I am not a fan of these sorts of similes. The one mandolinists get all the time is that mandolins are tuned like the bottom four strings of a guitar, in reverse, so mandolin chords look like guitar chords, in mirror image. These are odd coincidences, nothing more. I think they do more harm than good, as they add to the confusion. Instruments have their own characteristics, and they should be learned on their own merits, their own distinctive attributes.
Saying that the DGBE strings capoed at the fifth fret produce the notes of the ukulele strings GCEA may be so, though not exactly - the G is an octave up, a whole step lower than the A - but make me think, "So what?" Both of these similes fail because they cannot reproduce complete guitars, being played on instruments with four tones, not six.
Well, yes, this is really more to the heart of the matter. And to tell the truth, I'm disappointed with my mandolin brethren and sestren, extolling the virtues of an instrument other than our beloved chosen one. I'm particularly dismayed by the assertion that double strings are somehow a deterrent to learning to play the mandolin. This is one of its chief attributes, and it was just this very nature that helped me when I was first introduced to it. The fact that it sounds pretty just strumming the open stings, those ringing tones produced by the simplest approach, that kept me interested in it long enough to learn what to do with it. Also, the regular spacing of string intervals made it a lot easier to learn than guitar, whose one inconsistent interval forced me to pause and think every time I went from the G string to the B string. ("Oh, this is that one, the different one. Darn!")
I had picked up electric bass before mandolin, and that made sense to me. The mandolin made sense in much the same way, appealing to my mind; the ringing strings sounded pleasant right from the start, appealing to my heart. It was clear to me very soon that the mandolin is the greatest of all plucked instruments, and all I had to do was learn how to realize its potential. It took me a while to get far enough down the road to enlightenment to truly believe in my progress, but when I look back, I can see I've come a ways. And I know I'm ahead of the curve as far as the general public's acceptance of the painfully obvious fact of the mandolin's supremacy.
So far it looks like ukuleles 10, mandolins 2. That's OK; I'm used to being in the minority. I play mandolin, after all.
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