Pitch is a perceptual property that allows sounds to be ordered on a frequency -related scale , or more commonly, pitch is the quality that makes it possible to judge sounds as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies . Pitch is a major auditory attribute of musical tones , along with duration , loudness , and timbre .
148-457: Guitar tunings are the assignment of pitches to the open strings of guitars , including classical guitars , acoustic guitars , and electric guitars . Tunings are described by the particular pitches that are made by notes in Western music . By convention, the notes are ordered and arranged from the lowest-pitched string (i.e., the deepest bass-sounding note) to the highest-pitched string (i.e.,
296-543: A Kennedy Center Honor. Mitchell returned to live performance with an unannounced show at the June 2022 Newport Folk Festival and has made several other appearances since, including a headlining show in 2023. Mitchell was born Roberta Joan Anderson on November 7, 1943, in Fort Macleod , Alberta, the daughter of Myrtle Marguerite (née McKee) and William Andrew Anderson. Her mother's ancestors were Scottish and Irish; her father
444-405: A frequency , but pitch is not a purely objective physical property; it is a subjective psychoacoustical attribute of sound. Historically, the study of pitch and pitch perception has been a central problem in psychoacoustics, and has been instrumental in forming and testing theories of sound representation, processing, and perception in the auditory system. Pitch is an auditory sensation in which
592-618: A Rain Storm . She also collaborated with artists including Willie Nelson , Billy Idol , Wendy & Lisa , Tom Petty , Don Henley , Peter Gabriel , and Benjamin Orr of the Cars . The album's first official single, " My Secret Place ", was a duet with Gabriel, and reached the top 50 on the Canadian singles chart. The song "Lakota" was one of many songs on the album to take on larger political themes, in this case
740-588: A Seagull , in 1968. Settling in Southern California , Mitchell helped define an era and a generation with popular songs like " Big Yellow Taxi " and " Woodstock ". Her 1971 album Blue is often cited as one of the greatest albums of all time; it was rated the 30th best album ever made in Rolling Stone ' s 2003 list of the " 500 Greatest Albums of All Time ", rising to number 3 in the 2020 edition. In 2000, The New York Times chose Blue as one of
888-557: A bootleg price. I considered that album to be my Beatles . I learned every song off of it, and I don't think there is another album anywhere—including my own—on which I know every note and word of every song." After graduating from high school at Aden Bowman Collegiate in Saskatoon, Mitchell took art classes at the Saskatoon Technical Collegiate with abstract expressionist painter Henry Bonli and left home to attend
1036-406: A change is perceived) depends on the tone's frequency content. Below 500 Hz, the jnd is about 3 Hz for sine waves, and 1 Hz for complex tones; above 1000 Hz, the jnd for sine waves is about 0.6% (about 10 cents ). The jnd is typically tested by playing two tones in quick succession with the listener asked if there was a difference in their pitches. The jnd becomes smaller if
1184-488: A clean break with her earlier folk sound, producing the album herself and employing jazz/pop fusion band the L.A. Express as what she called her first real backing group. In February 1974, her tour with the L.A. Express began, and they received rave notices as they traveled across the United States and Canada during the next two months. A series of shows at L.A.'s Universal Amphitheater from August 14–17 were recorded for
1332-422: A common musical tradition often use the same or similar tuning styles. Standard tuning is the tuning most frequently used on a six-string guitar and musicians assume this tuning by default if a specific alternate (or scordatura ) is not mentioned. In scientific pitch notation , the guitar's standard tuning consists of the following notes : E 2 – A 2 – D 3 – G 3 – B 3 – E 4 . The guitar
1480-579: A drift to the religious right in American politics. "The churches came after me", she wrote, "they attacked me, though the Episcopalian Church , which I've seen described as the only church in America which actually uses its head, wrote me a letter of congratulation." Mitchell continued experimenting with synthesizers, drum machines and sequencers for the recordings of her next album, 1988's Chalk Mark in
1628-835: A fellow musician, Eric Andersen , in Detroit. Oscar Brand featured her several times on his CBC television program Let's Sing Out in 1965 and 1966. The marriage and partnership of Joni and Chuck Mitchell ended with their divorce in early 1967, and she moved to New York City to follow her musical path as a solo artist. She played venues up and down the East Coast, including Philadelphia , Boston , and Fort Bragg, North Carolina . She performed frequently in coffeehouses and folk clubs and, by this time creating her own material, became well known for her unique songwriting and her innovative guitar style. Folk singer Tom Rush had met Mitchell in Toronto and
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#17328729901981776-484: A fireplace for heat. The spindles of the banister were gap-toothed—fuel for last winter's occupants." She gave birth to a baby girl in February 1965. Unable to provide for her daughter, Kelly Dale Anderson, she placed her for adoption. The experience remained private for most of Mitchell's career, although she alluded to it in several songs, such as " Little Green ", which she performed in the 1960s and recorded eventually for
1924-517: A folk singer in Toronto. She left western Canada for the first time in her life, heading east for Ontario. Mitchell wrote her first song, "Day After Day", on the three-day train ride. She stopped at the Mariposa Folk Festival to see Buffy Sainte-Marie , an American folk singer who had inspired her. A year later, Mitchell played Mariposa, her first gig for a major audience, and years later Sainte-Marie herself covered Mitchell's work. Lacking
2072-477: A guitar string, which influences the overall sound and pitch of the guitar depending on the guitar string used. Some alternative tunings are difficult or even impossible to achieve with conventional guitars due to the sets of guitar strings, which have gauges optimized for standard tuning. With conventional sets of guitar strings, some higher tunings increase the string-tension until playing the guitar requires significantly more finger-strength and stamina, or even until
