I find songwriting on uke to be quite liberating vs. songwriting on guitar, mostly because the fewer # of strings allows me to focus more on the melody structure, whereas on guitar I found more time was spent on trying to figure out the proper harmonic structure of seemingly more complex chords with 2 added strings.
I always felt that this was a better spend of my mental and creative energy, especially if needing to transpose (only if the song had vocals) because it would force me to learn new chords on the uke. I do not like using a capo.
Also, by writing on uke, for me it seems like there is more musical "space" to write second enharmonic parts, or even bass parts. Of course this requires the ability and equipment to record yourself with multi-track DAW software.
I used to use Garageband, but switched to Reaper a few years ago, and find Reaper better suited to my needs. Reaper has a free version, and the paid version is only $60 USD.
The only issues I have with songs that have multiple parts, is that if I even perform them live, I need either other players to perform with me, or need to provide a complimentary backing track, which I feel is hokey and kind of cheating, kind of like karaoke-uke. However, since the pandemic, I have limited my presence in public settings, so that is not really a concern right now.
I know lots of concerns about masking and distancing are being reduced over the past few months, but I prefer to keep myself safe (I have other health concerns) and limit my public exposure.
I have not written new songs on guitar in over a decade, mostly because since I took up uke, I sold my guitar and sort of never looked back. So I have not been back to writing on guitar in that long, so keep all the above in perspective.
I have an acoustic uke-bass on semi-permanent loan from a friend, so that helps me with any songwriting that needs bass parts, which is much more fulfilling that using a mouse to click on a grid to input MIDI notes into a software program.
