And so what is the difference between piano, ukulele, guitar or harmonica? How about mandolin? Why not a combination of all three?
The answer is that many of the most common instruments have very specific purposes and that it’s difficult to learn to play a certain instrument with the same approach taken for the guitar, piano or harmonica. To start with, let me give you an overview of the difference between the three to get you started.
Piano sounds best when played with a metronome or a tempo machine. Its main purpose is to create melody in your head (hence the metronome), however, these are both difficult and boring to play correctly with out an aid. Playing with an instrument such as the harmonica, it’s not a problem at all that you’re missing something important – it’s just the sound produced is very difficult to recreate with an instrument with a different design. It’s not until you have a full blown bass, that you can start to get into creating rhythms. The bass player will have to sit still and try to listen to the rhythm of their instrument. They have to feel it.
The second purpose of the ukulele is to create sound waves which create different sound tones in your head. A good ukulele player will have a very powerful bass and will have a particular sound – in a way, you could even call it his own. This sound would make him sound like a drummer. You could say that it’s that kind of player as he can generate powerful drum sounds and you could also say that he has a certain feeling with it. An example of this kind of player would be Jon Fishman from Radiohead – a band who plays to their own strengths but also to the point that you don’t quite know if they’re actually playing to an instrument or if they’re just using that instrument to make their sounds which they hear as themselves.
Finally, guitars have an important function but it’s not the same as the ukulele. A guitar is mainly a percussion instrument. An excellent guitar player can create rhythmic changes in his/her solos by playing different rhythms. You could think of it as the player with multiple drums or strings who can also play the acoustic guitar as their own instrument as well.
This is why you can’t really learn anything about the ukulele apart from the fact that it’s easier to learn and play than a guitar. Of course, it’s even easier