Hi, Fred, I so enjoyed reading your notes to Mark (from last Wednesday)on the list re: Joni's use of major-to-minor shifts and chromaticity, that I printed it up.
I've been working on I Don't Know Where I Stand for some time now, and she does the kind of thing you talked about in spades; the shift in the scat part (doo doo doo doo doo..., for anyone who isn't familiar with the word scat :-) is one of the hardest things I've ever worked on. For a week, I was convinced that the published piano transcription was wrong, but after repeated listening, I finally decided it was correct. [for anyone who cares: The chord progession I hear during that doo-doo part is: A(9), G(9), Bbm(9), Gdim9, F9, and returning to D(9) for the last verse; I no longer recall what key the original was written in -- don't have it here -- but I'm doing it in D for the moment] Joni still does some of the major-minor thing (in Facelift, to some part) and certainly does some chromatic stuff still (Man From Mars has both, I think), b ut it's not as pronounced as it used to be. The rising and falling to show emotional shift is brilliantly shown in Facelift, where in the last line of each verse, she goes up to sing "Happiness is the best facelift!" (chromatically). MfM uses falling in exactly the complimentary way. Towards the end of each verse, when she sings "Man from mars...", and then pauses, it suggests to me trying to get someone's attention; and then her voice drops heartbreakingly and she sings (chomatically) "This time you've gone too far." Can you guess which songs I like best on TtT? A lot of her chords nowadays -- and maybe for a long time, come to think of it -- seem to be "9's" (really "add2's"), or occasionally "11's" (="add4's"). That's fine with me. I like 9's. They sound indecisive to me. Hope all is well at your end, Best, Walt
