MY Ukulele
I’ve been learning the guitar for a few years now and have managed to pick up a few guitars and some very different techniques for them. Until last week, when I sold the guitar I owned in Ukraine, I had an electric guitar, a steel string acoustic guitar and a Nylon string guitar. They all have different sounds and are played differently.
However, last year I went more adventurous and picked up a Ukulele.
Ukulele vs Guitar
Unlike the guitar the Ukulele only has 4 strings, is much smaller and has the strings closer in pitch than on a guitar. As such, it can’t make as many sounds though it does have a unique sound. It has a lot of restrictions so in many ways I thought it wouldn’t be as interesting or creative to play. If you’ve seen a video of Jake then you know that’s not true.
Sometimes, placing restrictions on ourselves can actually increase our creativity. Having fewer notes and fewer strings makes you concentrate on the notes you do have and can use. You can go back to your default tactics that you learn with the guitar. By placing further restrictions you need to experiment to see how to make the most of them. On the guitar it can be by playing the same chords but in a different position on the neck (so as to get a different sounds) or by strumming differently.
When using a ukulele it can help focus on the words you sing, the rhythm or how to combine chords and notes.
The best thing was that this wasn’t just something I applied to the Ukulele. When I went back to the guitar I noticed I took across a lot of what I learnt. Different strumming patterns, two string solos, chords and notes, and focusing on the lyrics all came across.
Not just the Ukulele
This isn’t just confined to musical instruments of course. Haikus are incredible popular poems due to their brief simplicity. The fact that you just need a 5-7-5 syllable pattern for the three lines (with a juxtaposition between two of the lines) helps people to create short, quick but occasionally powerful poems.
God even bound himself as such.
The restrictions of the Universe
Look at the universe and the rules he put in place. Gravity, friction, thermodynamics and so on. They all bound his creation within restrictive parameters and yet look at the world. No better yet, look at the universe. It is incredible beautiful and all this because of the restrictions in place.
