Joni Mitchell began playing the guitar like countless young musicians of the '60s, but she quickly turned onto a less-traveled path. "When I was learning to play guitar, I got Pete Seeger's How to Play Folk-Style Guitar," she recalled. "I went straight to the Cotten picking. Your thumb went from [imitates alternating bass sound] the sixth string, fifth string, sixth string, fifth string. . . I couldn't do that, so I ended up playing mostly the sixth string but banging it into the fifth string. So Elizabeth Cotten definitely is an influence; it's me not being able to play like her. If I could have I would have, but good thing I couldn't, because it came out original."
At the same time that she departed from standard folk fingerpicking, Mitchell departed from standard tuning as well (only two of her songs "Tin Angel" and "Urge for Going" are in standard tuning). "In the beginning, I built the repertoire of the open major tunings that the old black blues guys came up with," she said. "It was only three or four. The simplest one is D modal [D A D G B D]; Neil Young uses that a lot. And then open G [D G D G B D], with the fifth string removed, which is all Keith Richards plays in. And open D [D A D F#A D]. Then going between them I started to get more 'modern' chords, for lack of a better word." As she began to write songs in the mid-'60s, these tunings became inextricably tied to her composing.
On Mitchell's first three albums, Joni Mitchell (1968), Clouds (1969), and Ladies of the Canyon (1970), conventional open tunings coexist with other tunings that stake out some new territory. "Both Sides, Now" (capo II) and "Big Yellow Taxi," for instance, are in open E (E B E G# B E - the same as open D but a whole step higher); and "The Circle Game" (capo IV) and "Marcie" are in open G. But it was more adventurous tunings like C G D F C E ("Sisotowbell Lane'], with its complex chords created by simple fingerings, that enthralled her and became the foundation of her music from the early '70s on.
"Pure majors are like major colors; they evoke pure well-being," she said. "Anybody's life at this time has pure majors in it, given, but there's an element of tragedy. No matter what your disposition is, we are air breathers, and the rain forests coming down at the rate they are . . . there's just so much insanity afoot. We live in a dissonant world. Hawaiian [music], in the pure major - in paradise, that makes sense. But it doesn't make sense to make music in such a dissonant world that does not contain some dissonances."
Well it’s not rocket salad but interesting none the less, hey?
Article by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers
Acoustic Guitar (Magazine)
Mitchell a life long nicotine addict is not so much a serious singer one might be fogiven for thinking as her voice has been seriously damaged by smoke inhalation so much that she has lost octaves over the years
These are amongst the simplest and most basic of open tunings and nothing wrong with that but Mitchell is really not in the league of people like expert guitarists like Richard Thompson or folks purists like Martin Carthy who even plays in his OWN tuning for many songs and numbers these days! Open tunings are legion and my Line 6 Variax guitar models 11 tunings amongst 24 guitar modulations!
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