2220-737: A listener assigns musical tones to relative positions on a musical scale based primarily on their perception of the frequency of vibration ( audio frequency ). Pitch is closely related to frequency, but the two are not equivalent. Frequency is an objective, scientific attribute which can be measured. Pitch is the subjective perception of a sound wave by the individual person, which cannot be directly measured. However, this does not necessarily mean that people will not agree on which notes are higher and lower. The oscillations of sound waves can often be characterized in terms of frequency . Pitches are usually associated with, and thus quantified as, frequencies (in cycles per second, or hertz), by comparing
2368-477: A live album. In November, Mitchell released that album, Miles of Aisles , a two-record set including all but two songs from the L.A. concerts (one selection each from the Berkeley Community Theatre , on March 2, and the L.A. Music Center, on March 4, were also included in the set). The live album slowly moved up to No. 2, matching Court and Spark ' s chart peak on Billboard . "Big Yellow Taxi",
2516-465: A major third (M3) with its perfect fourths. Regular tunings that are based on either major thirds or perfect fourths are used, for example, in jazz. All fourths tuning E 2 –A 2 –D 3 –G 3 –C 4 –F 4 keeps the lowest four strings of standard tuning, changing the major third to a perfect fourth. Jazz musician Stanley Jordan stated that all-fourths tuning "simplifies the fingerboard, making it logical". Major-thirds tuning (M3 tuning)
2664-489: A major third/sixth or a minor third/sixth—but not both. Don Helms of Hank Williams band favored C tuning; slack-key artist Henry Kaleialoha Allen uses a modified C (C tuning with a B ♭ on the bottom); Harmon Davis favored E tuning; David Gilmour has used an open G tuning. Modal tunings are open tunings in which the open strings of the guitar do not produce a tertian (i.e., major or minor, or variants thereof) chord. The strings may be tuned to exclusively present
2812-587: A minor third, so giving a minor chord with open strings. Fretting the minor-third string at the first fret produces a major-third, so allowing a one-finger fretting of a major chord. By contrast, it is more difficult to fret a minor chord using an open major-chord tuning. Bukka White and Skip James are well known for using cross-note E-minor (E B E G B E) in their music, as in 'Hard Time Killin Floor Blues'. Some guitarists choose open tunings that use more complex chords, which gives them more available intervals on
2960-584: A more interesting and expressive alto range when she could no longer hit the high notes, let alone hold them as she had in her youth. The singer's next two albums featured no new songs and, Mitchell has said, were recorded to "fulfill contractual obligations", but on both she attempted to make use of her new vocal range in interpreting familiar material. Both Sides Now (2000) was an album composed mostly of covers of jazz standards, performed with an orchestra, featuring orchestral arrangements by Vince Mendoza . The album also contained remakes of "A Case of You" and
3108-470: A much-publicized resurgence in interest in Mitchell's work by a younger generation of singer-songwriters. In 1996, Mitchell agreed to release a greatest Hits collection, despite initial concerns that such a release would damage sales of her catalog. Reprise also agreed to release a second album, called Misses , that would include some of the lesser-known songs from her career. Hits charted at No. 161 in
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#17328729901983256-465: A new label, Geffen Records . Still distributed by Warner Bros. (who controlled Asylum Records), Geffen negated the remaining contractual obligations Mitchell had with Asylum and signed her to his new label. Wild Things Run Fast (1982) marked a return to pop songwriting, including "Chinese Cafe/ Unchained Melody ", which incorporated the chorus and parts of the melody of the famous The Righteous Brothers hit, and " (You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care ",
3404-443: A non-transposing instrument like a violin calls B ♭ ." Pitches are labeled using: For example, one might refer to the A above middle C as a′ , A 4 , or 440 Hz . In standard Western equal temperament , the notion of pitch is insensitive to "spelling": the description "G 4 double sharp" refers to the same pitch as A 4 ; in other temperaments, these may be distinct pitches. Human perception of musical intervals
3552-501: A pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world and I couldn't pretend in my life to be strong." Mitchell decided to return to the live stage after the great success of Blue , and she presented new songs on tour which appeared on her next album, her fifth, For the Roses . The album was released in October 1972 and immediately zoomed up the charts. She followed with
3700-526: A parking lot." Ladies of the Canyon was an instant smash on FM radio and sold briskly, eventually becoming Mitchell's first gold album (selling over a half million copies). She made a decision to stop touring for a year and just write and paint, yet she was still voted "Top Female Performer" for 1970 by Melody Maker , a leading UK pop music magazine. On the April 1971 release of James Taylor 's Mud Slide Slim and
3848-412: A price. Chords cannot be shifted around the fretboard in the standard tuning E–A–D–G–B–E, which requires four chord-shapes for the major chords. There are separate chord-forms for chords having their root note on the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth strings. These are called inversions . In contrast, regular tunings have equal intervals between the strings, and so they have symmetrical scales all along
3996-402: A real number, p , as follows. This creates a linear pitch space in which octaves have size 12, semitones (the distance between adjacent keys on the piano keyboard) have size 1, and A440 is assigned the number 69. (See Frequencies of notes .) Distance in this space corresponds to musical intervals as understood by musicians. An equal-tempered semitone is subdivided into 100 cents . The system
4144-751: A recording of African musicians, something that became more commonplace among Western rock acts in the 1980s. "In France They Kiss on Main Street" continued the lush pop sounds of Court and Spark , and efforts such as the title song and "Edith and the Kingpin" chronicled the underbelly of suburban lives in Southern California. During 1975, Mitchell also participated in several concerts in the Rolling Thunder Revue tours featuring Bob Dylan and Joan Baez , and in 1976 she performed as part of The Last Waltz by
4292-529: A remake of the Elvis chestnut, which charted higher than any Mitchell single since her 1970s sales peak when it climbed to No. 47 on the charts. The album peaked on the Billboard charts in its fifth week at No. 25. During this period she recorded with bassist and sound engineer Larry Klein , whom she married in 1982. In early 1983, Mitchell began her "Refuge" world tour, visiting Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland,
