New ways to do familiar things often come from unexpected places. One of my work colleagues has recently discovered the ukulele and we have a lunchtime uke session once a week. Today we soaked up a little autumn sunshine on the deck and played Blue Moon. It’s a pretty straightforward tune, except those couple of bars of Eb in the middle. I was showing her how to play the Eb chord, looked at her fingers and realised her way of playing the chord was much easier than mine. I was pretty happy with that little discovery, but it got better – I was playing around with the new shape after work and realised why I’ve been finding two note finger bars so tricky all these years. (I won’t bore you with the technical details!) In short, that nice little communal strum at lunchtime has led to a discovery that will change my playing for the better. And that makes me happy!
