File: gaudetdavid06-oh-gettingstarted_M.mp3
Speakers:
DG – David Gaudet
RG – Robert Gallant
KP- Curator Ken Perlman
KP: How did you yourself learn to play?
DG: I learned pretty well on my own.
RG: His brother kicked him upstairs every night after supper.
DG: Yeah
RG: His brother kicked him upstairs every night after supper and made him play.
KP: How did that happen.
DG: He wouldn't let me downs till I learned the tune.
KP: Tell me more about that. Did your brother play himself.
DG: No he didn't, no.
KP: So how did it happen that…
DG: He was determined for me to learn, I guess.
KP: Do you know why?
DG: I guess he liked the music. And he wanted a fiddler in the house.
RG: I think he probably knew he [David] had the skills to do it, that he had the ear to learn.
KP: So how old were you when this happened.
DG: Oh about 8, maybe. I played on the radio when I was 8 years old.
KP: Which radio was that?
DG: In Summerside, CJRW, West Prince Party Line.
KP: So how did you [first] get hold of a fiddle?
DG: Well one of my uncles. I got my uncle's fiddle; he lived next door at my grandmother's, so he give me a fiddle to learn with. And the fiddle was too long for my – I couldn't put it under my chin, so the first two years I played, I played like this, like a guitar [puts instrument face out on his lap]. I played on the radio like this.
KP: The tape won't pick this up so you actually have the fiddle laying on your right thigh, with the fingerboard just off your left thigh.
KP: How did you figure out how to play it in the usual way?
DG: When my arm got longer it [the fiddle] come up to the chin. Because them days you didn't get a new fiddle every time you played a tune. Nowadays they buy the fiddle to suit you, for the kids. Them days you had to play what you had.
KP: How did you go about learning tunes?
DG: Just by ear I guess, and listenin' to other fiddlers. I went to a lot of parties with my father and mother, put it that way. And all the tunes that was played, they went in the ear, and when I got home I scratched on the fiddle till I come up with something. That's the way I learned, I guess. Right now I can still pick up a tune and learn it pretty quick if I want to put my mind to it.