4440-449: A return to regular concert appearances, including a co-headlining tour with Bob Dylan and Van Morrison . On the album, Mitchell had played a custom guitar equipped with a Roland hexaphonic pickup that connected to a Roland VG-8 modeling processor. The device allowed Mitchell to play any of her many alternate tunings without having to re-tune the guitar. The guitar's output, through the VG-8,
4588-414: A rooming house, directly across the hall from poet Duke Redbird . Mitchell also began to realize each city's folk scene tended to accord veteran performers the exclusive right to play their signature songs—despite not having written the songs—which Mitchell found insular, contrary to the egalitarian ideal of folk music. She found her best traditional material was already other singers' property. She said she
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4736-495: A self-portrait on Clouds , were designed and painted by Mitchell, a blending of her painting and music that she continued throughout her career. In March 1970, Clouds produced her first Grammy Award for Best Folk Performance . The following month, Reprise released her third album, Ladies of the Canyon . Mitchell's sound was already beginning to expand beyond the confines of acoustic folk music and toward pop and rock, with more overdubs, percussion, and backing vocals, and for
4884-542: A serial system, C ♯ and D ♭ are considered the same pitch, while C 4 and C 5 are functionally the same, one octave apart). Discrete pitches, rather than continuously variable pitches, are virtually universal, with exceptions including " tumbling strains " and "indeterminate-pitch chants". Gliding pitches are used in most cultures, but are related to the discrete pitches they reference or embellish. Joni Mitchell Roberta Joan " Joni " Mitchell CC (née Anderson ; born November 7, 1943)
5032-485: A single interval (all fourths; all fifths; etc.) or they may be tuned to a non-tertian chord (unresolved suspensions such as E–A–B–E–A–E, for example). Modal open tunings may use only one or two pitch classes across all strings (as, for example, some metal guitarists who tune each string to either E or B, forming "power chords" of ambiguous major/minor tonality). Popular modal tunings include D Modal (D-G-D-G-B-E) and C Modal (C-G-D-G-B-D). Derived from standard EADGBE, all
5180-497: A smaller range than standard tuning; with seven strings, the major-thirds tuning covers the range of standard tuning on six strings. Major-thirds tunings require less hand-stretching than other tunings, because each M3 tuning packs the octave's twelve notes into four consecutive frets. The major-third intervals let the guitarist play major chords and minor chords with two three consecutive fingers on two consecutive frets. Pitch (music) Pitch may be quantified as
5328-741: A solo acoustic album without the folk-rock overdubs in vogue at that time, and his clout earned him a producer's credit in March 1968, when Reprise released her debut album, known either as Joni Mitchell or Song to a Seagull . Mitchell toured steadily to promote the LP. The tour helped create eager anticipation for Mitchell's second LP, Clouds , which was released in April 1969. This album contained Mitchell's own versions of some of her songs already recorded and performed by other artists: " Chelsea Morning ", " Both Sides, Now ", and "Tin Angel". The covers of both LPs, including
5476-413: A stimulus. The precise way this temporal structure helps code for pitch at higher levels is still debated, but the processing seems to be based on an autocorrelation of action potentials in the auditory nerve. However, it has long been noted that a neural mechanism that may accomplish a delay—a necessary operation of a true autocorrelation—has not been found. At least one model shows that a temporal delay
5624-429: A string snaps or the guitar is warped. However, with lower tunings, the sets of guitar strings may be loose and buzz. The tone of the guitar strings is also negatively affected by using unsuitable string gauges on the guitar. Generally, alternative tunings benefit from re-stringing of the guitar with string gauges purposefully chosen to optimize particular tunings by using lighter strings for higher-pitched notes (to lower
5772-649: A top ten hit for her, and "Michael from Mountains", both included on her 1967 album Wildflowers ). Collins also covered "Chelsea Morning", another recording that eclipsed Mitchell's own commercial success early on. While Mitchell was playing one night in 1967 in the Gaslight South, a club in Coconut Grove , Florida, David Crosby walked in and was immediately struck by her ability and her appeal as an artist. She accompanied him back to Los Angeles, where he set about introducing her and her music to his friends. Soon she
5920-403: A whole step (to D). The rest of the strings keep their original pitch. An open tuning allows the guitarist to play a chord by strumming the open strings (no strings fretted). Open tunings may be chordal or modal . In chordal open tunings, the open chord consists of at least three different pitch classes. In a given key , these are the root note, its 3rd and its 5th, and may include all
6068-583: A wide-ranging contralto around 1975. Her distinctive piano and open-tuned guitar compositions also grew more harmonically and rhythmically complex as she melded jazz with rock and roll , R&B , classical music and non-Western beats . Starting in the mid-1970s, she began working with noted jazz musicians including Jaco Pastorius , Tom Scott , Wayne Shorter , Herbie Hancock , and Pat Metheny as well as Charles Mingus , who asked her to collaborate on his final recordings. She later turned to pop and electronic music and engaged in political protest . She
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6216-503: A worthy addition. Mitchell hired the British synthpop musician Thomas Dolby to assist with synthesizers and production, but found working with him difficult: "I was reluctant when Thomas was suggested because he had been asked to produce the record [by Geffen], and would he consider coming in as just a programmer and a player? So on that level we did have some problems ... He may be able to do it faster. He may be able to do it better, but
6364-424: Is a transposing instrument ; that is, music for guitars is notated one octave higher than the true pitch. This is to reduce the need for ledger lines in music written for the instrument, and thus simplify the reading of notes when playing the guitar. Standard tuning provides reasonably simple fingering ( fret -hand movement) for playing standard scales and basic chords in all major and minor keys. Separation of
