Misunderstood or Misused Guitar Definition

Graham Greenbag

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At one time I was of the view that Ukes and Guitars were two completely separate things, I believe that that view is shared by the ‘average’ man or woman ‘on the street’. Now I really wonder whether that’s completely wrong, I’ve discovered varieties of Guitar that range in size and have four rather than six strings too. Guitar tuning has a variety of standards too.

Now I wonder what a Guitar actually is. It seems to me that the term Guitar is misused or misunderstood as it relates to both a wide family of instruments as well as the common aucustic six string ‘guitar’. As such isn’t the Uke simply a small or moderately sized Guitar with four strings and one of the two (most) common Uke tunings?

What do others think and what’s in the Guitar family?
 
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The basic difference to most people, I think is twofold, re entrant tuning & designed for accompaniment/chords, whereas, I think, the guitar was primarily a solo instrument from the start.

Lines, shape, & sizes have been merging over the years though, so they both just belong to the 'plucked string' family of instruments really, especially as manufacturers have introduced the 'guitarlele', as against the 'piccolo' guitar. :)

EDIT: My ukes perform the role of a mini guitar, I suppose, as they nearly all have a low G string, are linear, & I prefer to pick/play melodies as against chords for accompanying singing.
 
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Yeah, definitely a blurry one this - especially when you realise the uke is tuned very similarly to a renaissance guitar! I tend to lump "fretted stringed instruments" into one bucket and no doubt mortally offend all mandolin, banjo, bass, guitar, uke, etc., players in the process...
 
Thanks Keith and Jim. There certainly seem to be many more four string guitars than I was one aware of and I’m almost inclined to think that guitars were originally all four string instruments - aren’t six string guitars then a development of the original which stole the (Guitar) name.

This Wikipedia post is helpful but I suspect there is much more to understand / be aware of. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-string_guitar . To me it seems that we are all, in some shape or form of the instrument, essentially Guitar players.

I’m not sure about the crossover from guitar to banjo, both can have four strings and are fretted but guitars are essentially wooden and have a sound cavity.

I’ve heard of the Uke being described as a ‘gateway’ instrument to the World of Guitars. To my mind the Uke is already within that World and it’s just the tuning that varies, but what do others think and why?
 
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There is history,traditionally told by the dominate and perception that can really vary from truth to confusion. I tend toward the later.
So my take is here in the US there are Hawaiian Ukuleles were primarily sopranos, taropatch 8 strings, and concerts 4, but before that there were parlor, linear tuned guitars with 4 gut or silk strings, nylon later. Baritones came into popularity with the Vega and Arthur Godfrey. I'm assuming that Tenors, that now dominate the market came in to popularity some time between Sopranos and Baritones.
I have all of them but a Taropatch. I use Sopranos and concerts in re entrant tuning for Hawaiian, tin pan-alley, and "happy" songs, for the mournful and protest I switch to a Baritone with standard tuning. Also built a flipper that is Baritone on one side and short scale Bass on the other that is "a work in progress".
 
There is history,traditionally told by the dominate and perception that can really vary from truth to confusion. I tend toward the later.
So my take is here in the US there are Hawaiian Ukuleles were primarily sopranos, taropatch 8 strings, and concerts 4, but before that there were parlor, linear tuned guitars with 4 gut or silk strings, nylon later. Baritones came into popularity with the Vega and Arthur Godfrey. I'm assuming that Tenors, that now dominate the market came in to popularity some time between Sopranos and Baritones.

With history I too tend towards what you describe at the later choice, sometimes perception gives the truth but the dominate is almost always biased or distorted.

The four string Tenor Guitar with a scale length of 23 inches and developed by Martin and Gibson appeared in the 1920’s. Then we have Baritone Ukes developed by Favilla in the 1940s and later Martin, scale length of circa 20 inches. I believe that the South American Cuatro is a similar size to the Baritone. As far as I can tell the Tenor Uke, with its 17 inch scale, followed the Concert size in the 1930’s - a progression to gain more volume and more depth of sound.

