Donald MacDonald was born around 1750 in Skye. Both he and his father, John, had learned to play the bagpipes from the MacArthurs, pipers to the MacDonalds on Skye.

Donald served during the Napoleonic Wars in both the Caithness Highlanders and the Argyllshire Militia, volunteer militias, as a piper. He spent many years deployed to Ireland, mainly in the south. During this time, he regularly took part in recruiting parties as a piper. He also eventually became Pipe Major of the Argyllshire Highlanders.

Donald would take part in competitions sponsored by the Highland Society, whose president was the Colonel in Chief of the Caithness Highlanders. He placed third in 1801, second in 1811, and took first in 1817. He was about 50 years old and his prize for winning was a set of Prize Pipes. At the time these were usually the best set of bagpipes available.

Donald MacDonald started making bagpipes and other musical instruments in the periods between his deployments. He eventually set up shop in Edinburgh, at the top of High Street. He was known for making Highland bagpipes as well as Northumbrian and Irish bagpipes and other military band instruments. He also spent time to collecting and studying bagpipe tunes.

Joseph MacDonald published his Compleat Theory of the Scots Highland Bagpipe in 1760. Even with that, there was no standard system for writing bagpipe tunes down. The Highland Society of London would give prizes to pipers who could produce written copies of tunes. Donald MacDonald won five guineas in 1806 for his settings.

While Donald was not the first person to write bagpipe music down, he is responsible for most of the standardizations still used today. He continued the tradition of starting the bagpipe scale on low A, rather than C that most other people were using. He was the first to start writing all melody notes with the tails pointed down and all grace notes with the tails pointed up. This clearly separated the two types of notes and made the music easier to read.