Six strings, four strings, it’s all the same, right? Wrong (imagine Dana Carvey as John McLaughlin in his most bellicose bellowing)!  The ukulele and the guitar may both be stringed instruments, but there are many differences in how they are strung, tuned, and played. I’ve been playing guitar for decades and can voice most chords on the guitar without thinking. Which is where the little uke comes in. It has only 4 strings (from low to high: G, C, E, and A) for you to express yourself.

As a musicianship exercise, last weekend I took a few songs that I knew well on the guitar and rearranged them for ukulele. The point of the exercise was to get me thinking about chords, structures, and shapes in a new way. Liberate my thinking a little. My first rearrangement was “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters,” one of the most beautiful and under-appreciated songs in the Elton John catalog. Pick up his 1972 gem “Honky Chateau” and you’ll find it is full of treasures.  In fact, Rolling Stone ranked it number 357 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time (2003 version of the ranking).  The song was inspired by Elton’s lyricist Bernie Taupin hearing gunshots outside his hotel room during his first trip to New York. So the song states that “Rose of Spanish Harlem” is just a myth, rose trees never grow in New York City – powerful stuff to me, since I grew up half an hour by train from New York and have sworn I’ve seen many trees alive and well.

I’ve been playing the song on guitar for years and can usually play it from memory. But the C, A minor. and  other chords in the song are much different on the ukulele. Your fingers wind up going to places you (and they) never thought they’d go. Be ready to take your mind to different places too!  The transition to a different instrument taught me a lot about the song and showed me things I didn’t know were there!

Which brings me to the topic of this post. There is an opportunity to stretch yourself in everything you do. You are never too old, too set in your ways, or too structured to learn something new. Even if you think that you know something well, looking at it differently can teach you new things. So go back over that customer engagement survey and look for some new insights. Ask a client if what you do in another vertical could work in theirs. Look into a new cloud technology. As the song says, turn around and say “good morning” to the night.