Apparently the current ‘classical’ six string design came in around the late 1700’s with earlier guitars having four and then five courses of strings - reported dates are a bit variable. The Parlour Guitars that I found oginate in the late 1800’s and had six strings, not sure of their scale length. Until recently I was unaware that Guitars, Classical acoustic type ones, were available in different sizes.
 
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I played guitar for almost 50 years, which made taking up the uke five years ago very easy. So my gateway was guitar to uke, and haven't touched my guitars. Re-entrant tuning is one of the things I like so much about a uke, if I want a linear sound, I'll just play the guitar. I surf eBay looking at ukes and many listings from China say in their description "small guitar" or such.


8 tenor cutaway ukes, 5 acoustic bass ukes, 10 solid body bass ukes, 7 mini electric bass guitars

• Donate to The Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children's hospital music therapy programs. www.theukc.org
• Member The CC Strummers www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/video
 
I played guitar for almost 50 years, which made taking up the uke five years ago very easy. So my gateway was guitar to uke, and haven't touched my guitars.

The Classical six string Guitar is no doubt a very capable and wonderful instrument, well for those who can manage its size and features. However it seems to me that the original Guitars were four course or string instruments and that we have simply made things more complex over the centuries. Sometimes simple is better, you can’t do the more complex things that extra strings provide but those strings aren’t there to confuse or get in the way either.

I’m of the view that simple things, that can readily be used well, are generally much more use to the world than more complex things. Complex things might give better results but they only do so in the hands of a relatively small number of people.
 
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This is actually a question about taxonomy, not musical instruments.

All are chordophones (plucked or strummed strings). This means they're not viols, trumpets etc.

Beyond that, you can be a cladist, who defines ancestral relationships. In which case they're all lutes (and lutes are oudhs).

Or you can define based on similarities, in which case you have plenty of choices - number of strings, soundboard material, composition of strings, tunings ...

I play uke (re-entrant and linear), tenor guitar (Chicago), tenor banjo (5ths) and mandolin (5ths). From that perspective, the big difference is tunings. So I can easily swap from uke to tenor guitar (Chicago tuned) because they are both tuned the same; but re-entrant makes a playing difference, so there are two sub-families. Tenor banjo to mandolin is easy. Uke to mandolin is difficult because the tunings are too different.

But this is just my functional classification, it's not objectively right. Nor are any other ways of classifying. But fun can be had arguing about it.
 
There is, on some sites, some comment that the Baritone Uke and the Cuatro are essentially the true form of Guitar as played in the Renaissance period - though they have single rather than double strings. This encourages an interest in alternate tunings as the Baritone and Cuatro are similar - Ken Middleton has an interesting video on that. It also encourages an interest in playing Baritones but I think they they are a bit too big for me at the moment and I’m not sure that I would be well served just now by a further set of fingering to learn and understand. Baritones, what fantastic value they are though, a lot more Uke for just a little more than a Soprano - and so many tuning options too. Whatever it’s interesting to understand the distant background of the Ukulele version of the Guitar.

Some of the terms in the Prof’s comment lost me for a moment or two.
Taxonomy is all all about classification.
My check on Chicago varies from what Chris has said above, I’m sure that there will be some good reason but this is what I came across: Chicago tuning copies the first four strings on a Guitar (same as Baritone tuning).
“The notes are (from fourth string to first string) D, G, B, E. The E is the E note just above middle C; the B is the note just below middle C the G is the next note below the B and the D is next to the octave below middle C.”
https://blog.deeringbanjos.com/chicago-tuning-banjo

Edit. Thanks Keith for your clarification below. :).
 
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Surely someone (not me) still has their Grove Music Dictionary from college and can quote the guitar definition. Although it probably takes up two pages.
 
