Are ukuleles a real instrument?

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: Donuel
Date: 17 Jan 20 - 07:00 PM

My cello got wet so I put it in the dryer and out popped a ukelele.
I had to put on some metal classical acoustic strings so now it has more sustain than a cello in pizzicado mode.

I now have 4 ukes. I do not know who the fathers are because they are all different woods but they are all 4 octave instruments.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST,larepole
Date: 15 Jan 20 - 12:13 AM

Ukeleles are not real instruments, but Jokeleles are. People dislike the Jokelele because it is quiet and you cant hear it, and they like the Jokelele because it is easy to carry around and its quiet and you cant hear it. They dont play the Jokelele in bluegrass? Because you cant do the hula when you're playing a Mastertone banjo. Also its easy to get a Jokelele to leave an Irish session, you play tunes. The latest Jokeleles are beautiful two-tone models; plink and plunk. And the correct way to pronounce the word Jokelele is Yuk-a-le-lee. Why do people play the Jokelele? The ukelele is too difficult.
Lare

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 14 Jan 20 - 05:52 AM

As a Turkish bardic-folk instrument:

Brenna McCrimmon

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST,AJW
Date: 13 Jan 20 - 04:49 PM

Listen to the late John King, or Samantha muir on You Tube and say it's not a real instrument!

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: JHW
Date: 11 Sep 14 - 06:16 PM

Didn't think so but just heard Christine Jeans play one rather like a classical guitar in duo with George Welch. Excellent.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: Musket
Date: 04 Sep 14 - 01:29 PM

My mate collects guitars. A few months ago, he was taking the piss out of ukeleles with the best of them.

Then he had a barbecued donkey on the road to Damascus.

He now has a custom made to his specification ukelele. Cost him over a grand.

I hope it isn't contagious.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST,Guest Vicki Kelsey
Date: 04 Sep 14 - 01:16 PM

Give a listen to the above mentioned Del Rey playing Scott Jop
lin's "The Entertainer" on uke. In her hands, there's no doubt about it being a "real" musical instrument.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 03 Sep 14 - 04:18 PM

Sure, take the kazoo. That way, if they open up the act to audience participation, you have it handy.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 03 Sep 14 - 06:05 AM

We've been invited to a friend's big birthday celebration in the Autumn and music will be provided by the Shropshire Strummers ukulele band. Despite gainsayers here I'm looking forward to it. The Berkshire Small Strings group I've seen are excellent. When I was in the Cook Islands 20 years ago local guys played home made ones with the body made out of half a coconut shell- got the sound OK.
Wonder if I should take the kazoo...?


RtS

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: JennieG
Date: 22 Aug 14 - 05:41 PM

Del Rey is great! I saw her perform some years ago when she was visiting Oz with Steve James.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 22 Aug 14 - 11:32 AM

Well I'm just listening to Del Ray on resonator uke (check out Hobieman records). If you like it, she is appearing at South St Reading UK with Adam Franklin on 18th September 2014 at 8pm and on tour around the UK.
Unfortunately I'll be out of the country so will miss it (shame!)> She also plays resonator guitar of course.

RtS

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 22 Aug 14 - 11:26 AM

apologies if this point has already been made in this thread,

I'm more comfortably resigned to hearing little kids practicing the uke
than the the recorder or violin...

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 22 Aug 14 - 09:57 AM

That's telling 'em, Stim.

I remember an early music concert I attended after a workshop in North Carolina. Everybody had early instruments, and the faculty was very learned. At the final concert, a faculty member played a tune from the 11th Century on a plastic toy, the kind that you blow into, and it has a little keyboard on the side.

It sounded right, and we all listened respectfully.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 21 Aug 14 - 09:40 PM

Exactly so, Stim!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 21 Aug 14 - 09:12 PM

I remember when people who played early music on instruments appropriate to the period were regarded with the same sort of
amused disdain that uke players get now.

