How difficult is it to play guitar vs. ukulele

mariegan7

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Hello everyone. I would like to know how much more difficult it is to play guitar vs ukulele. I mainly enjoy playing fingerstyle ukulele and now am curious about playing guitar mainly fingerpicking classical guitar. I like the full bodied sound of guitar. I mainly want to try out guitar because there is more fingerstyle sheet music written for guitar than ukulele. Any input is appreciated.
 
depends. I'm pretty sure guitar can be more advanced than ukulele since there's more strings. You can probably find plenty of picking tabs that are on par with ukulele tabs in difficulty.
 
Classical guitar is quite a bit more demanding. You need to learn proper technique. I started on guitar and on the guitar your technique is much more important because you have further to reach and more strings. There is an awful lot of fingerpicking music for ukulele - I got 800 songs from Colin Tribe and have hundreds from other sources, books and on the internet. I have found it easier to find fingerpicking songs for the uke than I ever did for the guitar. There is more formal repertoire for guitar. I have also adapted some things that I learned for guitar for ukulele. With guitar you are adding in the bass line too. When I first started playing ukulele I played far more guitar than uke because I was familiar with it and missed the bass notes on the uke. Now I've completely reversed and almost never play guitar. The reason is that sometimes less is more and I find I can do more with the four strings and shorter neck than I could do when working with six strings.
 
Classical guitar is quite a bit more demanding. You need to learn proper technique

And so does an ukulele. But how many of us are self taught and are doing fine?

Guitar is not intimidating. Its just a big ukulele with 2 more strings. I crossed from ukulele to guitar. Now i play guitar more than ukulele and play it for the church band.

I play acoustic, classical and electric guitar. The chords take a bit of getting used to, but it doesnt take long to get familiar with it.

If you are not sure whether you want to take the plunge yet, try a Baritone ukulele first. It is tuned as a guitar (dgbe) but without the 2 extra bass strings
 
I do not play the guitar but the way I see it a Ukulele is exactly 33% easier to play than a guitar.
 
I do not play the guitar but the way I see it a Ukulele is exactly 33% easier to play than a guitar.

I think that depends on what perspective you look at it from. 4 string chords are easier than 6 string chords..

However, beyond that, I think guitar is an easier instrument to play in nearly every other aspect.

Even though I have played ukulele for longer than guitar - i find it a LOT easier to play accompaniment for singing on a guitar. The bass end gives you that "security" of rhythm..whereas sometimes with ukulele with the lack of sustain and bass, you sometimes feel like you're on a plane running on low fuel...

Furthermore, chords to popular songs, eg: key of E, I find easier on guitar than uke.

Another thing to point out is that larger fretspacing on guitar can make some chords a degree easier.

When it comes to playing instrumental melodic pieces.. the difficulty is about the same. Unless of course you are using re-entrant tuning on the uke, which in my opinion, makes it harder! I prefer having my ukes tuned linear to play instrumentals.


Given I have about equal skill with guitar ans ukulele, if I am requested to play some accomanpiment unexpectedly, I know for a fact that I will find guitar the far more easier instrument to utilise than ukulele.

So there you have it folks - ukulele is a harder instrument to play than guitar!
 
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I'm no guitarist by any stretch of the imagination, but I've attempted to play guitar on and off for years and always get discouraged. My little hands have a hard time with those 6-string chords, and something about my posture with a guitar on my lap always triggers back pain. So I stick to uke.

Physical discomfort aside, I think kissing said it pretty well about the difficulty of playing instrumentals. If you "get" it on uke, you'll probably get it on guitar.

As for amount of fingerstyle sheet music for uke - one suggestion would be to learn to arrange your own.
 
Go for it! Knowing the uke will help you along your journey, but don't compare the two...they are two totally different instruments. You know what strings are, what chords are, how to strum, how to pick, you're already 3/4 of the way there! Don't be intimidated at all ... buy a decent guitar and sit down and start messing with it. Go for it, I say.... GO FOR IT!
 
Physically, it is definitely easier to play the uke since, like others have mentioned, there is far less stretching needed on a smaller instrument.

Also, like Katy, I find I can do more with fewer strings. The guitar was good for me for strumming but beyond that I was stumped.
 
