The Ukulele: A Smart Instrument Option

                  I work the graveyard shift from 6 PM to 6 AM at a hospital. When I get home in the morning I am usually quite exhausted as you can imagine. The only thoughts on my mind as I drive home are curling up in bed next to my wife and sleeping for the next week. But occasionally a battle will occur when I see my ukulele lying invitingly in its case in the next room. I freeze, confronted by this major choice. A cold sweat breaks out on my temples as I look from my uke to my wife, the lovely sleeping lump in bed, and back to my uke. I make the hard choice (though not necessarily the right one), and walk into the room opposite our bedroom, shutting the door behind me as I pick up my instrument and pluck a few soft notes. Oh, that’s satisfying.

      Now, when most people think of musical instruments, the ukulele is usually one of the last to come to mind. Whether it is because they deem it under par in comparison with other instruments, or as a simple toy is anyone’s guess. I would like to present some information and challenge those mindsets. I would like to persuade you to buy, learn and PLAY the UKULELE. YEAH!

                  You should know that I am a personal fan of the ukulele and I own one myself and play it often. I believe as Jake Shimabukuro (seen in figure A) a master ukulele virtuoso, has said that “if everyone played the ukulele, the world would be a better place.” because it just comes across as a peaceful happy instrument.

      Mr. Shimabukuro is an excellent reason in and of himself why one should pick up their own uke. Take a look at his extraordinary rendition of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puSkP3uym5k, and you’ll understand why it’s snagged almost eight million hits to date (Ukulele Weeps).

Figure A - - Courtesy of www.last.fm

      Impressive, huh? Jake was four years old when he received his first ukulele, and took to it wholeheartedly. That was over thirty years ago and it’s safe to say that he’s become a master of it, producing several albums and going on tour all over the world. It certainly is remarkable to see someone have such control over an instrument which is guilty of being overlooked by most people.

      Remarkable, sure. But is it enough to get you to go out of your way to not only buy a new instrument, but put forth the time and effort needed for learning it? There is a big difference in seeing someone jam on the ukulele hardcore, like Jake Shimabukuro, and deciding to actually get one for yourself. 

       If people only knew how beneficial it is for us as individuals to learn a musical instrument, i.e., emotionally beneficial, intellectually, health-wise, etc., then it would be logical to say that more people would go out of their way to learn one, or two, or even several instruments.

      The power of music is potent to say the least, and it has also proven to be therapeutic. Yes therapeutic, meaning it has the ability to assist in healing, actual physical healing of the body and mind. In a study conducted by three medical doctors, Marion A. Phipps, Diane L. Carroll, and Anastasia Tsiantoulas, associated with Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, 53 persons with an average age of 55.8 years participated, to determine whether music intervention, in addition to what the researchers termed “usual care,” could be overall more beneficial and healing promoting than just receiving usual care, in a hospital setting. All of the patients were in the hospital for some type of neurological condition, be that stroke, encephalitis, multiple sclerosis, seizures, aneurysm, etc.

      The results were quite promising. All of the measured results were physical manifestations, that’s to say, blood pressure, heart rate, respirations per minute, body temperature, etc., except for the lone psychological measurement, mood. Of these physical measurements, there were noticeable drops in heart rate and respirations per minute. And the one psychological measurement, mood, was markedly different as well, for the positive.

      This would indicate that the average patient on whom this music intervention study was done was overall more positive and more relaxed while staying at the hospital during their time of care and rehabilitation. In other words, more relaxed and overall more positive because of the music factor. While, according to the article, “…the sample was not large enough to have statistical power,” the study was still plenty conclusive: positive music was physically rehabilitative and therapeutic (Carroll).

      So yes it’s obvious from the research and data above that music is overall good for you. But so what? What does this have to do with me wanting you to learn the ukulele? You can bring your ukulele to the hospital if you want, but I’m more intent to bring up it’s naturally bright and happy tonal quality. It just sounds like a happy instrument. It doesn’t really matter what you’re playing because it seems like the ukulele itself is glad.

      So music it seems is a stress killer. More specifically, the ukulele is a stress killer. While many stereotypes about the ukulele are false, a few of them are true. For example, the ukulele is indeed a laid back instrument. True. That fat Hawaiian guy sitting on his porch, leaning back, strumming on his uke as the sun sets over the ocean may be a bit cliché, but have you ever thought about why he’s doing that? It’s cause it’s so relaxing that he just can’t not do it! It is just soothing to play it. In the words of Roger Greenwalt, record producer and organizer of the 2011 Beatles performance on ukulele in Brooklyn, New York, “…the ukulele cheers you up. It’s like a happiness machine.” After witnessing the 9/11 terrorist attack on the world trade centers, Roger left to stay with a cousin in San-Francisco. There were ukuleles in his apartment. He states, “I started playing one and just started feeling un-bummed-out” (Tim Morrison).

      Music has been used as a method of “un-bumming oneself out,” a form of relaxation and of therapy for thousands of years. More recently, it has been the subject of various studies to determine the exact benefits we attain from it. In a 2004 study, 103 kindergarten children were subjected to a study to determine whether additional focused music instruction helped children develop their phonic, reading and linguistic skills.