As I think of it, most of the truly interesting developments in music tended to be regarded with disdain by somebody. And a lot of developments that weren't very interesting, as well.

It seems to me that no matter what sort of music you play or listen to,
there is someone, somewhere, who is disdainful of it. The only response I can think of is to say, "We're going to play what we want,
like it or not" and to carry on.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: Andrew Murphy
Date: 21 Aug 14 - 06:18 PM

ukuleles are extremely popular recently, they have become the instrument of choice for hipsters.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 21 Aug 14 - 12:38 PM

For Chrissake, Guest, get a grip!!

I didn't say that a ukulele could replace a Renaissance guitar in an Early Music consort, I said that one can play the same music on it that you can play on a Renaissance guitar!

I'm not stupid. I know how picky Early Music fans can be when it comes to authenticity of instruments and technique of playing.

Also, I am American, not English, and although I'm familiar with Early Music groups in this country, I am not familiar with all of those in England. I have never heard of Richard York.

E.g., are YOU familiar with the Baltimore Consort? Or Elizabeth CD Brown? I thought not.

Also—if someone new to Early Music wishes to play Renaissance guitar, but who cannot afford one (you're not liable to find one in most music stores and if you can find a luthier who makes authentic replicas, they don't come cheap), a baritone ukulele could be something to get started on.

Don't be such a snob.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 21 Aug 14 - 10:35 AM

Between one 'do' on an instrument and the next, there are 12 notes. Any instrument that has the 12 notes can play any music written in the Western world. Arguments against any instrument doing that are founded in habit, personal preference or snobbery.

Most of the time you don't even need all twelve notes.

Guest, you sound like part of the Great You-Shut-Up, the movement in our society which is always telling people to stop singing, to put their instruments away and just buy the recordings of the professionals. The main tactic of the Great You-Shut-Up is humiliating people.

'fuke'? What do you think we are, twelve-year-olds?

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Aug 14 - 05:40 AM

Richard York is probably the reference on mediaeval and early renaissance music in the country: he's a very active performer and runs the Chester Minstrels, which brings the top performers from bands like Blowzabella, Lady Maisery, and most of the Bagpipe Society together on an annual street gig. The suggection you could play accurate historically-informed Renaissance music on a fuke is actually offensive to the work a lot of people have done getting it right, from the Galpin Society to Sothebys to Kings College London...and to claim academic credentials in that is hilarious, speaking from within the halls of the Warburg Institute, a specialist house in research of the period - I am a memmber of the esoteric studies reading group. We're the home of PROMS, one of the leading sources of work of the very period you're talking about, my own studies are entirely congruent with Tony Rooley's teaching at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, and I'm consulted by Stevie Wishart, the leader of Synphonie. Me, I have enough difficulty having my Hobrough Galileo doppia accepted as it's a 17th-century instrument - but at least my Germsan nakers are right. The only way I can is because people are playing hurdies of the period.

Now, for all that you're a decent folkie, don't go there in Renaissance, you obviously haven't kept up in the last 20 years with what's gone on. Unless you are working with Joel Cohen and the Boston Camerata, you probably don't rate, and I'm most certainly not a major player in the UK.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 09:46 PM

Guest, I don't get what you're saying in your post just above. And I Googled "Richard York" and came up with nothing that made sense.

I attended the U. of W. School of Music, not to learn to play the guitar or sing folk songs (I already had a good classic guitar teacher who taught privately, and I knew they wouldn't let me in on the basis of folk music--not "serious" enough for them, and that was more the province of the English Lit. Department), but because I wanted the courses in music theory.