6512-498: Is a Canadian-American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and painter. As one of the most influential singer-songwriters to emerge from the 1960s folk music circuit, Mitchell became known for her personal lyrics and unconventional compositions which grew to incorporate pop and jazz elements. Among her accolades are eleven Grammy Awards , and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. Rolling Stone called her "one of
6660-466: Is a regular tuning in which the musical intervals between successive strings are each major thirds , for example E 2 –G ♯ 2 –C 3 –E 3 –G ♯ 3 –C 4 . Unlike all-fourths and all-fifths tuning, M3 tuning repeats its octave after three strings, which simplifies the learning of chords and improvisation. This repetition provides the guitarist with many possibilities for fingering chords. With six strings, major-thirds tuning has
6808-538: Is almost entirely determined by how quickly the sound wave is making the air vibrate and has almost nothing to do with the intensity, or amplitude , of the wave. That is, "high" pitch means very rapid oscillation, and "low" pitch corresponds to slower oscillation. Despite that, the idiom relating vertical height to sound pitch is shared by most languages. At least in English, it is just one of many deep conceptual metaphors that involve up/down. The exact etymological history of
6956-485: Is another alternative. Each string is lowered by a whole tone (two semitones) resulting in D-G-C-F-A-D . It is used mostly by heavy metal bands to achieve a heavier, deeper sound, and by blues guitarists, who use it to accommodate string bending and by 12-string guitar players to reduce the mechanical load on their instrument. Among musicians, Elliott Smith was known to use D tuning as his main tuning for his music. It
7104-465: Is approximately logarithmic with respect to fundamental frequency : the perceived interval between the pitches "A220" and "A440" is the same as the perceived interval between the pitches A440 and A880 . Motivated by this logarithmic perception, music theorists sometimes represent pitches using a numerical scale based on the logarithm of fundamental frequency. For example, one can adopt the widely used MIDI standard to map fundamental frequency, f , to
7252-479: Is flexible enough to include "microtones" not found on standard piano keyboards. For example, the pitch halfway between C (60) and C ♯ (61) can be labeled 60.5. The following table shows frequencies in Hertz for notes in various octaves, named according to the "German method" of octave nomenclature : The relative pitches of individual notes in a scale may be determined by one of a number of tuning systems . In
7400-537: Is one where a listener can possibly (or relatively easily) discern the pitch. Sounds with definite pitch have harmonic frequency spectra or close to harmonic spectra. A sound generated on any instrument produces many modes of vibration that occur simultaneously. A listener hears numerous frequencies at once. The vibration with the lowest frequency is called the fundamental frequency ; the other frequencies are overtones . Harmonics are an important class of overtones with frequencies that are integer multiples of
7548-400: Is simplified by regular intervals. On the other hand, five- and six-string open chords (" cowboy chords ") are more difficult to play in a regular tuning than in standard tuning. Instructional literature uses standard tuning. Traditionally a course begins with the hand in first position , that is, with the left-hand covering frets 1–4. Beginning players first learn open chords belonging to
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#17328729901987696-494: Is still possible for two sounds of indefinite pitch to clearly be higher or lower than one another. For instance, a snare drum sounds higher pitched than a bass drum though both have indefinite pitch, because its sound contains higher frequencies. In other words, it is possible and often easy to roughly discern the relative pitches of two sounds of indefinite pitch, but sounds of indefinite pitch do not neatly correspond to any specific pitch. A pitch standard (also concert pitch )
7844-475: Is the conventional pitch reference that musical instruments in a group are tuned to for a performance. Concert pitch may vary from ensemble to ensemble, and has varied widely over musical history. Standard pitch is a more widely accepted convention. The A above middle C is usually set at 440 Hz (often written as "A = 440 Hz " or sometimes "A440"), although other frequencies, such as 442 Hz, are also often used as variants. Another standard pitch,
7992-410: Is tuned down one whole step (to D) and the rest of the strings remain in standard tuning. This creates an "open power chord " (three-note fifth ) with the low three strings (DAD). Although the drop D tuning was introduced and developed by blues and classical guitarists, it is well known from its usage in contemporary heavy metal and hard rock bands. Early hard rock songs tuned in drop D include
8140-477: Is unnecessary to produce an autocorrelation model of pitch perception, appealing to phase shifts between cochlear filters; however, earlier work has shown that certain sounds with a prominent peak in their autocorrelation function do not elicit a corresponding pitch percept, and that certain sounds without a peak in their autocorrelation function nevertheless elicit a pitch. To be a more complete model, autocorrelation must therefore apply to signals that represent
8288-484: Is used by most guitarists, and frequently used tunings can be understood as variations on standard tuning. To aid in memorising these notes, mnemonics are used, for example, E ddie A te D ynamite G ood B ye E ddie. The term guitar tunings may refer to pitch sets other than standard tuning, also called nonstandard , alternative , or alternate . There are hundreds of these tunings, often with small variants of established tunings. Communities of guitarists who share
8436-418: Is well known for using open tuning in his music is Ry Cooder , who uses open tunings when playing the slide guitar. Most modern music uses equal temperament because it facilitates the ability to play the guitar in any key—as compared to just intonation , which favors certain keys, and makes the other keys sound less in tune. Repetitive open tunings are used for two classical non-Spanish guitars. For
8584-535: The Alberta College of Art in Calgary for the 1963–64 school year. She felt disillusioned about the high priority given to technical skill over free-class creativity there, and felt out of step with the trend toward pure abstraction and the tendency to move into commercial art . She dropped out of school after a year at age 20, due to an unexpected pregnancy (with her daughter Kilauren). She then started playing music in