Children Learning Music

      The children were tested before the experiment began, to have a baseline and a comparison. They were assessed in categories comprising reading ability, specifically letter-naming fluency, initial-sound fluency, nonsense-word fluency and phoneme-segmentation fluency. The experiment was done over a four month period, supervised by the kindergarten teachers and conducted by advanced collegiate music students from the nearby university who taught the experimental group musical instruction for 30 minutes weekly.

      The findings show that the children in the experimental groups’ (the group with musical instruction in addition to regular classroom instruction) posttest scores in the area of phoneme-segmentation fluency were significantly higher, which is quite something, seeing as their pretest scores were even lower than the control groups in that regard. Now, phoneme-segmentation fluency, or the ability to “hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words and the understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds”, is only one part of reading and speech (DIBELS). Notwithstanding, it is incredibly important. The article sums up the results very nicely when it says that, “music instruction, while valuable for liberating the artistic and musical potential of every child, may significantly enhance children’s language literacy as well” (Gromko).

      So for the layman this means if children are actively musically instructed then they will have a significant advantage in reading ability, which as we all know is one of the most important life skills one can develop. I would definitely put it high up there on the “list of things people need to improve to become successful in life.”

      It’s clear from the above data that it is good for children to participate in learning music as it has the ability to enhance their learning skills. So what kind of music should they be taught? Well, the ukulele is a perfect answer to that question for several reasons, the primary of which is the size of the instrument.

      There are several different types of ukulele. In order of size from smallest to greatest we have the soprano ukulele, measuring in at 21 inches total body length, the concert ukulele, measuring in at 24 inches total body length, the tenor ukulele, measuring in at 28 inches total body length, followed by the baritone ukulele, measuring in at 32 inches total body length (see figures B and C.)

 Figure B

Figure C

       Figure B shows the different types of ukulele in comparison with one another while figure C shows me, 5’8”, 130 pounds, standing next to a Kala tenor travel ukulele measuring in at 26 inches total body length, with a box of tissues on my other side. As you can see, they are all quite small instruments. Can you imagine one in the hands of a child? It is like the ukulele was made for them.

      So if you are a parent and want your child to be the best child on the block, teach them music. If you want them to be the best child on the block and have a child-size instrument which immediately makes them twice as adorable, then buy a ukulele. Have a look at what your child could be, here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErMWX--UJZ4 (I’m Yours(ukulele)). I just want to add a disclaimer before anyone gets their hopes up, saying, no, buying your child a ukulele will not turn it Japanese, no matter how badly you want it to happen. I know, bummer.

      I did a little research of my own in the form of a general survey on music in March 2011 in order to find out a little background information about what my peers thought about the subject because they represent a good general opinion on the questions asked. I found a couple of interesting points of data which only back up what I am trying to persuade you to do.

      The first statistic that stuck out to me, for good reason, was the people who in fact already claim to play the ukulele. Of the people surveyed, 8% claim to play. While I liked this, the factors surrounding this particular statistic must also be brought into consideration. First of all, one of them was me, and the other three people were outliers in the data, that is to say, they were on the extreme sides of the data. Two were 17 year old females and the other person was the oldest in the class… and spelled ukulele, “eukelale.” It was still encouraging to me to find so many, because I thought that I would be the only one. Notwithstanding, not nearly enough people know enough about or play the ukulele, especially in comparison with more popular instruments like the guitar or piano.

Figure D

The ukulele has started to become a much more mainstream instrument in the past couple of years, but the number of people who play it still pales in comparison to how many people play the piano, guitar, or sing. For example, as is visible in the pie chart, figure D, 70% of people surveyed play the piano. Perhaps this is just because we live in Utah, and many LDS families have pianos in their homes to teach their kids, but this is by far the number one instrument played according to the survey.

But doesn’t it just make more sense to have a ukulele in your home as opposed to a piano? I mean, really, think about it. You can buy an ok ukulele for about 50$, you can get a great one for 200-300$ whereas you are looking at spending at least 1500$ for an ok piano. You can have several ukuleles in your home for one fifth of the price of just one decent piano. Oh, and you can move them anywhere you want anytime you want without breaking your back or having to call in your church group to help you. Granted, some families have played the piano for generations, so they teach their children, or some families inherit pianos. Understandable of course, so to you I say, go buy a ukulele in addition to your piano and have a duet party. It will sound quite nice.

One of the questions posed in the written survey was, “Which of these factors would be most important to you when buying a new instrument? Number them from 1-4 with 1 being the most important, and 4 being least important.

• Portability of instrument (like a violin versus a piano or cello)
• Size of instrument (for example, will it take up a whole room or a small space)
• Ease of learning curve (some instruments can be considered to have an easier learning curve versus others)
• Cost”

       A good majority of the surveyed, 58%, put down cost as the most important factor when buying an instrument. An overwhelming 88% put down cost as the most important or as the second most important. This is illustrated in figures E and F.

