Acquires his first tunes

File: macdonaldjoe-oh-gettingstarted_learningtunes_M.mp3

Speakers:

JM – Joe MacDonald

KP – Curator Ken Perlman

JM: Around here, there was good old fiddlers around here. There was Gregory MacEachern, a neighbor of ours. He's dead now long of it. He was a great old fiddler and any time no matter how old or how young you were, if you went there he played. I remember being carried to a party at a neighbors house. I was three or four years old I suppose, but I remember I learned a tune that night from Gregory MacEachern, and he – There was several other fiddlers there too, but he was the best of them all.

KP: How'd you learn it?

JM: Just by ear. I'd get the tune into me head and then express it on the fiddle.

KP: Oh, you picked up a fiddle at 4 or 5 and . . .?

JM: No, no . . . by the time I was old enough to get hold of a fiddle, me head was full of music then. For everything I heard stayed there, and I had no trouble, I had all kinds of music to express on the fiddle out of me head. But it was years and years after that before I learned to read music. I just learned that on me own too. I didn't never have any lessons or anything.