8732-611: The Billboard albums chart—a higher placement than Don Juan's Reckless Daughter — Mingus still fell short of gold status, making it her first album since the 1960s not to sell at least half a million copies. Mitchell's tour to promote Mingus began in August 1979 in Oklahoma City and concluded six weeks later with five shows at Los Angeles' Greek Theatre and one at the Santa Barbara County Bowl , where she recorded and filmed
8880-526: The English guitar , the open chord is C major (C–E–G–C–E–G); for the Russian guitar , which has seven strings , it is G major (D–G–B–D–G–B–D). When the open strings constitute a minor chord, the open tuning may sometimes be called a cross-note tuning. Major open tunings give a major chord with the open strings. (often most popular) Open tunings often tune the lowest open note to C, D, or E and they often tune
9028-510: The Wounded Knee incident , the deadly battle between Native American activists and the FBI on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the previous decade. Musically, several songs fit into the trend of world music popularized by Gabriel during the era. Reviews were mostly favorable towards the album, and the cameos by well-known musicians brought it considerable attention. Chalk Mark ultimately improved on
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#17328729901989176-399: The major keys C , G , and D . Guitarists who play mainly open chords in these three major-keys and their relative minor -keys ( Am , Em , Bm ) may prefer standard tuning over many regular tunings, On the other hand, minor-thirds tuning features many barre chords with repeated notes, properties that appeal to acoustic-guitarists and beginners. Standard tuning mixes
9324-538: The octave doubles the frequency of a note; for example, an octave above A440 is 880 Hz. If however the first overtone is sharp due to inharmonicity , as in the extremes of the piano, tuners resort to octave stretching . In atonal , twelve tone , or musical set theory , a "pitch" is a specific frequency while a pitch class is all the octaves of a frequency. In many analytic discussions of atonal and post-tonal music, pitches are named with integers because of octave and enharmonic equivalency (for example, in
9472-623: The reciprocal of the time interval between repeating similar events in the sound waveform. The pitch of complex tones can be ambiguous, meaning that two or more different pitches can be perceived, depending upon the observer. When the actual fundamental frequency can be precisely determined through physical measurement, it may differ from the perceived pitch because of overtones , also known as upper partials, harmonic or otherwise. A complex tone composed of two sine waves of 1000 and 1200 Hz may sometimes be heard as up to three pitches: two spectral pitches at 1000 and 1200 Hz, derived from
9620-466: The tritone paradox , but most notably the Shepard scale , where a continuous or discrete sequence of specially formed tones can be made to sound as if the sequence continues ascending or descending forever. Not all musical instruments make notes with a clear pitch. The unpitched percussion instruments (a class of percussion instruments ) do not produce particular pitches. A sound or note of definite pitch
9768-518: The $ 200 needed for musicians' union fees, Mitchell performed at a few gigs at the Half Beat and the Village Corner in Toronto's Yorkville neighbourhood, but she mostly played non-union gigs "in church basements and YMCA meeting halls". Rejected from major folk clubs, she resorted to busking , while she "worked in the women's wear section of a downtown department store to pay the rent." She lived in
9916-402: The 1971 album Blue . In "Chinese Cafe", from the 1982 album Wild Things Run Fast , Mitchell sang, "Your kids are coming up straight / My child's a stranger / I bore her / But I could not raise her." These lyrics did not receive wide attention at the time. The existence of Mitchell's daughter was not publicly known until 1993, when a roommate from Mitchell's art school days in the 1960s sold
10064-479: The 25 albums that represented "turning points and pinnacles in 20th-century popular music". NPR ranked Blue number 1 on a 2017 list of Greatest Albums Made By Women. Mitchell began exploring more jazz-influenced ideas on 1974's Court and Spark , which featured the radio hits " Help Me " and " Free Man in Paris " and became her best-selling album. Mitchell's vocal range began to shift from mezzo-soprano to that of
10212-517: The A above middle C to 432 Hz or 435 Hz when performing repertoire from the Romantic era. Transposing instruments have their origin in the variety of pitch standards. In modern times, they conventionally have their parts transposed into different keys from voices and other instruments (and even from each other). As a result, musicians need a way to refer to a particular pitch in an unambiguous manner when talking to each other. For example,
10360-595: The Band . In January 1976, Mitchell received a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for the album The Hissing of Summer Lawns , though the 1976 Grammy for that category went to Linda Ronstadt . In early 1976, Mitchell traveled with friends who were driving cross country to Maine. Afterwards, she drove back to California alone and composed several songs during her journey which featured on her next album, 1976's Hejira . She stated that "This album
10508-512: The Beatles ' " Dear Prudence " (1968) and Led Zeppelin 's " Moby Dick " (1969). Tuning the lowest string one tone down, from E to D, allowed these musicians to acquire a heavier and darker sound than in standard tuning . Without needing to tune all strings (Standard D tuning), they could tune just one, in order to lower the key. Drop D is also a convenient tuning, because it expands the scale of an instrument by two semitones: D and D ♯ . In
10656-519: The Blue Horizon album, Mitchell is credited with backup vocals on the track " You've Got a Friend ". The songs she wrote during the months she took off for travel and life experience appeared on her next album, Blue , released in June 1971. Comparing Joni Mitchell's talent to his own, David Crosby said, "By the time she did Blue , she was past me and rushing toward the horizon". Blue was an almost instant critical and commercial success, peaking in
10804-577: The Roads". The album climbed to No. 13 on the Billboard Charts, reaching gold status three weeks after release, and received airplay from album-oriented FM rock stations. Yet "Coyote", backed with "Blue Motel Room", failed to chart on the Hot 100. Hejira "did not sell as briskly as Mitchell's earlier, more 'radio-friendly' albums, [but] its stature in her catalogue has grown over the years". Mitchell herself believes
