It's not easy... either you need to go through the Joni guitar chords slowly, so others in the band can make a note of the key notes of each chord (very time consuming!), or you need to come up with chord names that others can follow. Either method takes time ...
Of course the best solution is to have other players who can pick up the chords by ear, but this isn't easy. You may be able to take shortcuts where very similar guitar chord shapes are used throughout a song. For example, a song like Cherokee Louise has a lot of similar shapes: 5555xx, 7777xx etc for the major chords 9998xx, 2221xx etc for the minor chords. Once you work out the basic chord type for one shape (e.g 5555xx is Gadd9) you know that the 7777xx is the same chord shifted up - so it will be Aadd9. Similar thing for the minor chords (Bmadd9, Emadd9). It's not *quite* as simple as this though (things never are...!) because some of open strings are often added to the chords, but once you know the names of the open strings, you know these notes can be added to the chords. It's probably easier to break things down this way, as a basic chord types, with open string notes added, instead of working out the exact chord name each time. Howard Laurent Olszer wrote: > > > I think the fact that Joni always worked on alternate tunings, with the > > band used to "normal conventions" made it difficult for her in the early > > days to communicate her ideas. The band members were probably used to > > being told chord names and so on, but Joni's tunings made this > > difficult, and the complex sound of her chords also made it harder for > > the musicians to pick up the notes by ear. > > > > Howard > > Thanks for the info. I have exactly the same problem playing with non-Joni > fans. No problem with the sax + harp players. The others are lost. What > solutions might you recommend? What we need is a Joni songbook for the rest > of the band. But that's probably a long ways away. > > Laurent
