ukulele to guitar

ripock

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I wanted to give my ukulele friends some encouragement. If you want to, you can totally play guitar.

On a whim, I bought what would have been considered cool in my youth, a magenta B.C. Rich guitar (the Rich Bich). I bought some Slinky strings because that's what kids did back then and I promptly threw away the two base strings. I strung it up and now have an electric hair-metal baritone ukulele.

I just play what I play on my ukulele and it works (but the steel strings are a bit rough on my ring finger, which is the strumming finger). The stretch is a bit uncomfortable on the low frets, so I just go to fret 11 or so and feel more at home. Beyond fret 19 I feel lost because my ukuleles only have 19 frets.

I just play my ukulele stuff. Obviously I am not playing in the key that I think I am in. For example, if I do some lame I-IV-V progression in C, I'm actually playing in G. So I'm not playing what I think I'm playing but it sounds good. The only thing better than finger picking "Freight Train" is finger picking "Freight Train" with a whammy bar!

So the next time someone says that the uke isn't a real instrument, just say you could play a "real" instrument if you wanted, but you don't want to.
 
Very cool.........you have basically made a Tenor Guitar. I have a Blueridge and a Regal resonator tenor guitars, they are acoustic. Google Eastwood instruments for massive eye candy on the electric tenor guitar front. They make lots of beautiful instruments.
 
You can also put a capo on fret 5 and be playing in low-G CEA uke tuning. So sort of like having two instruments in one. :cool:
 
downupdave: I have a BT-40 Blueridge which I love because it has the correct fret markers. I wish it had its pegs behind the headstock like an old Martin, but I still like it a lot. It also has a pick-up so that I can run a fuzz pedal through it.

Jer: I have tried but cannot use a capo. My technique (or lack thereof) causes my hand to knock against the device.
 
Guitar is just like ukulele with 2 more strings.
Ukulele is just like guitar with 2 less strings and sometimes re-entrant tuned.

There really is no magical barrier that makes the two mutually exclusive.
I play both. Doesn't take much effort to learn the other if you know how to play one of them.
 
I wanted to give my ukulele friends some encouragement. If you want to, you can totally play guitar.

On a whim, I bought what would have been considered cool in my youth, a magenta B.C. Rich guitar (the Rich Bich). I bought some Slinky strings because that's what kids did back then and I promptly threw away the two base strings. I strung it up and now have an electric hair-metal baritone ukulele.

I just play what I play on my ukulele and it works (but the steel strings are a bit rough on my ring finger, which is the strumming finger). The stretch is a bit uncomfortable on the low frets, so I just go to fret 11 or so and feel more at home. Beyond fret 19 I feel lost because my ukuleles only have 19 frets.

I just play my ukulele stuff. Obviously I am not playing in the key that I think I am in. For example, if I do some lame I-IV-V progression in C, I'm actually playing in G. So I'm not playing what I think I'm playing but it sounds good. The only thing better than finger picking "Freight Train" is finger picking "Freight Train" with a whammy bar!

So the next time someone says that the uke isn't a real instrument, just say you could play a "real" instrument if you wanted, but you don't want to.

Timely as I'm slipping down that slope right now. I've been playing my baritone a lot lately to prepare myself for the possible guitar acquisition. Even with the bari, I'll play a lot of my soprano songs, just a few keys lower. Usually sounds fine, except some of the picking where it occasionally needs the re-entrant tuning.
 
I have an old yard sale small tenor guitar that I bought for my son over 40 years ago. I have recently (about 15 years ago) switched the strings to nylon, making it essentially a large baritone uke.

tenorguitar.jpg

Please ignore the attached thumbnails. I can't seem to get rid of them.
 

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It's an interesting topic. I went from already knowing guitar to ukulele, myself. I found that already having the physical facilities (the fretting hand muscles, etc.) to make for a friendlier transition. However, treating them as two separate instruments helped me the most in terms of memorizing chords and just respecting and embracing the timbre and personalities of the two instruments.

Another point.. After I play the ukulele for a few days/weeks and go to the guitar, it feels like the guitar is huge resonant beast, like I'm playing a grand piano. Which is a pretty cool feeling, too.
 
I played rhythm guitar for almost 50 years before I started playing uke over 6 years ago. It was a fairly easy transition, especially that I was very proficient with bar chords. But in my case, the uke took me over so much, and then the bass uke, I never touched my guitars again and gave them to my nephew.


This is Michael Kohan in Los Angeles, Beverly West near the Beverly Center
9 tenor cutaway ukes, 6 acoustic bass ukes, 12 solid body bass ukes, 14 mini electric bass guitars (Total: 41)

• Donate to The Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children in hospital music therapy programs. www.theukc.org
• Member The CC Strummers: YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/video, Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheCCStrummers
 
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