Between two years at the U. of W. School of Music and another two years at the Cornish College of the Arts (a sort of conservatory), I got the musical education I was after.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 08:22 PM

Not a Uke course, though. And if you took such a proposal to someone like Richard York, you'd be laughed out of town.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 06:04 PM

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

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST,#2
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 05:59 PM

I am normally a lurker, but I like to understand what I'm lurking.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST,#2
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 05:58 PM

Boy, it would male it so much easier if everyone who posted to a thread would choose a name, even something simple like #2. As it is, there are a few people not choosing names and they all show up as "GUEST". Each thread would be much easier to follow if everyone used a different name.
Just plain "GUEST" has already been taken back in 1996. Unless you are that GUEST, please use a unique screen name.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: Artful Codger
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 03:49 PM

Well, the guitar isn't a real instrument, either. You can do so much more on a harp-guitar.

Well, the harp-guitar isn't a real instrument, either, because you can do so much more on a piano.

But the piano isn't a real instrument because you can do so much more on an organ.

Which isn't a real instrument, because you can do so much more on a synthesizer.

But a computer is capable of generating music a synthesizer can't touch.

But a computer isn't a real instrument, either, because the wind puts all other instruments to shame: it makes the most amazing variety of tones, effects and dynamics, using a trillion voices at the same time.

So I guess the only real instrument is the flute.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 12:35 PM

There's nothing wrong with rationalising something, if it allows you to explain to others your feelings about something, in this case, disappointment. You should sit in on a session and add something to it. I reviewed my feeling with the possibility I was wrong, and asking myself why I felt what I felt about what I was listening to, and that is what I felt. Oh no, not another uke.

Renaissance music also works very well on the tissue-and-comb. It doesn't mean that it should be performed on it. It also means that if the best the Uke can do is go back to a time when musical composition was simpler in many ways, chromatically above all (and yes, I am very much aware of its place in Quadrivium work, complete with mirror cannons) then it is an instrument which has its limits and which should not go into certain areas.

And yes, it is a bad workman who blames his tools, but it is a worse workman who insists on using a Chinese chisel when a Japanese one is available. And I absolutely agree with Guest 19 Aug 14 - 10:00 PM on the question of structure, although I would rather apply that to the set as a whole, than just one piece.

It might perhaps be a poor musician, if it were not that the musician in question was held out as being one of the best. In some respects, it was a Curate's Egg of a performance, there were some skills which could transfer to a better instrument and be creditable. But he didn't, and he held out his new instrument as being the epitome of its kind, which leaves me thinking that if that's the Ralph McTell of the Ukelele, I'd not like to discover the Johnny Cash of the medium - except that this is what we get, at least in the UK.

OK, we have many learners and in ten years time they might be worthwhile. But only if the instrument has it in it to allow them to: you can as easily waste ten years on paper-and-comb. And if it's a start to allow them to move onto something better (I'm thinking of the recorder here), then don't offer it to us as something fully-fledged and omnipuissant. It has a small place in Hawaiian music, and little more.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: Tootler
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 03:02 AM

Don Firth,

Renaissance music works very well on the ukulele. The tone of a ukulele, especially the tenor, is not unlike the lute or other small renaissance string instruments. There is plenty on the internet. Just Google "Renaissance ukulele" and you'll find plenty.

I agree with guest above about the take the A-train clip posted. It's not the best example and that "tick" with the fingernails is very irritating.

As far as the anonymous critical guest is concerned I suspect that whatever you post, he will find something critical to say as he clearly does not like the ukulele and needs to rationalise his reaction to the instrument.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 10:00 PM

Tho I find GUESTs attitude a little bit annoying, I nonetheless appreciate the attempt to actually discuss the musical aspects of a musical performance. That doesn't happen here very much, and it probably should.

That said, with some apologies to the performer, who probably expected a much warmer reaction to his effort, I'll weigh in.

I don't think the arrangement is very good at all. It's a patchwork of bits that don't flow together very well. It's not very coherent, and there are a lot of trite gimmicks tossed in, which actually distract you from the melody and the basic pulse of the song, rather than building on it and moving it forward.(and that repeated plucked rhythmic phrase grated on my nerves)

Little instrumental pieces like this should be a bit like a roller coaster ride-they draw you in, build up some momentum and climb slowly to the first peak and then give you a dramatic first slide, then get into the groove and move along for a bit with a series of ripples and smaller slides and a novel twist and turn here and there, keeping the the excitement up, but keeping things spread out
enough that you get the full effect of each event, then, when you're still in completely in the moment, they draw you up the last hill for the big final plunge, then you level off, and you're out.

