Joni is an excellent guitarist in her own self created sphere.
You bring up a good point, though. She could never be considered
a jazz musician on any instrument except voice because she is not
capable of playing other people's songs or improvising.
Her tunings cause her to play modally, and within those tunings it
would be impossible (or damn near) to play polyphonically.
One thing about standard tuning is that you can go from any chord
to any other chord at any time. In these tunings you cannot do that.
The mark she has left on guitar playing should not be underestimated,
but it is it's own confined language.
RR
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I ran across what is probably an old Top 20 show on the "top 20
> guitarists of rock and roll". Joni made the list at number 18 or so. Now the
> other 19 on that list could sit down and play her songs in no time flat, but
> I doubt that she could play any of theirs without a great deal of time and
> practice (and in many cases, "jamais"). I believe this because even I can
> play Joni's songs - now that I have the JMDL guitar tab data base to work
> from :-) - but I could not hope to do what those others do. Do they call this
> "transferrance " in psych ? (I know nothing about Psych). At first I thought
> that maybe they the VH1 poll was paying homage to her use of multiple
> alternate tunings - and to the contribution that has made to future
> exploration of the guitar as an instrument. But as I recall (I was dozing off
> until I heard 'the name' ) they did not spend any significant time dwelling
> on that.
