Thanks for your kind words, Walt. Glad you find all this interesting. "I Don't Know Where I Stand" is a classic version of what I've been talking about, and her little vocal "horn" solo is brilliant, especially over such unusual chordal movement.
Her chordal language has always had an abundance of pungent color tones, major and minor 9, major and minor 11, add 2, add 4, major and minor 7ths with and without raised 4ths ... the whole palette. Sometimes they may sound more indecisive, but generally produce the effect of emotional complexity and richness. "Man From Mars" is one of the few recent songs that recall her early musical dialect (yes, especially the music to which the line "This time you've gone too far" is set), but unfortunately I don't find it as inspired. As I've written before (probably too many damn times for some folks' taste here), whatever musical gift she once had for composition has long since dissipated. This saddens me, but in no way diminishes the magnitude of her earlier achievement, which is among the most towering of the modern era. Fred In a message dated 4/1/02 2:11:02 PM, BigWaltinSF writes: >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), but 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
