Secret Chords: How Joni Mitchell flummoxed the world
From her music to her personal opinion on life, Joni Mitchell has made a career out of going against the grain. Unafraid to strike out on her own and carve a musical career that is fearlessly distinctive, although her work might not be for everyone, no one can doubt the gravity of Mitchell’s talent.
One thing that has always been one of Mitchell’s greatest strengths is her penchant for obscure chords and phrasings. These incredibly atmospheric collections of notes have been instrumental in supplementing the deeply emotional nature of her vocals and the profundity of her lyrics. Whether this be ‘Help Me’ or her later, more experimental efforts, this unique approach to chords helped Mitchell assert herself as one of her generation’s great artists.
As recorded in the 2014 collection of interviews with Malka Marom, Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words, Mitchell described her phrasings as “chords of inquiry”, as she didn’t know how else to explain their nature. Describing how her sustained chords do not convey a sense of resolution, which irks her male counterparts, the Canadian said: “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.”
Mitchell also revealed what drew her to these influential shapes, stating: “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…”
As she alluded to, it wasn’t just Joni Mitchell who was flummoxed by her chords; her prominent collaborators were, too. In Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words, jazz legend Wayne Shorter admits that even he couldn’t comprehend what she was playing before realising that some are sustained. “What are these chords?” he confusedly asked her. “These are not guitar chords and these are not piano chords. What are these chords?”
Providing more information on the nature of these chords, Shorter 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.”
Watch Mitchell live in action below.