10952-542: The US, but made No. 6 in the UK. Mitchell also included on Hits , for the first time on an album, her first recording, a version of "Urge for Going" which preceded Song to a Seagull but was previously released only as a B-side . Two years later, Mitchell released her final set of "original" new work before nearly a decade of other pursuits, 1998's Taming the Tiger . She promoted Tiger with
11100-490: The United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Scandinavia and then going back to the United States. A performance from the tour was videotaped and later released on home video (and later DVD) as Refuge of the Roads . As 1984 ended, Mitchell was writing new songs when she received a suggestion from Geffen that perhaps an outside producer with experience in the modern technical arenas that they wanted to explore might be
11248-459: The United Kingdom, the album premiered at No. 25 on the albums chart. Critically, it was better received than her 1980s work. This album was also Mitchell's first since Geffen Records was sold to MCA Inc. , meaning that Night Ride Home was her first album not to be initially distributed by WEA (now Warner Music Group ). To wider audiences, the real return to form for Mitchell came with 1994's Grammy -winning Turbulent Indigo . The recording of
11396-879: The aisle brandishing my daisies." Mitchell is both a Canadian and U.S. citizen. While living at the Verona apartments in Detroit's Cass Corridor , the couple regularly performed at area coffee houses, including the Chess Mate on Livernois, near Six Mile Road; the Alcove bar, near Wayne State University ; the Rathskeller, a restaurant on the campus of the University of Detroit ; and the Raven Gallery in Southfield . She began playing and composing songs in alternative guitar tunings taught to her by
11544-459: The album coincided with the end of Mitchell's marriage to musician Larry Klein after 12 years; Klein was also co-producer of the album. Indigo was seen as Mitchell's most accessible set of songs in years. Songs such as "Sex Kills", "Sunny Sunday", "Borderline" and "The Magdalene Laundries" mixed social commentary and guitar-focused melodies for "a startling comeback". The album won two Grammy awards, including Best Pop Album, and it coincided with
11692-446: The album to be unique. In 2006 she said, "I suppose a lot of people could have written a lot of my other songs, but I feel the songs on Hejira could only have come from me." In mid-1977, Mitchell began work on new recordings that became her first double studio album, Don Juan's Reckless Daughter . Close to completing her contract with Asylum Records, Mitchell felt that this album could be looser in feel than any album she had done in
11840-526: The apparent pitch shifts were not significantly different from pitch‐matching errors. When averaged, the remaining shifts followed the directions of Stevens's curves but were small (2% or less by frequency, i.e. not more than a semitone). Theories of pitch perception try to explain how the physical sound and specific physiology of the auditory system work together to yield the experience of pitch. In general, pitch perception theories can be divided into place coding and temporal coding . Place theory holds that
11988-477: The birth of her daughter in February 1965, Mitchell was playing gigs again around Yorkville, often with a friend, Vicky Taylor, and was beginning to sing original material for the first time, written with her unique open tunings. In March and April she found work at the Penny Farthing, a folk club in Toronto. There she met New York City-born American folk singer Charles Scott "Chuck" Mitchell, from Michigan . Chuck
12136-510: The chart performance of Dog Eat Dog , peaking at No. 45. In 1990, Mitchell, who by then rarely performed live, participated in Roger Waters ' The Wall Concert in Berlin . She performed the song " Goodbye Blue Sky " and was also one of the performers on the concert's final song " The Tide Is Turning " along with Waters, Cyndi Lauper , Bryan Adams , Van Morrison and Paul Carrack . Throughout
12284-527: The concert. It was her first tour in several years, and with Pastorius, jazz guitarist Pat Metheny , and other members of her band, Mitchell also performed songs from her other jazz-inspired albums. When the tour ended she began a year of work, turning the tapes from the Santa Barbara County Bowl show into a two-album set and a concert film, both to be called Shadows and Light . Her final release on Asylum Records and her second live double album, it
12432-507: The demo of "Can't Get Enough". Open-G tuning usually refers to D–G–D–G–B–D. The open G tuning variant G–G–D–G–B–D was used by Joni Mitchell for "Electricity", "For the Roses" and "Hunter (The Good Samaritan)". Truncating this tuning to G–D–G–B–D for his five-string guitar, Keith Richards uses this overtones-tuning on the Rolling Stones 's " Honky Tonk Women ", " Brown Sugar " and " Start Me Up ". The seven-string Russian guitar uses
12580-404: The fact is that it then wouldn't really be my music." Dog Eat Dog , released in October 1985, was only a moderate seller, reaching No. 63 on Billboard ' s Top Albums Chart, Mitchell's lowest chart position since her first album peaked at No. 189 almost eighteen years before. One of the songs on the album, "Tax Free", created controversy by lambasting " televangelists " and what she saw as
12728-454: The first half of 1990, Mitchell recorded songs that appeared on her next album. She delivered the final mixes for the new album to Geffen just before Christmas, after trying nearly a hundred different sequences for the songs. The album Night Ride Home was released in March 1991. In the United States, it premiered on Billboard ' s Top Albums chart at No. 68, moving up to No. 48 in its second week, and peaking at No. 41 in its sixth week. In
12876-433: The first time, many songs composed on piano, which became a hallmark of Mitchell's style in her most popular era. Her own version of " Woodstock ", slower than the cover by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young , was performed solo on a Wurlitzer electric piano . The album also included the already-familiar song "The Circle Game" and the environmental anthem " Big Yellow Taxi ", with its famous line, "they paved paradise and put up
13024-414: The first time. One unconventional teacher, Arthur Kratzmann , made an impact on her, stimulating her to write poetry; her first album includes a dedication to him. She dropped out of school in grade 12 (resuming her studies later) and hung out downtown with a rowdy set until she decided that she was getting too close to the criminal world. Mitchell wanted to play the guitar, but as her mother associated