Funnily enough, this is the second time a performance recently that a youtubed version of "Take the A Train" has come up for discussion. This link is to an OpEd piece in the Washington Post that is highly critical of a performance by Charles Mingus group, and features a solo
by Eric Dolphy.All that Jazz isn't all that great

Unlike the writer, I was blown away by the piece, but what do I know?
I'm just a ukulele player...

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 08:45 PM

When my girlfriend back in 1952 or so, who had just become interested in folk music, was given a fine old parlor guitar by her grandmother (1898 George Washburn "Ladies' Model")—the venerable lady hadn't played it in years—Claire was having so much fun with it that I got myself a guitar. Clueless! It was a "Regal," a real cheapie, $9.95! Fortunately the intonation was close enough that it could be tuned okay (I was lucky!), but it sounded like it was made from wood normally used for making apple crates—and probably was.

But I learned my first chords on that clunker, and was well on the way to developing a good repertoire of songs when I bought myself a Martin 00-18 about a year later. Since then, I've owned several guitars, and had a pretty decent career singing folk songs and ballads professionally. I also play some classical guitar, and currently own a Spanish-made guitar that I'm told is worth around $20,000 (I paid nowhere near that, but I got it in 1960 or so, and it's appreciated a lot since! Lucky again!).

But that $10 Regal got me started.

If an instrument is playable at all, you can at least get started on it.

A ukulele, particularly a baritone ukulele, is not much different from a Renaissance guitar, and although lutenists at the time looked down their noses at it, some damned fine music was written for it.

And in fact, it just occurred to me, that some of that same music could just as well be played on a ukulele.

Renaissance guitar. Whole batch of stuff on that page. (Sounds a lot like a ukulele to me!).

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: PHJim
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 07:11 PM

DesiC, I have played some neat old instruments that are not expensive, but can make great music, but I have also had students come to take lessons on an instrument that would discourage anyone from playing. It's not the price of an instrument, but the quality and the set up, that makes it playable. I have tried playing brand new ukuleles that had such bad intonation that setting them up to be playable would cost as much as buying a good uke in the first place. I hate to see someone turned off playing because of a crummy instrument.
I have a few student grade guitars and banjos that I love and have even done some recording with an old budget Stella when there were Gibsons and Martins available to me. One of my favourite open back banjos cost me $10 (and another $100 or so to set it up).
It's not the price as much as the playability of an instrument that validates it as an instrument. I probably worded it as I did because quite often (certainly not always) the ones that are hard to play are also cheaper.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 06:42 PM

Well, my point, Guest, is that the deficiencies are not in the instrument, simple though it may be, they are in the musician.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 04:38 PM

That's rather my point, Don. It's not just a cliché, it went unnoticed by the Ukelele gang: it's not as if the instrument has to be played like that (thinking here of the passing note in GHB which is related to gracing in other instruments), it's just a habit needed to make the instrument the instrument. Trouble is, the instrument's the medium, the music should rule, and it didn't. Now, that might be acceptable in an instrument which adds something enormous to the tune, but to be frank, I think I'd rather have heard it played on a barrel-organ.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 02:20 PM

To PHJIM
Just because there are more expensive better made versions and more expensive, does not invalidate cheap guitarsm banjos, Ukes etc as instruments, that's just a snobbish ignorant point if view!

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 12:47 PM

Yeah.... The downstroke with the fingernail on "Take the A-Train" is superfluous and sort of a ukulele cliché. Unnecessary and a bit distracting. Most of the really nice music--with the exception of genuine Hawaiian music--is minus the "ukulele clichés."

Dunno if that makes sense, but it does to me.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 10:55 AM

Guest, if you're going to denigrate the uke you've got to come up with a better example than that. It was swinging, tasteful and the instrument had a marvelous tone. I dug that rhthymic chuck as well.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 09:43 AM

Yes, that was the recording I was commenting on. You don't even seem to be able to see the strike, hit by the backs of his nails on a down stroke. It's like adding a burp in the middle of a song, just because it's always done that way. It's positively flatulent. OK, if you're playing Hawaiian music, it's normal, but Take The A Train isn't Hawaiian.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 09:29 AM

Here is Gerald Ross's Take The A Train. Listen and tell me if this is ruined by a flabby downstroke.
A Train
You may want to forward past Gerald's description of his new ukulele.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 09:27 AM

I am not sure why I need to defend an instrument I've spent the last thirty years playing to anyone, so I won't. GUEST may play the Charango to his/her hearts content, it is an interesting instrument, but I feel sorry for all those murdered armadillos.

It is worth pointing out that audiences both formal and informal have a fondness for the uke that doesn't extend to other instruments--walk into a room with a guitar and people regard you charily, a violin tends to put people off, and they pretty much ignore the others.

The uke makes people happy, no matter what you play on it, no matter how well or badly you play it. That's what makes it special.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: Felipa
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 05:23 AM

I'll find out at the City of Derry guitar festival, which this year includes a three-day long ukelele course for beginners
http://www.cityofderryguitarfestival.com/

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 04:19 AM

Don't think it is snobbery, it's certainly personal, but when the best even its defenders can come up with is that they kinda like them, then I think that's a mile away from "this instrument is so brilliant we've got to have one" and rest my case. I hear them and don't hear something I particularly like, because it doesn't express anything much, and that's not snobbery, it's my sense of what is music coming through.
Sure, if you're having fun with it and it leads you on to something more expressive, like that small guitar, then it's not a bad thing. I just don't think it's sufficiently good to want one around. There are many more instruments in our heritage far more deserving of the work, for one thing.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 Aug 14 - 06:25 PM

Amen, Jennie!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: JennieG
Date: 18 Aug 14 - 06:13 PM

They are as real as you wish to make them.

Our uke group has people who will never be of the standard of some of the 'masters', but they are having a great time just the same. Some have never held an instrument in their lives before joining, couldn't read music - still can't - but they have a lot of fun. We recently played a couple of songs at a concert and feedback was "you were all enjoying it so much"! Yes, we were! Isn't that what music is about?

I have two ukes, a $50 soprano which makes a surprisingly good sound, and a hand-made tenor which cost many noughts more than $50 and sounds much better too, made by one of Australia's best luthiers.

Perhaps it's time to put away the musical snobbery, and just enjoy the music.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: PHJim
Date: 18 Aug 14 - 05:19 PM

Of course there are gonna be people who don't like the sound of the ukulele and will never appreciate it, no matter how well it is played, just as there are those with no use for the banjo, bagpipes, accordion... and I guess it all comes down to personal preference. While I once thought they were toys, I now kinda like them.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 Aug 14 - 04:23 PM

I have heard people get some pretty good music out of the little "standard" ukulele, but I can't say I could work up a great deal of enthusiasm for it. But the "Guitalele," the size of a tenor uke and with six strings (tuned like a guitar with a capo on the fifth fret), is capable of some pretty interesting stuff.

Actually, it could be considered a one-quarter-size guitar.

Links to YouTube in my post above.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: irishenglish
Date: 18 Aug 14 - 09:46 AM

Check out Taimane Gardner on Youtube and ask that question again!

