The Guitalele - Is It A Small Guitar Or A Six-String Ukulele?

So I have added another member to my musical family…I bought a guitalele Monday night.

On the way home from our celebratory caipirinha and Brazilian deliciousness at the mercado, we stopped at a really cool music store called Dust Bowl just to see what they had. I have a friend looking for a banjo, which given that this is Japan, it’s a pretty scarce instrument. We oohed and aahed. It was actually a really good store so I was happy to stop and browse. No luck on the banjo but they did have a guitalele in the acoustic area. As the name suggests, a guitalele is a hybrid instrument that is the size of an ukulele with the six string setup of an acoustic guitar.

I had been tempted to buy one for my banjo-searching friend for his birthday last year as his main instruments are guitars in general, and I thought having a traveling guitar the size of an ukulele would be a great idea as a present. I had given him his first ukulele the year before and he loves it.

As you probably figured out, I didn’t end up buying one for him but I did in the heat of the moment, buy one for myself. It was less than $100, so I just couldn’t pass it up. It’s a good thing I did as my husband said he would have gone back the next day to pick it up for me if I hadn’t.

The most fascinating thing for me was learning that I had some minor misconceptions about the guitalele. It is not really a guitar substitute (which I thought it was). It is tuned to A so that means it’s higher than a standard acoustic guitar tuning. The chord shapes are the same of course but the key is different. Apparently some musicians equate it to a requinto guitar as they share the same tuning (ADGCEA). I think that this instrument comes almost a full circle as the ukulele was actually created based on the influence of instruments used by Portuguese immigrants to Hawaii.

Since I am still learning the guitar (it’s been over a year and I haven’t really taught myself much), learning the guitalele probably won’t be too difficult since I don’t have to switch gears too much. The most interesting thing for me though is that the first four strings are tuned to a standard ukulele (in this case a tenor, I think) and the last two strings are bass strings. So I can use the chords I know from playing the ukulele and then add the bass strings to round out the chords.

I hope to be able to play it a little in the coming weeks but I am not sure if it will replace my plastic ukulele for when I travel and go camping. Although, it being so cheap, I don’t think I would worry about it getting destroyed too much. Dents and dings add character, right?

So now I have a grand total of six musical instruments: three ukuleles, one acoustic electric guitar, one electric guitar, and the guitalele. I suspect I may have bitten off more than I can chew as the cliché goes but it’s an adventure after all.