Hmm...different, not necessarily easier or harder. If you've been playing ukulele you'll have the finger dexterity to transition to guitar well.

Not that people haven't done extraordinary things with ukuleles, but I think the biggest difference between guitar and ukulele is the size of the world you're entering. The guitar universe is much more vast, owing to guitar having a greater number of practitioners, whether they be players, builders or writers.
 
I played rhythm guitar for almost 50 years before taking up the ukulele 18 months ago. My nephew and a very close friend are extremely accomplished guitar players, especially finger style. I never felt that guitar was all that difficult, but at the same time, I didn't apply myself to it all that seriously. I was competent, but since playing ukulele, I haven't played guitar and the occasional moment I pick up one, I find it so big, I just put it right down.

Going to guitar from a uke, I would say is more difficult, you have to spread your fingers and move over the fretboard more. But saying that, it really depends on how much effort and time you want to put into it. If I'm not mistaken, Daniel Ho started with classical guitar, then added ukulele, and he's extremely accomplished on both.
 
I'm no guitarist by any stretch of the imagination, but I've attempted to play guitar on and off for years and always get discouraged. My little hands have a hard time with those 6-string chords, and something about my posture with a guitar on my lap always triggers back pain. So I stick to uke.

Physical discomfort aside, I think kissing said it pretty well about the difficulty of playing instrumentals. If you "get" it on uke, you'll probably get it on guitar.

As for amount of fingerstyle sheet music for uke - one suggestion would be to learn to arrange your own.

If you want to try learning guitar, I suggest looking into the smaller bodied guitars. I used to have a dreadnought but now have a GS Mini which I really like and find very comfortable.
 
I have a slightly different take on more difficult - I started playing uke a few years back and it became a sort of gateway drug to acoustic guitar, then electric guitar. Now I'm back exclusively on uke simply because I can sit on the sofa and quietly strum without offending my family, I can pack the uke into a full car or on a plane without too much hassle, etc. The guitar, for me, is more difficult to just pick up and go and so I got discouraged by lack of improvement due to lack of practice and I headed on back to the uke and I'm getting my 30 minutes or more in every day again, and I love it.
 
"....sometimes with ukulele with the lack of sustain and bass, you sometimes feel like you're on a plane running on low fuel..."

Very well said. Have you ever recorded yourself playing uke, then played it back only to realize that those bass notes you thought were coming out of the instrument were actually only in your head?

To add my two cents, the last time I played guitar, I was about 16-17 years old. Then I became a drummer for about twenty years. I picked up a soprano uke after that and used the little bit I knew about guitar to learn it very quickly. However, when I tried to pick up a guitar again, I couldn't play it at all. The neck was too wide, the strings too close together, and the whole feel of that huge, clunky instrument against my body was overwhelming. I've tried on a few other occasions to play guitar with no success. I just long for my tiny little uke every time.

On the other hand, I just bought a 17" pocket uke and now, when I try to play my soprano uke, it feels just as humongous and intimidating as the guitar did. So perhaps it's all just a matter of getting yourself acclimated to whichever instrument you choose to make your #1?
 
And so does an ukulele. But how many of us are self taught and are doing fine?

That's not a valid argument. There's a huge difference between "self taught and doing fine" and "classically trained," which since the OP is very interested in learning classical guitar (specifically citing the literature available), the former isn't going to help him nearly as much as the latter will.

To the OP, it's all in how you approach it. Uke and Guitar share some similarities, but if you approach it as a different instrument, I think you'll find it's not nearly as hard as you may think. As with fingerpicking on any instrument, it's going to be technically demanding, so I would encourage you to learn the proper technique from a teacher, specific to that area (and not just a guitarist who also happens to have a classical guitar). That will provide a firmer foundation for you to go off and learn on your own as well.
 
I started playing ukulele when I was 4, but changed to guitar when I was 5. I’ve only just bought (but not yet received) my first ukulele since then.

I love the guitar – it’s a fabulous instrument, and very versatile. I’m just getting a uke for a bit of fun, and for reasons of nostalgia. I don’t intend to cut back on my guitar playing.