Figure E

Figure F

       The question was followed up by another inquiry of, “Are there other factors not listed you deem important?” to which the most common answer was, “quality of instrument” (Owen).

      From this, it’s easy to conclude that people generally want the best bang for their buck. Well, duh. I think I could have guessed that before I started. However, I didn’t know cost would be victor by such a landslide. So, taking that into consideration, let’s think about it for a minute. You want more bang for your buck? But of course! The ukulele! In a Time magazine article written by Tim Morrison, entitled “A String Thing,” Andy Suh, a Sam Ash Music Store salesman in Manhattan, New York, said, “For 40 bucks, you can get an instrument that’s not a piece of crap.” (Tim Morrison). Well said, sir.

      Mr. Suh seemed to hit it right on the money. In the same article, it goes on to describe how, “during the Great Depression, only two instruments showed year-on-year increases in sales: the harmonica and the ukulele, both cheap, compact and easy to learn.” So yes, the ukulele is a comparatively “cheap” instrument, but it is not cheap. Catch my drift?

      Another plus to the ukulele’s credit is that the learning curve is not as steep as other instruments. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that this is an easy instrument to master; I’m saying it is an easy instrument to learn the basics on. It’s relatively easy to learn a c chord, a g chord and an f chord, opening the way to literally hundreds of popular mainstream songs.

      Granted the ukulele may not be the most popular instrument around right now, which would mean ukulele lesson teachers would be even sparser, in fact I don’t even think I’ve ever heard of one or seen one advertised, but with technology being what it is right now, at such a dynamic level, you don’t need a teacher to learn. Great how-to websites like Pete Gray’s ukeschool.com/instruction.html which includes additional links to other ukulele websites, are really the only things you need, along with some self-motivation, to learn.

      Youtube.com is not only a great place to see and listen to fantastic music as well as cover songs, but has already become an amazing place to be instructed about pretty much anything that comes to mind. This includes the ukulele. There are so many ukulele tutorials and how-to’s on Youtube that you can have your pick of them. This is to our advantage since most people learn by seeing anyway.

      If you’re not convinced to go get a ukulele right now than perhaps it’s time to be blown away again. Here is a reminder to you why the four-stringed mini guitar is worthy of your time, an original of Jake Shimabukuro’s entitled “Let’s Dance”, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqaYmQZgrB4&feature=related (Jake Shimabukuro).

                  I think Mr. Shimabukuro’s ukulele speaks, or sings rather, for all ukuleles much better than I can. After all, who prefers reading about one when they could listen instead? And in the end, who prefers watching someone else play the ukulele when you could just play your own? Not only does the uke look and sound like a ray of sexy sunshine, but with the sundry benefits that stem from learning the uke, i.e. therapeutic benefits, reading, being cost effective, making your kids breathtaking, etc., the most prudent thing to do right now would be to do what I have suggested, go get yourself one and get started.

Works Cited

"DIBELS Phoneme Segmentation Fluency." Official DIBELS Home Page. University of Oregon Center on Teaching and Learning. Web. 24 Mar. 2011. <https://dibels.uoregon.edu/measures/psf.php>. 

Gray, Pete. Ukulele Instruction – School of Ukulele. ukeschool.com/instruction.html. Web. 19 Mar. 2011. 

Gromko, Joyce Eastlund. “The Effect of Music Instruction on Phonemic Awareness in Beginning Readers.” Journal of Research in Music Education v53 issue 3, p199-209. Web. 2005. 

I'm Yours(ukulele). YouTube. 09 Dec. 2009. Web. 31 Mar. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErMWX--UJZ4>.
Jake Shimabukuro "Let's Dance" Perf. Jake Shimabukuro. YouTube. 02 July 2006. Web. 31 Mar. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqaYmQZgrB4>.
Ludden, Jennifer. “Virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro Takes Ukulele Seriously.” Weekend Edition Saturday (NPR). 2011. Web. 

Morrison, Tim. "A String Thing." Editorial. TIME 01 Jan. 2011: 64. Academic Search Premier. Web. 15 Mar. 2011. 

Owen, Jeffrey. “General Survey on Music.” Survey. March 7. 2011. 

Phipps, Marion A., Diane L. Carroll, and Anastasia Tsiantoulas. "Music as a Therapeutic Intervention on an Inpatient Neuroscience Unit." CINAHL. EBSCO, 04 Mar. 2011. Web. 25 Mar. 2011.
Selecting-A-Uke-Comparision.jpg. Photograph. Http://www.curtsheller.com/index.php. Curt Sheller Publications. Web. 24 Mar. 2011. <http://www.curtsheller.com/lessons/lesson_pages/selecting_a_ukulele/>.
Tanega, Jayson. 395502.jpg. Photograph. Http://www.last.fm/. CBS Interactive Music Group. Web. 26 Mar. 2011.
Ukulele Weeps by Jake Shimabukuro. Perf. Jake Shimabukuro. YouTube. 22 Apr. 2006. Web. 23 Mar. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puSkP3uym5k>. 

Youtube.com. n.p. Feb 2005. Web. 20 Mar. 2011.