Best uses of a 5 String Uke

I'm considering a 5 string with GgCEA. I have not been able to get my hands on one to try and I was wondering what kind of music people use it for. Is it best used for strumming, picking, chord & melody or is it versatile enough to be used as an every day player. My biggest fear is that when you add the low G it lose its re-entrant ukey sound. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

brUKEman said:

I'm considering a 5 string with GgCEA. I have not been able to get my hands on one to try and I was wondering what kind of music people use it for. Is it best used for strumming, picking, chord & melody or is it versatile enough to be used as an every day player. My biggest fear is that when you add the low G it lose its re-entrant ukey sound. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Click to expand...

Having recently purchased one I have to say it is good for "all of the above."

Okay...when strumming you do lose a bit of the "lilt" of a reentrant uke but in exchange you get a nice full sound. The way I see it is tenors are not great "lilt" ukes anyway - for that I'll play a soprano or my Pineapple Sunday (tenor scale but body only a little larger than a soprano).

For everything but strumming it's like having two ukes in your hand - reentrant and linear. The high-G string is on the outside so when you are doing finger rolls they sound exactly like they do on a reentrant uke unless you intentionally hit both strings. I do a lot of finger rolls and I did not like the way they sounded on a linear uke. If you are picking a melody and want to use the lower notes, it is not difficult to pick just the inside low string. Currently I do this by using my index finger picking up instead of my thumb picking down, but I think once I've had the uke a little longer I'll probably be able to pick just the bass string with my thumb.

So I guess considering all of this you could say that it is a win-win-tie situation. Rentrant picking - win. Linear picking - win. "Ukey" strumming - tie.

John

Thanks for the info, very helpful. When you play an individual Gg string can you use your finger or is too small and you need to use your nail (which I don't have).

When I'm playing the outside high-g I brush it with the pad of my thumb, basically exactly the way I do a four string. If you're talking about the inside low G string I can catch it pretty easy with my index finger coming up but haven't quite mastered catching just the low-G with my thumb...yet.

John

I considered one, many more models come with 6 strings, got a Pono 6 string tenor. No more trouble to play.