I was obviously young when I made the transition from uke to guitar. The renaming of chords wasn’t too much of a problem. I was playing a full-sized classical guitar, and I remember it feeling huge at first, but I must have grown into it! I think the most difficult thing was finding that I had to ‘extend’ a lot of chords onto the bass strings. For example, I think an F on the uke is a C on the guitar, but instead of playing it with two fingers, you often need three or four fingers to fret it on the guitar. I remember starting off with three fingers, but after a few years realised four were often better. Similarly, C on the uke is G on the guitar, and that usually requires three fingers instead of one. G on the uke is D on the guitar, and it often demands four fingers (five ideally!)

It’s just a case of getting your fingers ‘programmed’ to the different shapes, but it could take some time before changes are fast and smooth.

Right hand technique will obviously be a bit different when fingerpicking, but being able to play lower notes with the thumb is great.
 
I guess it depends on what you want to play. I play instrumentals mostly on both the uke and guitar (and have played cello for 20 years).
I started to learn guitar (with an excellent teacher) after he successfully taught me how to play Jake's Bohemian Rhapsody at good speed.

It took me 2 years to finally get comfortable with fingerstyle guitar playing... and I'm just scratching the surface.
There are certainly more gifted players than me... though I'm not bad.... but the fingerstyle guitar universe is far more difficult. Which doesn't mean uke playing cannot get ugly too...
 
It depends what kind of guitar music you want to play and to what degree of complexity and perfection.

I'm a classical trained guitarist, and after 6 years, while I'm happy with my progress, it is much more demanding and difficult to play because of the extra strings, bigger size, but most of all because classical music is much much more complex. Most of the time you are playing 3 different voices at the same time.

Even casual playing demands a bit more because chords become more complicated and the extra two strings add more complexity to everything you do from a simple 3 chord song to playing Bach. By the way if you want to learn to play classical or even finger picking, I suggest you find a qualified teacher and take weekly lessons for at least year. The foundation and technique needed to understand the subtleties of this type of music are a basic requirement for the most efficient path to playing and\or mastering this style of music.

They say it takes about 10,000 of practice to master something. well that is certainly true for classical instruments, and unfortunayle I only have about 3000 hours logged in ;)

I would not recommend a smaller guitar, I find it actually harder to play because it's too crowded, yet I can play from an Iuke sopranino to a baritone uke with out any problems.

If you want to check out some of what I have accomplished in 6 years of classical guitar vs. 3-4 years of casual Uke playing I invite you to check out my youtube channel at http://youtube.com/user/olarte99/videos

IN any case all string instruments have a lot of common so that makes things easier, but out of all the ones I play I find them in varying degrees of complexity from Uke being the easiest, to classical guitar pretty demanding and Violin totally demanding.

For me I decided to only play classical on guitar due to it's demanding nature, and everything else (including a bit of classical) on the Uke.

The benefit of playing both is that my training in classical guitar makes it much easier to play finger picking and melody lines on any uke, and my hands and fingers have developed independence (the bible on this is a book & dvd called Pumping Nylon) so I feel quite comfortable playing any size uke and stretching my hand up the fretboard....

But I have fun with all of them and vary the degree of focused practice needed for them and for the kinds of music I play.

Have fun and Good luck.
 
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I had a classical guitarist friend who used to say the guitar is the easiest instrument to learn to play and the hardest to master. I never had reason to challenge that thought. I, (currently learning classical) now say the same thing about the ukulele. It seems a bit easier to play, and perhaps a bit harder to master, in some respects.
 
There are so many levels of competence that one can play many instruments at I find it difficult to disagree with any of the recommendations and suggestions made by most, if not all of the above posters. However I'd like to possibly expand on one idea :

Bill1 wrote:
If you can spare around $150, pick up a Yamaha CS 100 guitar

My only reservation about a "proper" classical guitar is the relatively wide fingerboard, which may be a bit of a struggle coming from a ukulele. If I might suggest a Yamaha JR-1, slightly smaller than the CS 100 and at a similar price point, which is usually delivered with steel strings, but which plays very nicely with a set of nylon strings (and an appropriately adjusted nut).

My JR-1 sits alongside my armchair, on the other side to my tenor ukulele, and is my "goto" guitar for when I want a little more bass under my thumb ;)
 
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