I have an old small tenor guitar. It was my son Clay's first instrument. When I bought it at a yard sale, it had steel strings and was in Chicago tuning (DGBE). When Clay started taking the guitar seriously, he got a six string and the old tenor was hung on the wall. 10 or 12 years ago, I re-strung it with Nylon strings and kept the DGBE tuning, making it a large baritone uke, rather than a small tenor guitar.

The mando-thing world is far stricter about naming instruments than the guitar world. Long neck mando-things can be "octave mandolins, Irish bouzoukis, octophones, citterns, blarges, and many other things, differing only in scale length, number of courses, octave or unison courses and whatever the maker decides. (except for those made by Grit Laskin, which are all called "long neck mandolins" regardless of number of courses. . .)

In the guitar world, the word "guitar" includes nylon classical or flamenco guitars, solid body flying V, 4 or 8 string tenor guitars, 6, 7, 9, 12 string hollow body acoustic or solid electrics, resonator guitars, lap steel guitars or pedal steel guitars.
The seven string guitar comes in the type with an extra bass string as popularized by George Van Eps, the type with the extra treble string as popularized by Lenny Breau and the type with the double octave G string (E,A,D,gG,B,E) as popularized by Spider John Koerner.

tenor.jpg Clay&Darcat3.jpg JIM & Clay at 3.jpg
 
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To me the main reason I can think of to call a ukulele a ukulele and a guitar a guitar is that if you learn to play one, there's a certain amount of new learning needed to play the other. Having learned to play one ukulele, you can happily pick up any other and strum it. It is of course possible to adopt any arbitrary tuning on a ukulele, but I reckon that if another ukulele player finds it unplayable as a result, then you might as well give it some other name, 'cos it's no longer a ukulele.
 
To me the main reason I can think of to call a ukulele a ukulele and a guitar a guitar is that if you learn to play one, there's a certain amount of new learning needed to play the other. Having learned to play one ukulele, you can happily pick up any other and strum it. It is of course possible to adopt any arbitrary tuning on a ukulele, but I reckon that if another ukulele player finds it unplayable as a result, then you might as well give it some other name, 'cos it's no longer a ukulele.

That seems logical enough if, like the vast bulk of the population, you believe that a Guitar is just a large bodied six string instrument. It’s a common description and ‘everybody’ knows what you mean. However, to me it seems that the name has been stolen and such things should be called by a more distinct name that recognises members of the Guitar family. We have Ukulele Guitars, Baritone Guitars, Palor Guitars and Classical Guitars and they all have the same ancestors - so a family.

On the tuning point we have Ukes in gCEA and GCEA and aDF#B and DGBE and dGBE and ..... but we regard then all as Ukes even though you have to relearn the tuning. I’d struggle to play anything that wasn’t tuned g/GCEA.

I guess the term Uke will do for us and provides clarity for the public but I’m now inclined to think that Ukes are as much a Guitar and part of that family as anything else. Guitar implies six strings but it needn’t be the case and once wasn’t,
 
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No one seems to be able to define a ukulele, so I guess if one wants to call a guitar a ukulele, that's okay. I don't know if it goes the other direction.
 
If we all were to get hung up on labels, then nobody would actually be playing music.

I had a tenor uke tuned in fifths CGDA for a while before I restrung it back to re-entract GCEA and gave it to a friend who wanted to learn to play (and is now in a band in NYC and plays the uke on stage every weekend)...

Is this a "tenor guitar" tuned in fifths, a tenor "uke" tuned in fifths, or something else?

For me, I really don't care, I just wanted to play it and see if I could remember some music from when I used to play mandolin.

I find that labels, if used improperly are often either a speedbump to acceptance, or held as law by gatekeepers that want to control what other people can or cannot do with their own things. Neither is beneficial to actually making music.

A G chord is a G chord and a scale is a scale, regardless of the instrument played on. IMHO, making music should be the priority, however and whenever possible.

I let other people get out the Brother P-Touch and put name-tags on everything in sight, but my own O.C.D. does not rise to that level. :)
 
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