File: macdonaldbill-oh-composing_m.mp3
Speakers:
Bm – Bill MacDonald
KP – Curator Ken Perlman
BM: [The] first of this week, Tuesday I think it was, I went out to my daughter's cottage, 25 miles out.
KP: Yes.
BM: Up near Morrell. I was coming in and there was a beautiful tune going through my head. I didn't even have a pencil or a piece of paper to write any of it down. It's gone now. It may never come again.
KP: Oh
.
BM: It may never come again, and I whistled it all the way in. But when I got here I didn't have it.
KP: Now, do you work it out on the fiddle and then write it down, or are you able to write it down just from hearing it?
BM: I play it on the violin and then I write it.
KP: So the tunes just come to you. You don't work up one part and then another part. They just come to you fully.
BM: I've gotten up through the night; I'd would wake and couldn't get back to sleep, and a new tune would come into my head. And the only way you can capture it is – I have my tape recorder out there – I had it outside yesterday – I have it sitting there, eh? I get up, close the door, get the violin, and just a few bars of it on the tape. Then the next day I can write it or a week later, it wouldn't matter