the next instrument I'm getting: a mandola

background entertainment: "Down From The Mountain," live concert of the musicians who performed the music for "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

So, why the mandola, you may rightly ask. A somewhat less valid question would be "what the @*%$ is a mandola?" Such a question would imply that you didn't even bother to try to look anything up before gripin'. The mandola is a member of the mandol family, just as the violin and viola are members of the viol family. ("Ooh! Harold! She's playing that viol instrument again!")

Yes, why the mandola as opposed to the mandolin? Perhaps mandolas might be found a bit cheaper on the "used" market. That's a side issue, though. More important is this: a mandolin has roughly the same scale length as a violin - very short! My primary axe is long-scale bass. Right now I have a short-scale bass, an electric guitar and a violin. Needless to say I'm having serious musculo-skeletal memory problems. Even my bass is too short to play without looking at every fingering. Aggh!

But at least the mandola has frets and doesn't require command of "bowing technique".