13172-426: The following categories: Joni Mitchell developed a shorthand to specify guitar tunings: one letter naming the note of the open lowest string, followed by the relative fret (half-step) offsets between adjacent strings; in this format, the standard tuning is E55545. This scheme highlights pitch relationships and simplifies comparisons among different tuning schemes. String gauge refers to the thickness and diameter of
13320-525: The fretboard. This makes it simpler to translate chords. For the regular tunings, chords may be moved diagonally around the fretboard. The diagonal movement of chords is especially simple for the regular tunings that are repetitive, in which case chords can be moved vertically: Chords can be moved three strings up (or down) in major-thirds tuning, and chords can be moved two strings up (or down) in augmented -fourths tuning. Regular tunings thus appeal to new guitarists and also to jazz-guitarists, whose improvisation
13468-456: The fundamental. Whether or not the higher frequencies are integer multiples, they are collectively called the partials , referring to the different parts that make up the total spectrum. A sound or note of indefinite pitch is one that a listener finds impossible or relatively difficult to identify as to pitch. Sounds with indefinite pitch do not have harmonic spectra or have altered harmonic spectra—a characteristic known as inharmonicity . It
13616-655: The greatest songwriters ever", and AllMusic has stated, "Joni Mitchell may stand as the most important and influential female recording artist of the late 20th century." Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in Saskatoon and throughout western Canada, before moving on to the nightclubs of Toronto . She moved to the United States and began touring in 1965. Some of her original songs ("Urge for Going", " Chelsea Morning ", " Both Sides, Now ", " The Circle Game ") were recorded by other folk singers , allowing her to sign with Reprise Records and record her debut album, Song to
13764-561: The hand is in the first position. The open notes of the second (B) and third (G) strings are separated by four semitones (a major third ). This tuning pattern of (low) fourths, one major third, and one fourth was inherited by the guitar from its predecessor instrument, the viol . The irregular major third breaks the fingering patterns of scales and chords, so that guitarists have to memorize multiple chord shapes for each chord. Scales and chords are simplified by major thirds tuning and all-fourths tuning , which are regular tunings maintaining
13912-476: The highest open note to D or E; tuning down the open string from E to D or C avoids the risk of breaking strings, which is associated with tuning up strings. The open D tuning (D–A–D–F ♯ –A–D), also called "Vestapol" tuning, is a common open tuning used by European and American/Western guitarists working with alternative tunings. The Allman Brothers Band instrumental " Little Martha " used an open D tuning raised one half step, giving an open E♭ tuning with
14060-416: The highest sounding note), or the thickest string to thinnest, or the lowest frequency to the highest. This sometimes confuses beginner guitarists, since the highest-pitched string is referred to as the 1st string, and the lowest-pitched is the 6th string. Standard tuning defines the string pitches as E, A, D, G, B, and E, from the lowest pitch (low E 2 ) to the highest pitch (high E 4 ). Standard tuning
14208-651: The instrument with country music and disapproved of its hillbilly associations, she initially settled for the ukulele . Eventually she taught herself guitar from a Pete Seeger songbook. Polio had weakened her left hand, so she devised alternative tunings to compensate; she later used these tunings to create nonstandard approaches to harmony and structure in her songwriting. Mitchell started singing with her friends at bonfires around Waskesiu Lake , northwest of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan . She widened her repertoire to include her favourite performers, such as Édith Piaf and Miles Davis , at age 18. Her first paid performance
14356-467: The jazz-rock-folk collisions of Hejira . Mitchell also revived "Jericho", written years earlier (a version is found on her 1974 live album) but never recorded in a studio setting. The album was released in December 1977, receiving mixed reviews but selling relatively well, peaking at No. 25 in the US and going gold within three months. Mitchell wore blackface and a pimp outfit on the album cover, one of
14504-449: The live version, was also released as a single and did reasonably well (she released another version of the song in 2007). In January 1975, Court and Spark received four nominations for Grammy Awards, including Grammy Award for Album of the Year , for which Mitchell was the only woman nominated. She won only the Grammy Award for Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals . Mitchell went into
14652-435: The low and middle frequency ranges. Moreover, there is some evidence that some non-human primates lack auditory cortex responses to pitch despite having clear tonotopic maps in auditory cortex, showing that tonotopic place codes are not sufficient for pitch responses. Temporal theories offer an alternative that appeals to the temporal structure of action potentials, mostly the phase-lock of action potentials to frequencies in
14800-647: The mid-1980s, three alternative rock bands, King's X , Soundgarden and Melvins , influenced by Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath , made extensive use of drop D tuning. While playing power chords (a chord that includes the prime, fifth and octave) in standard tuning requires a player to use two or three fingers, drop D tuning needs just one, similar in technique to playing barre chords . This allowed them to use different methods of articulating power chords ( legato for example) and more importantly, it allowed guitarists to change chords faster. This new technique of playing power chords introduced by these early grunge bands
14948-427: The most common type of clarinet or trumpet , when playing a note written in their part as C, sounds a pitch that is called B ♭ on a non-transposing instrument like a violin (which indicates that at one time these wind instruments played at a standard pitch a tone lower than violin pitch). To refer to that pitch unambiguously, a musician calls it concert B ♭ , meaning, "the pitch that someone playing
15096-431: The most controversial moments of her career that has been widely criticised as racist . She called her blackface alter ego " Art Nouveau ", inspired by a black man who once complimented her while walking down an LA street. She wore blackface several more times throughout her career and has consistently defended her use of it as late as 2017. However, in 2024, the album cover art on streaming services and physical reissues
