He almost got me playing uke - but I got a yamaha guitalele instead, I'm lazy though - so keeping what I knew and getting a pseduo uke sound was easier. it's a 5th higher than a guitar (like playing with a capo on 5th fret of guitar).
Great to travel with, though I never got into it - prefered the martin backpacker which was as easy to travel with and in a std guitar tuning.
One thing I did notice from re-watching Jake's ted talk - he uses a bit of flamenco techniques (Rasgueado mainly I thought) - a lot of rakes with the thumb too and occasionally a triplet style strum.
Gabriella (From Gabriella y Rodrigo) does a sweet tutorial on the basic of the triplet strum - there also loads of Rasgueado tutorials on YT.
If you get into that - you'll find it a lot easier on higher tension instruments - my fingers tend to get stuck with low tensions strings/instruments. I suspect Jake's strings are reaallllllly taut. I find I get a bit more volume from higher tensions too.
Took me about six months to get close to a decent triplet and I'm still to get a passable Rasgueado going. But when you do, it sounds killer. They are also techniques that one has to keep maintaining - don't use it and ya lose it (which it my issue atm)
