The ukulele and the cavaquinho are both from the same family of instruments – both originated from Portugal.
There are many similarities between them: they are a similar size, they have four strings. There are also differences. In terms of construction, cavaquinhos tend to have a larger body than the uke and have slotted headstocks like a classical guitar rather than tuning pegs like a ukulele.
There is also a difference in tuning. Cavaquinhos are typically tuned DGBD (giving them the sound of an open G chord). This tuning is lower than a ukulele and is also relatively different so the chord shapes of a ukulele do not work on a cavaquinho.
It’s often said that the ukulele is a very easy instrument to learn. And there’s some truth in that. You only have four strings to memorize finger positions for, the strings are more forgiving on the fingers and the stretches are less challenging.
Having said that, all musical instruments are challenging to learn. If you think the ukulele is easy to play, watch some ukulele YouTube videos and it’s pretty clear many people find it difficult. It’s certainly no easier to play the ukulele to a high standard than it is to play the guitar to a high standard.
According to Jim Beloff, “If you were a poor guitar player, you suddenly become a pretty good uke player.” I’d disagree with that entirely. It might be that the ukulele suits you better than the guitar, but there are no guarantees.
Like most instruments, the ukulele is easy to play badly and hard to play well.
The price of vintage koa ukuleles seems to be going up and up in recent years. Not long ago, there was very little price difference between a Martin ukulele made of mahogany and made of koa. Those days are long gone. A 2K will fetch hundreds of dollars more than a 2M.
Part of this increase in price is due to the availability of koa. True koa is only available on Hawaii and is getting increasingly hard to find.
There’s little doubt that koa is more beautiful than mahogany and this is probably the biggest factor in the price difference between koa and mahogany ukuleles. There is a difference in sound between them, but I wouldn’t say one is better than the other.
If you want the look and sound of koa wood without the price tag, you do have options. There are an increasing number of ukuleles being made of woods in the same family as koa, Acacia wood, such as Australian blackwood. These include brands such as the Koa Pili Koko Kelii and Lehua ukuleles. It would take a more eagle eyed and eared connoisseur than me to tell the difference.
It’s sad to say, but it is far more easy to find guitar chords online than it is to find ukulele chords. Luckily, there’s no problem whatsoever translating them to ukulele.
Chords written for the guitar will be exactly the same on the ukulele. If the guitar chord sheet tells you to play G, you just play the standard G chord shape on the ukulele. It’s as simple as that.
Make sure you have a ukulele chord dictionary on hand to check the chord shapes. You’ll want to ignore the guitar chord diagrams as the G chord shape for guitar looks different to the G chord shape on the ukulele.
There’s no getting around it, the way a ukulele is strung is absolutely ridiculous. But that’s what makes it such incredible instrument.
Almost all stringed instruments go from lowest string (thickest) to highest string (thinnest). Not the ukulele. The ukulele strings sizes go like this from nearest your head to nearest the ground:
G string: Second thinnest.
C string: Fattest.
E string: Second Fattest.
A string: Thinnest.
Anyone who has experience with string instruments will find this baffling. I certainly did. When I first bought a cheap ukulele and, being a guitarist, was completely ignorant, I changed the order of the strings. Now I’m much wiser and know that this is the only way to have your strings.
The best quality ukulele strings around are Aquila and Worth.
I admit, I do it all the time. It’s a simple matter of maths. I have three guitar capos and one ukulele capo. I usually use the first one that comes to hand. For the most part, a guitar capo – depending on the capo itself – will do the job. However, it is much larger than necessary and will get in the way of your playing. It’s worth investing in a smaller capo just for your uke.
Buying a Ukulele Capo
There are plenty of ukulele capos around. However, these tend to be the cheap, wrap around type. They do the job OK, but if you want a better quality capo, buy a mandolin capo. Mandolin necks are roughly the same size as a ukulele neck, so their capos fit perfectly well. They also have higher quality level capos which can be put on and taken off quickly and easily and can be adjusted more accurately to the size of your ukulele’s neck.
Linguistically speaking, if a noun starts with a vowel sound it’s ‘an’ and for a consonant sound it’s ‘a’.
But there is plenty of disagreement on whether the word ‘ukulele’ starts with a vowel sound or not. The Hawaiian way of pronouncing it is ‘oo-koo-lay-lay’ i.e. with a vowel sound. The most common way to pronounce it in the mainland US, and the rest of the English speaking, world is ‘yoo-ka-lay-lee’.
Hardcore ukulele traditionalists (aka pedants) will tell you that the Hawaiian pronunciation is the only true and correct pronunciation and therefore only ‘an ukulele’ is correct. However, unless you live in Hawaii, your English teacher is unlikely to be familiar with the derivation of the word ukulele and will strike a big red line through ‘an ukulele’. But it would certainly be fun proving them wrong. Unless you’re trying to embarrass your English teacher, stick to ‘a ukulele’.
There is one issue that is completely clear cut: anyone who says ‘ook’ rather than ‘uke’ is clinically insane and should be dragged to the nearest brain-doctor.
Unfortunately, there’s no cut and dried, standard tuning for the ukulele. The tunings that have been used on the ukulele have changed over time.
Standard Ukulele Tuning
The most common tuning nowadays is gCEA and is largely regarded as the standard tuning. The small ‘g’ is to indicate that the G string is pitched between the E and A strings rather than lower as most instruments are. This type of tuning is known as re-entrant tuning. Here is how the notes sound from G to A:
Ukulele D Tuning
This used to be the standard tuning for the ukulele. If you look at sheet music from the 1920s and 1930’s, it often has accompanying chords for the ukulele in this tuning. This tuning is the same as C-tuning but two frets higher. So, if you put a capo on the second fret of a C-tuned ukulele you’d get the same notes. It sounds like this:
Standard Baritone Ukulele Tuning
There are four main sizes of ukulele: soprano, concert, tenor and baritone. The soprano, concert and tenor ukuleles all have the same tuning. The baritone, however, is much larger and is tuned DGBE. This is not re-entrant but goes from low to high – just like the four highest strings of a guitar. The notes for the standard tuning for baritone ukulele sound like this:
I’ve been answering people’s ukulele related questions on Yahoo! Answers for a while now and I see the same, or similar, questions cropping up over and over. So, I decided to answer these questions once a for all so that I can point people in the direction of the posts whenever these questions come up.
All the posts on this blog will be inspired by questions that real people have asked, whether that be on Yahoo! Answers or in emails and messages to me. I hoping that this will make it easy for people to find answers to the most commonly asked ukulele questions.
photo credit: fo.ol
It’s sad to say, but it is far more easy to find guitar chords online than it is to find ukulele chords. Luckily, there’s no problem whatsoever translating them to ukulele.
Unfortunately, there’s no cut and dried, standard tuning for the ukulele. The tunings that have been used on the ukulele have changed over time.