Joni Mitchell is rightly lauded for her lyricism, and for the emotional clarity her voice can carry. Yet as all acoustic guitarists know, she’s also an incredible musician – quietly inventive, subtle, but still deeply complex.
The Canadian born musician returned to the stage last year, with a Newport set representing her first public performance in nine years. Fighting her way back from a potentially lethal brain aneurysm, Joni stunned the crowd with a remarkable set.
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It was a fitting moment, one that showed an intense adoration to her artistry. One mystery remains, however – Joni Michell’s complex guitar chords.
In a classic interview, Joni once labelled her trademark chord phrasings as “chords of inquiry” – a natural musician, she didn’t know what else to call them. As it turns out, her fellow musicians were confused too, with even jazz greats admitting that they weren’t sure what she was doing.
Layering suspended chords upon one another, she’s able to suggest a real sense of openness. “They have a question mark in them. They’re sustained. Men don’t like them because they like resolution, just like they do in life.”
Joni Mitchell previously worked with the late Wayne Shorter, who admitted to her he couldn’t understand her phrasings. “What are these chords?” he asked her. “These are not guitar chords and these are not piano chords. What are these chords?”
He added: “You realise some of them are sus chords. They create suspense. They’re suspensions. They’re unresolved, like a major is a positive statement. A minor is a tragic chord, right? The seventh is a kind of a bluesy chord. But a sus chord has a question mark in it. It lacks resolution.”
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In the same interview, Joni Mitchell revealed what attracted her to these unusual chord shapes. “I stay on sus chords a long time and go from sus chord to sus chord, and then by building that, because it builds tension, when you drop into a major chord, it’s like the major chord was never more major. It’s like a complementary colour — the sky just opens up. I don’t really know the neck comprehensively, but as far as composing and finding unusual chordal colours and combinations, my system works for me very well. Except that when it comes to sitting down and playing with someone else…”
Let’s hope there’s a few more performances to come from Joni Mitchell and her beautiful suspended chords.
For a deep-dive into a pivotal 1970 moment in Joni Mitchell’s career visit the Clash archive.