Hi, guys, I know what chords mean only in terms of the piano (i.e., if someone asks me to play a Dm7 on the piano, I can do it pretty much without thinking), but what does an "open" tuning on a guitar mean? It seems to mean more than just "non-standard" -- if so, is there more than one "closed" way of tuning? If someone says, e.g., "open D' tuning", does it mean you tune the strings to play only, say D, F#, A and their octaves? Also, what does a "modal" tuning mean?
Thanks for your patience; it's just that although I sorta play the piano, I've always been mystified by the guitar -- maybe because I think too linearly. A friend wayyyyyy back in college (around '74) showed me how to play three chords (D, A7 and G, I think) so I could strum along with "Carey", but I had a strong feeling I'd never develop the intuitional ease with guitar that I had with the piano -- admittedly, I didn't try very hard. On another topic -- I recently recived my copy of "Joni Mitchell anthology", and I was wondering: Who chooses the songs for these things?! Some of the choices were obvious -- they were the songs that "everyone knows" (Chelsea Morning, Both Sides Now yadayadayada) -- but WHY would they put only one song from FTR (!!!!) and one from Hejira (!!!!!), while they put in three from DJRD (to my delight -- I love the album, but wasn't it less popular than Hejira?) -- they skip Mingus altogether, and the anthology stops at WTRF -- and they included the title song, Chinese Cafe and Solid Love -- did they just go on the basis of the singles that were released, or what? But I'm happy enough -- it has "Jerico" (my favorite of all JMs) and "I don't Know Where I Stand" (my second favorite). Oh, one other thing (sorry, but I've been lurking for a while) -- I doubt Joni writes the arrangements for piano that shows up in the various sheet music books that come out -- but has anyone ever noticed that they occasionally contain slight errors, and that these remain uncorrected for all eternity -- once an arrangement comes out, it stays that way? (Sorry I can't be more specific -- but I remember someone long ago pointing out that there was a transcriptional error in Blonde In The Bleachers -- they were right, I'd had that itchy feeling that something sounded not quite right in the opening sequence of the song when I played it as written. And in the arrangement in the Anthology for IDKWIS, I'm pretty sure there are missing chords, or that the arrangement is way oversimplified...) When oh when will the two volume set of "all" of her songs come out that I've heard rumors about? Hugs all around and a Happy New Year, Walt
