Joni Mitchell

shamustwin · Post by **shamustwin** » Mon Sep 27, 2004 5:55 am

...was on television last night in a small concert setting. She is and always has been amazing. Does anyone know the tuning she was/is using? Her guitar sound was fantastic.

loendmaestro · Post by **loendmaestro** » Mon Sep 27, 2004 8:23 am

Is she still using the Parker Fly these days?

shamustwin · Post by **shamustwin** » Mon Sep 27, 2004 8:44 am

Yes, it was a Parker. I'm sure it was a very recent concert. She has a very unique way of playing.

jps · Post by **jps** » Mon Sep 27, 2004 3:51 pm

Last I heard, she had something like 57 different tunings. Which one were you looking for?! In the past she used a V-Guitar (I'm not sure which model) to do the transposing of her tunings, at least with electric guitar.

ibmindless · Post by **ibmindless** » Mon Sep 27, 2004 4:06 pm

I'm new to the forum, so I'm not familiar with the forum's capabilities - otherwise I'd attach a text file of 90+ Joni songs with the altered tunings for each. I assembled the info some time ago from the web. Here's an excerpt that describes her methods:

Many of Joni Mitchell's tunings are based on the traditional D and G tunings. For example, a simple way to visualize the C

tuning is to think of it as the D tuning tuned one step lower. Joni's current favourite tuning -- what she calls the "Canadian"

tuning -- is really just the D tuning with the D (4th) string tuned up a whole tone to E (e.g., "Passion Play"). For other songs

in this tuning, the strings are still tuned the same in relation to each other, but a semitone or a tone lower ("Sunny Sunday",

"Yvette in English"). Don't forget, Joni's voice has lowered over the years, so songs she used to sing in D tuning, for example, may be in C tuning for current live versions.

Joni Tunings
Joni Mitchell tunings.txt (7.0 k)