The Ukulele / Guitar Relationship
Firstly, and above all - a happy new year to you! Like me, hopefully, you’ll be looking to deepen your relationship with music this year, learn more, play more, listen more.
One way, as a player, that you can deepen that relationship I’ve learnt, is to try to play another instrument. Specifically, if your weapon of choice is the ukulele, you can actually already play some guitar, and vice versa. You might not have realised that. I know plenty of people who can play both, but have no real idea how the two instruments relate, so let’s deal with the “science bit”.
A ukulele (specifically the soprano, concert or tenor sizes) are basically a guitar with the first five frets chopped off, and the thickest two strings thrown in the bin. Binning those two bass strings is easy, chopping off the first five frets obviously isn’t, but fortunately sticking a capo on the fifth fret of a guitar achieves the same thing. Hey Presto! You’ve converted your guitar into a ukulele. A ukulele is strung five frets higher than a guitar, which in turn means that in order to play the same chord sound, (emphasis on "sound", i.e. tones, specific notes) you need to use a different chord shape.
Hopefully I don’t need to tell you that this picture is to help illustrate what I just said. DO NOT simply attempt to chop saw the end off of anyone’s guitar, to turn it into a ukulele. Always put safety goggles on first ;-) ……
You can think about this relationship both ways round. As a ukulele player, if you can get your hands on a second hand guitar, you can follow this suggestion and start to get used to playing a bigger instrument, without learning any new chord shapes. If you’re a guitar player, the next time you need to change your strings, just remove your bass “E” and “A” strings, put your capo on five and look up some ukulele chords. Try playing some songs you know using these new chord patterns. It’ll sound new, maybe even interesting. It’ll sound even better if you have a friend who can play the "normal" guitar chords whilst you play these new ones.
The astute amongst you may have noticed, or at least suspected, I’ve used a few phrases that are deliberately…… misleading.
The phrase “science bit” could also be read as “music theory”, which I know can sometimes have the result of people sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting “LA LA LA……” Tough. Music theory is good, I think, as long as it has a practical application to what you’re doing, and this is one of those times. “New chord patterns” is the another one, ukulele and guitar chord patterns are actually the same, albeit that ukulele chord shapes are truncated versions of guitar chord shapes, because you don’t have as many strings to worry about.
If all this is new to you, it might be raising some more questions that require a bit more explanation - that’s great! I’m going to continue this topic another time, but, if you have any burning questions that just can’t wait, email me, or ask me at a club night.
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