My point, Guest, is that Renaissance music played on a good ukulele sounds like the same music played on a Renaissance guitar--the authenticity of sound that early music fans are so fond of.

Also, you can play multiple lines (counterpoint) on a ukulele / Renaissance guitar, which you can't do with tissue paper and comb, kazoo, penny whistle, or bongos.

You could possibly play Mozart's clarinet concerto (the clarinet part, but you'd need a full orchestra for the rest) with a tissue paper and comb. But you'd have to be damned good to get a booking in Carnegie Hall.

Not impossible, however, with a ukulele. After all, Larry Adler made a halfway decent career playing classical music on the harmonica.

I was once told, when I tried to register at the School of Music at the University of Washington, that the guitar was not a musical instrument. Even though John Williams had played a concert in the Meany Hall auditorium on campus a couple of months before.

I eventually did get into the department (a music prof who knew better interceded for me), but I still got a lot of crap from some other faculty members and students. "When are you going to stop messing around with that cowboy music and get serious?"

Don Firth