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Aug 14 - 04:19 AM

In some respects it comes back to the original objections to the guitar in the 1880s, as typified by WS Gilbert's opening shots in Trial By Jury, when he used it as a symbol for an effete intellectual. Tink-a-tonk was the words he used. He's pointing at would-bes rather than can-dos, and the question really comes back to whether it has a place outside of the self-referential in our music.
None of the players quoted as references have taken it anywhere with other instruments, because it has annoying features: Ross, for example, destroys Take The A-Train by insisting on the flabby downstroke strum in the middle of each bar as a form of percussion when he'd have done better playing a la table. I stopped wasting time on the list PHJim gave me 16 Aug 14 - 01:30 PM after a bit, as it was just too dispiriting: no, I don't think it has a place in anything other than it's original Hawaiian context, I see what the afficionadoes see in it, but it's a severe case of self-referential, indeed self-justificatory, monomania. Sure, the best players can get something out of it, but it's never going to be the kind of heart-breaking wail of the clarinet at the start of Rhapsody in Blue, or the throb of tympani, or Hendrix in full-flow, it goes about 30% towards a Hawaiian guitar, so I suspect it's had its day and been found wanting - worse, it's clearly not got the scope to go anywhere. Why not play the charango, a similar instrument which does far more? But no, you'll stick with it and the more chi to your karma. Me, I use a brick wall.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 18 Aug 14 - 01:54 AM

I have to disagree with Artful Codger. The under $100 ukes can be suprisingly good. I have a Kala Soprano that I am very fond of- it plays well all the way up the neck, and has quite a good fretboard, and a pleasing sound. Not quite as good as an old solid mahagonny Martin, but neither are those $200-300 instruments. I have heard good reports on the Lanikai beginners models as well.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: PHJim
Date: 18 Aug 14 - 12:03 AM

Good points Artful,
    The cheap, painted ukuleles that many folks start their ukulele playing on are not really instruments. Of course this is true of guitars, banjos and mandolins as well. I have tried these entry level (a poor term) instruments and anyone would have trouble getting a decent sound out of them. A poor quality instrument will discourage any beginning player and should be avoided.

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: Artful Codger
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 10:04 PM

The Hawaiian 'ukulele was adapted from the Portuguese cavaquinho and rajão, often played together, with the cavaquinho playing melody rather than being strummed. Although we mostly hear the 'ukulele being strummed rather than fingerpicked (following it's primary use in accompanying 20's/30's songs), it has always been used as a melody instrument as well, and the reentrant tuning lends itself to more bell-like playing (one note sustained into the next, where even legato would cut it off).

What gives 'ukulele a bad rep is the fact that it's accessible to and popular with people just beginning to learn an instrument or with not much dedication. Unlike the guitar, you only have to worry about four strings, and although some chord shapes require a barre (or are easiest to play that way), most don't: you've got a finger for each string. Sadly, although playing up the neck is much easier than on guitar (unless on guitar you take the uke approach of only playing the top four strings), most players are content with their limited stable of first position chords, with which they can accompany any song--at least to their liking--and that's all they really wanted to do in the first place.

The other thing that gives 'ukulele a bad rep is that, although good ukes are way cheaper than good guitars, mandolins, banjos and the like, most folks start (and stick) with the under-$100 cheapies, which have unimpressive or even annoying tone--better fit for painting and hanging on the wall. This is false economy, since they easily spend more for the basic accessories than they did for the instrument itself. For about $200 you can get an all-solid wood uke, nice-sounding with spot-on intonation; for $250-400, you can get a sweet-sounding instrument with finer, more exotic-looking tonewood that may satisfy you for the rest of your life. (But few people are satisfied with just one uke, and why should you be?) From there on, the main cost is the labor for hand-building a more finely resonant instrument and the cachet/unique tone/bling of true koa or other select tonewood; the bang-for-the-bucks ratio declines sharply. In contrast, $300 is hardly enough to buy an entry-level banjo worth serious consideration. Can you honestly tell me you'd rather hear a tinny, stray-toned banjo than a melodious uke?

Subject: RE: Are ukuleles a real instrument?
From: PHJim
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 11:20 AM

From: GUEST
Date: 16 Aug 14 - 01:55 AM

"Ok for playing Georges Formby songs, not much else!"

Jake's take on Over The Rainbow