>> quotes from Mark Hanson's book 'The Alternate Tunings Guide for Guitar' >> (Amsco Publications, 1991) that Joni Mitchell "has always played only >> in alternate tunings. She has never learned to play in standard tuning.">
Penny wrote: > The last sentence of this statement is not correct according to a first > hand aquaintance of mine. Thanks for the story, Penny - lucky guy!!! Thanks also - Sue, Michael and Marian - for confirmation of the standard tuning songs. I found this in an interview Joni did with DJ Tony Hale on London's Capital Radio for a show called 'Rock Master Class (London, England, December 29, 1985) see http://www.jmdl.com/articles/docs/851229rmc.cfm >>>>>> TH: You don't tune a guitar the same way -- the conventional tuning, E, A, D, G, B, E, I don't think, do you? JM: Well, when I started playing guitar -- I'm trying to think now when I got my first six-string guitar. I guess it was probably 1964. It was a nylon string, it had a classical neck, a wide neck on it, and at that time I played in standard tuning. It wasn't until I began to write my own songs that I began to crave chords that I didn't have the dexterity with my left hand to make. The voicings that I heard, the music that I wanted to make, I simply couldn't get out. And it was a frustration because, you know, I could learn your F chord and your G chord, and your minor, and a couple of things like that, but after a while there was no -- it seemed like every variation or combination of chords had already been a well-traveled course. It was Eric Anderson that showed me some of the first open tunings in the coffee houses in those days. Open G, D Modal, Open E, which I guess is the same as Open -- Open G, Open D -- pure major chords, anyway, were used among some of the people who played more blues oriented folk music. And so I learned those. And then I began to hybrid them. And the only person I knew that was also doing that at the same time was Buffy St. Marie who had developed some interesting-sounding chords with more modal than major or minor, and that modality drew my ear." >>>> PaulC PS. I know what Joni means by "it seemed like every variation or combination of chords had already been a well-traveled course." Only now, almost 40 years later, most of us find it hard to come up with an 'open tuning' that doesn't sound like "one of Joni Mitchell's"!!!
