From: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org (JMDL Digest) To: joni-digest@smoe.org Subject: JMDL Digest V2014 #184 Reply-To: joni@smoe.org Sender: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk Unsubscribe:mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe Website:http://jonimitchell.com JMDL Digest Sunday, February 9 2014 Volume 2014 : Number 184 ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- Re: The new Joni Tuning Book and a strange Dawntreader tuning [Anita Subject: Re: The new Joni Tuning Book and a strange Dawntreader tuning What has always stunned me about the Dawntreader is how the left hand part (once I'd found it some years ago on JMDL ) is SO easy. Not a bar chord in sight - simple D and E min shapes that made sense to me. Yet put together in that tuning and it turns into a sequence of notes that is orchestral and melodic. When I talk (read bore) about Joni to people I can never quite explain how unusual I found the guitar. In the review I wrote when I was just 15 in 1970 and saw Joni live for the very first time, I said that I couldn't believe it possible that anyone could play and sing as the same time like Joni did! Some things never change! Anita On 9 Feb 2014, at 15:55, Dave Blackburn wrote: > More thoughts on chord shapes > > Joni has said many times she has weakness in her hands from post-polio syndrome which caused her to seek chord shapes that were easy to play, so, a good rule of thumb is that the easiest ones to play are the right ones. She used a lot of one finger stops, and a few favored easy shapes that she slides up and down the neck to make her progressions. Her right hand technique, by contrast, is not simplistic at all, employing a wonderful combination of finger picking, simultaneous string plucking, up brush strums and backbeat slaps. Her right hand position should be in a textbook for correct technique: the thumb extended outward, the wrist raised but cocked downwards so the fingers meet the strings square on without diagonal scraping. > > She leaves the top two strings open very often so the Dawntreader tuning in the new book that substitutes a second string G for A should be pretty easy to hear that its wrong. > > She also has long slender hands so she used her left hand thumb a lot for bass notes. Her single most used chord shape seems to be like a first position Emajor shape with the thumb over the top to play the F# bass (visualized in standard tuning). Personally I finger it differently, but there are many videos of her playing this shape this way. > > Dave ------------------------------ End of JMDL Digest V2014 #184 ***************************** ------- To post messages to the list,sendtojoni@smoe.org. Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe -------