The goal of the #OAIM50 Tune Challenge is to create a habit of practice, a commitment of playing your instrument often, and of challenging you to broaden your repertoire within a given time frame.
This may seem like a daunting task at first, but there’s nothing like goal setting to pique that competitive streak within, stimulate some dopamine and get you feeling like there could be serious bragging rights at the end of this challenge! And some youtube videos of you to share with your friends!
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What started back on St Patrick’s Day 2020 as a simple idea to have the whole OAIM community learning the same new tune together, has quickly become what we’re calling a Global Session! It covers tunes selected for their popularity on the Irish music scene. The instruments used lean heavily on the tin whistle and flute, but also include tunes on fiddle, button accordion, guitar, piano, concertina, and banjo. It doesn’t matter what instrument you learn from, mp3’s and sheet music are included in the tutorials for each tune.
To take the challenge one step further, we invite you to share your progress on Social Media with the hashtag #OAIM50 so that you can see how fellow OAIM-er’s are doing. Be sure to post to our facebook page tag us on instagram or tweet to us on twitter.
The #OAIM50 Challenge is only open to subscribers/members of OAIM. On the OAIM members’ dashboard, we feature the tune that we’re all currently working on in the challenge. If you’re unsure, simply email us, tweet us, or message us on Facebook.
RTÉ NEWS pick up on our #OAIM50 Challenge
We were so excited that Ireland’s largest media outlet, RTÉ, picked up on our very first Global Session video. It has already amassed over 76,000 views (on facebook), making heroes and history of our wonderful students who participated in the fun. We’ll be challenged with future montages to make them even more creative and enjoyable… but, that’s where you come in!
Tunes covered include polkas, jigs, slip jigs, and reels; plus a few hornpipes and waltzes. Don’t forget to use the Play-Along Backing Tracks section of the OAIM dashboard to help you follow the tune at slower speeds (eg 50%, 75%) as you’re learning. It’s invaluable for building confidence with the note sequences of new tracks.
Along with learning a new tune together, members are invited to send us a video of themselves playing the tune of the week. This is where it gets really fun!!! We usually only ever ask people to play a track at 75% speed for the final video, sometimes that will be 100% for slower airs/waltzes. We then create a montage of all the videos. Below are a few video montages: (check out the playlist for the FULL set of videos so far – there are a LOT!).
Please note: Only members are invited to participate in the video montages. We send a regular email with the instructions. If you’re a member and you don’t receive these emails, be sure to contact us so that we can remedy that.
The tunes are listed at the end of this page as the lessons for the course.
We’re now working on 2 tunes to create what is known in Irish music as a “set”.
The two tunes in this set are:
- Murphy’s Hornpipe
- Higgins’ Hornpipe
The backing tracks for each tune is on its tutorial page, so use that when learning each tune. Then when you have learned each tune separately you can use the backing track of the set to learn how to move from one track to the next and when you’re recording your final video. This backing track of the set can be found in the Play Along Backing Tracks section of the members’ are in the folder “Tune Challenge Sets”.
Tunes to be played at 100% speed, with the deadline for video submission set for Sunday, 17th September 2023.
(Video Submissions only open to OAIM members.)
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