Kohala KU212 acoustic soprano ukulele
Kohala KU212 acoustic soprano ukulele
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
The ukulele likely evolved from guitars and similar fretted instruments brought to Hawaii by Portuguese explorers in the 19th century. Traditional ukuleles were made with materials available on the Hawaiian islands at the time. For example, some ukes are built using a coconut for the main body of the instrument.
The ukulele became popular in the United States early in the 20th century after Hawaii became a US territory, and was used in early jazz and vaudeville recordings that found their way to Europe. British vaudevillian George Formby Jr. made the ukulele very popular in England in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, and was an early influence on a young man named George Harrison. You might have heard of him.
I had taken a passing interest in the ukulele after learning of Harrison’s fascination with the instrument in The Beatles Anthology. I picked up a $20 First Act ukulele at the local Wal-Mart around Christmastime of 2004, and played around with it a bit, but quickly ran up against the limitations of what was essentially a toy: it wouldn’t stay in tune, and went wildly off pitch as I fretted further up the neck. I pretty much put the ukulele aside and forgot about it.
A couple years later, my young daughter started taking an interest in learning guitar, but was frustrated with not being able to reach the frets and make chords properly. I got her a student model guitar, which did help a bit, but was still uncomfortable for her. I thought again about the ukulele, with its much narrower neck and smaller frets, and wound up ordering two of them: one for her and a matching one for myself.
I chose my ukes based on several factors. First, it had to be reasonably priced so I could afford two of them. Second, it had to be built by a manufacturer that specialized in ukuleles. And third, it had to have decent reviews from experienced players. After searching for a couple of weeks, I settled on the Kohala KU212, an intermediate model built by the Kohala division of Lanikai, based in Hawaii and known for making quality instruments. I got them from an independent music store in Texas, and paid $39 for each.
The tuning of a ukulele can be confusing at first: the string closest to the player, which you might expect to be tuned lowest, is higher than the next two strings. The best way I can relate to it is by comparing the ukulele to a guitar. The guitar’s highest-pitched strings are tuned DGBE. If I capo or barre the strings at the fifth fret, these strings sound GCEA. The ukulele matches these notes, but the G is tuned up an octave. What this means for a guitar player is that I can simply modify my guitar chords (ignoring the lowest two strings) and play a fourth below what I want to hear. If I fret an E major chord, I’ll hear an A major chord, and so on.
Knowing that George Harrison was a fan of the ukulele (he had them scattered around his house so that one was almost always within arms’ reach) gives me insight into a lot of his compositions. “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something” play very cleanly and easily on a ukulele, and might very well have been composed on one.
NOTE: George Harrison would have been 69 years old on 25 February 2012.
Photo by Kathy Thomas