Mind/body problem

It was one of my all-time impulse buys. Last Sunday morning, full of coffee, I decided it would be a good idea to trawl Craigslist for musical instruments. Two hours, a trip across the Bay Bridge, and $200 later, a Danelectro baritone guitar was mine. (Look: I could've paid $350.)

It's a late 90s reissue, but vintage-toned. Not really expert craftsmanship, but more than adequate for my purposes -- an extra, wider paintbrush for home recordings and maybe some gigs. It's also a workout for the fingers, because you have to stretch to reach the wide-spaced frets. (Compare this regular-sized guitar with my long-necked axe.) It doesn't play fast, but it's not supposed to. Mostly, it's about finding new chord voicings and hearing bright, growly bass strings without feeling like you're playing bass. Love it.

But strangest of all, it's a trick for the mind. Your hands are playing A... why do you hear E? You finger a G chord... and D comes out. It was hard enough trying to learn mandolin (tuned in fifths) after eight or ten years of guitar (tuned in fourths, mostly). But it's much trickier to use the same fingerings as a regular guitar and expect certain sounds, but hear others instead. The curse of having good pitch!