indeed, the CD-ROM is a set of files in html and fairly standard video format; you ought to be able to access the files if you go beyond waiting for it to load on its own. I published a CD-ROM of astronomy data in 1998. I made of point of using low-level html that followed all the then-standards. It still works, except the formatting of tables in html has changed and the videos don't play automatically - I have to find the files in the disk directory and manually open them.

 

I've made a point of keeping external CD drives on my computers (including purchasing one for the computer that belongs to my employer) - it's too useful a format for what I do and I have lots of stuff archived that way. My life is not on the cloud, which I guess makes me a Luddite.

 

To get off the thread drift, when I have time I'll get out my Vallely disk and see what I can do.

 

Ken

[Luke Hillman]

On 2/21/2024 at 9:12 PM, Joe G. said:

I believe Mr. Hillman is the Niall Vallely CD-ROM Sweepstakes winner. Boy howdy, that was quick!

 

And it's just arrived! My PC can read it just fine. It's a fascinating piece of web history — the html pages were created long before we had any accessibility standards; the typeface is tiny and the videos are low-res and open in a separate window (remember how amazing it was when we started being able to embed videos in pages?) — but the content hasn't aged a bit, and is a great intro to the Irish style of playing. I'm looking forward to spending a lot more time with it. Thank you, @Joe G.! And Leah for the writeup.

 

On 2/21/2024 at 11:53 AM, Leah Velleman said:

[...] non-vintage Macs won't even recognize the disc. You can probably do some kind of technical witchcraft to it [...]

 

Indeed, I performed the arcane ritual magick of "copying the files to a flash drive" to view on my macbook

 

On 2/21/2024 at 11:53 AM, Leah Velleman said:

But it feels weird that resources like this are becoming unavailable as [...] presses go under, [...]

 

Yeah, it's a shame that madfortrad dot com now belongs to some boring marketing company that doesn't seem to understand that their domain name ought to have something to do with their business... I dunno, maybe I'm missing something. 🤷‍♂️

Edited February 27 by Luke Hillman

[Joe G.]

The new owners probably think it's meant to say Mad for Trade, or some such thing.

Glad it arrived and sort of works, Luke. Enjoy!

[DaveRo]

On 2/21/2024 at 9:41 PM, Leah Velleman said:

Think of it like a very old-fashioned website, but you get it on a CD and not over the internet.

This immediately reminded me of the Peter Bellamy CD set  "Wake the Vaulted Echoes" which is just like that. I don't think there is any video, but the sound files are RealAudio format!

 

On 2/21/2024 at 7:53 PM, Leah Velleman said:

But it feels weird that resources like this are becoming unavailable as ... file formats change.

This is a well known story in the UK, but maybe not beyond.

https://timharford.com/2023/11/cautionary-tales-laser-versus-parchment-doomsday-for-the-disc/