THE DARK SIDE: Does preferring Guitalele mean I'm no longer a Ukulele player?

Is a Guitalele player still an Ukulele player?

  • Yes

    Votes: 23 41.8%

  • No

    Votes: 25 45.5%

  • Other

    Votes: 7 12.7%
  • Total voters
    55
I just can't imagine not playing a uke, no matter what else I had. It would be sacrilege to me.
 
I think it depends where you are coming from.

There's a regular at a folk club I go to who recently started bringing a guitalele (It looks like a Yamaha but I've not got round to asking him about it). He is otherwise a guitarist and my feeling is he treats it as a small guitar and finds it useful for some songs, so in his hands it's definitely a guitar.

OTOH, if you come to from a ukulele background, maybe what you are playing is a ukulele with an extended range allowing more bass and fuller chords.

Of course, you could leave the 5th string off and tune it reentrant (high 4th & 5th strings) and pretend it's a Rajao :p
 
The answer is clear just by the fact that you had to ask the question.

Turn in your membership card. We don't want to see you around these parts no more.
 
jimavery said:
A ukulele (not "an" ukulele) is soprano or smaller and tuned reentrant ADF#B or higher... ...in my mind... ��
Click to expand...

What he said....and I gotta a guillelerilla (Kala).....I don't quite get it ....I like it .... But if you prefer it to a uke because of the bass strings I can dig that....
 
Whether a guitalele is a 'small guitar', or a low G tenor uke with two extra bass strings, or a re-entrant dGBE tenor with two extra strings doesn't matter to me. Due to size and tuning it's in the ukulele segment as well as the guitar segment.

How about bassists who play five- or six-string basses? Have they stopped being bassists? Or tuba players playing tubas with four or five valves rather than three?

Since when was pigeon-holing a thing here?

(That said, I support the idea of a guitalele/guilele/kiku subforum. There are so many here playing the six-stringer from time to time, and buying them too... After all, the instruments are sold by noted retailers and manifactured by many leading brands and luthiers.)
 
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Well, I've got a guitalele ... purchased secondhand about three months ago; but, as of yet, I can't play it (two extra strings and a wide fretboard); so I suppose that rules me out of the discussion altogether!
 
A guitarlele is just a ukulele sized guitar, so if you're playing one, you're a guitar player.
Likewise, a banjolele is a ukulele sized banjo, so you're a banjo player.
If you play a cuatro, you're a cuatro player.

Whilst you may still be a ukulele player, if playing a ukulele, no matter what other instruments you own.
The instruments name defines what kind of player you are, it's that simple. :cool:

(A musician may play one instrument or many.)
 
uke1950 said:
A guitarlele is just a ukulele sized guitar, so if you're playing one, you're a guitar player.
Likewise, a banjolele is a ukulele sized banjo, so you're a banjo player.
If you play a cuatro, you're a cuatro player.
Click to expand...

George Formby. The famous banjo player.
 
uke1950 said:
A guitarlele is just a ukulele sized guitar, so if you're playing one, you're a guitar player.
Likewise, a banjolele is a ukulele sized banjo, so you're a banjo player.
Click to expand...

This isn't quite the same, though. A banjolele has four strings, the same scale length as a ukulele (usually soprano or concert, sometimes tenor), and it is tuned identically. You play it exactly the same way (well, some techniques are unique to it) as any uke and it uses nylon strings as well, unlike banjos or mandolins. A banjolele has more in common with a uke than with a banjo, at least musically. Construction is a different matter. :p The major difference between a ukulele and a guitarlele is the two bass strings (and they are all linear), so the music you play is different, if you use all of the strings. To me, it's rather clearly a short-scale guitar.

I'm actually more torn on low-G ukes and linear baritones as I do feel that re-entrant tuning is one of the defining core features of the ukulele. I like my tenor with a low-G,. but when it's in this tuning it does feel like I'm playing a simplified guitar. Still sounds great, of course. Plus Iz played a low-G tenor, and millions of people very strongly associate his song with the ukulele. Just adding "low-G tenor" to the word "ukulele" is probably sufficient, though, just like recorder players and others do. Our community isn't really large enough that we should slice it into pieces by separation and segregation.
 
I'm reading a book right now that another UU member gave me. It is the history of the ukulele. I'm smack dab in the middle of the twenties, when ukulele manufacturers are coming up with all sorts of variants to compete in the market. It is very interesting, and it really gives the reader a different perspective. I have to say that since starting to read this book my views have changed a bit.
 
Rllink said:
I'm reading a book right now that another UU member gave me. It is the history of the ukulele. I'm smack dab in the middle of the twenties, when ukulele manufacturers are coming up with all sorts of variants to compete in the market. It is very interesting, and it really gives the reader a different perspective. I have to say that since starting to read this book my views have changed a bit.
Click to expand...

Is that John King's book? I thought it was excellent, and it also further deepened my appreciation of the ukulele.

How have your views changed?
 
Mivo said:
Is that John King's book? I thought it was excellent, and it also further deepened my appreciation of the ukulele.

How have your views changed?
Click to expand...
Yes, John King and Jim Tranquada, and published by the University of Hawaii Press. Before I read this book I never felt the Hawaiian connection, but I always knew it was there, and I knew that a lot of people really felt it. And I never questioned it. But I didn't realize how much of the history of the ukulele was tied to marketing ukuleles. I didn't realize that so much of the Hawaiian music from the early part of the 20th century wasn't even written by Hawaiians, that it was written on the mainland and performed by musicians who never set foot on the islands to sell Hawaiian music. But I'm only half way through the book, so there is a lot more. I'm also a slow reader in that I usually read for a half hour before I go to sleep, or less if I'm tired, so it takes me a long time to get through a book. But thus far, a lot of stuff that I believed about the ukulele and its connections to Hawaii and the Hawaiian people has been changed.
 
Yes, I felt similarly when I read it. The book gave me the impression that the ukulele is almost more of a mainland instrument than a Hawaiian one, and that it was the 5-string taropatch (not even what we call taropatch now) that was popular in Hawaii and among the royal family. Even the photo on the title page features taropatches, not ukuleles.

You're reading the paper version? :p
 
Mivo said:
Yes, I felt similarly when I read it. The book gave me the impression that the ukulele is almost more of a mainland instrument than a Hawaiian one, and that it was the 5-string taropatch (not even what we call taropatch now) that was popular in Hawaii and among the royal family. Even the photo on the title page features taropatches, not ukuleles.

You're reading the paper version? :p
Click to expand...
Yes I am reading the paper version, and I agree. I was surprised how short of a time it was a Hawaiian instrument before it went to a mainland instrument. It did not have a long Hawaiian history really.
 
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