15244-406: The musical sense of high and low pitch is still unclear. There is evidence that humans do actually perceive that the source of a sound is slightly higher or lower in vertical space when the sound frequency is increased or reduced. In most cases, the pitch of complex sounds such as speech and musical notes corresponds very nearly to the repetition rate of periodic or nearly-periodic sounds, or to
15392-467: The next two decades, though the rupture of a brain aneurysm in 2015 led to a long period of recovery and therapy. A series of retrospective compilations were released over the time period, culminating in the Joni Mitchell Archives , a project to publish much of the unreleased material from her long career. She returned to public appearances in 2021, accepting several awards in person, including
15540-431: The nightclubs of Canada. She continued to play gigs as a folk musician on weekends at her college and at a local hotel. Around this time she took a $ 15-a-week job in a Calgary coffeehouse called The Depression Coffee House, "singing long tragic songs in a minor key". She sang at hootenannies and made appearances on local TV and radio shows in Calgary. In 1964, at the age of 20, she told her mother that she intended to be
15688-476: The note C. This overtone-series tuning was modified by Mick Ralphs , who used a high C note rather than the high G note for " Can't Get Enough " on Bad Company . Ralphs said, "It needs the open C to have that ring," and "it never really sounds right in standard tuning". Mick Ralphs' open C tuning was originally an open G tuning , which listed the initial six overtones of the G note, namely G–G–D–G–B–D; Ralphs used this open G tuning for "Hey Hey" and while writing
15836-402: The open G tuning D–G–B–D–G–B–D, which contains mostly major and minor thirds. Any kind of chordal tuning can be achieved, simply by using the notes in the chord and tuning the strings to those notes. For example, A sus4 has the notes A, D, E. By tuning the strings to only those notes, it creates a chordal A tuning. Bass players may omit the last two strings. Cross-note tunings include
15984-532: The open strings. C, E, E, E and other such tunings are common among lap-steel players such as Hawaiian slack-key guitarists and country guitarists, and are also sometimes applied to the regular guitar by bottleneck (a slide repurposed from a glass bottle) players striving to emulate these styles. A common C tuning, for example, is C–E–G–A–C–E, which provides open major and minor thirds, open major and minor sixths, fifths, and octaves. By contrast, most open major or open minor tunings provide only octaves, fifths, and either
16132-413: The orchestrated song "Paprika Plains", and wanted her to work with him. She began a collaboration with Mingus, who died before the project was completed in 1979. She finished the tracks, and the resulting album, Mingus , was released in June 1979, though it was poorly received in the press. Fans were confused over such a major change in Mitchell's overall sound, and though the album topped out at No. 17 on
16280-506: The output of the cochlea , as via auditory-nerve interspike-interval histograms. Some theories of pitch perception hold that pitch has inherent octave ambiguities, and therefore is best decomposed into a pitch chroma , a periodic value around the octave, like the note names in Western music—and a pitch height , which may be ambiguous, that indicates the octave the pitch is in. The just-noticeable difference (jnd) (the threshold at which
16428-646: The past. She invited Pastorius back, and he brought with him fellow members of jazz fusion pioneers Weather Report , including drummer Don Alias and saxophonist Wayne Shorter . Layered, atmospheric compositions such as "Overture/Cotton Avenue" featured more improvisatory collaboration, while "Paprika Plains" was a 16-minute epic that stretched the boundaries of pop, owing more to Mitchell's memories of childhood in Canada and her study of classical music. "Dreamland" and "The Tenth World", featuring Chaka Khan on backing vocals, were percussion-dominated tracks. Other songs continued
16576-420: The perception of pitch is determined by the place of maximum excitation on the basilar membrane . A place code, taking advantage of the tonotopy in the auditory system, must be in effect for the perception of high frequencies, since neurons have an upper limit on how fast they can phase-lock their action potentials . However, a purely place-based theory cannot account for the accuracy of pitch perception in
16724-408: The physical frequencies of the pure tones, and the combination tone at 200 Hz, corresponding to the repetition rate of the waveform. In a situation like this, the percept at 200 Hz is commonly referred to as the missing fundamental , which is often the greatest common divisor of the frequencies present. Pitch depends to a lesser degree on the sound pressure level (loudness, volume) of
16872-501: The playing of certain chords while simultaneously increase the difficulty of playing other chords. Some tunings are used for particular songs and may be named after the song's title. There are hundreds of these tunings, although many are slight variations of other alternate tunings. Several alternative tunings are used regularly by communities of guitarists who share a common musical tradition, such as American folk or Celtic folk music. The various alternative tunings have been grouped into
17020-466: The same intervallic relationships as open D. The English guitar used a repetitive open C tuning (with distinct open notes C–E–G–C–E–G) that approximated a major-thirds tuning . This tuning is evident in William Ackerman 's song "Townsend Shuffle", as well as by John Fahey for his tribute to Mississippi John Hurt . The C–C–G–C–E–G tuning uses some of the harmonic sequence (overtones) of
17168-423: The same musical interval between consecutive open string notes. Alternative ("alternate") tuning refers to any open string note arrangement other than standard tuning. These offer different kinds of deep or ringing sounds, chord voicings, and fingerings on the guitar. Alternative tunings are common in folk music . Alternative tunings change the fingering of common chords when playing the guitar, and this can ease
17316-424: The second (B) through fifth (A) strings being tuned in minor 3rds and second (e) following the low (E) string as the separation being tuned in 5ths, and creating as by a five- semitone interval (a perfect fourth ) allows the guitarist to play a chromatic scale with each of the four fingers of the fretting hand controlling one of the first four frets (index finger on fret 1, little finger on fret 4, etc.) only when
17464-529: The single, " You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio ", which peaked at No. 25 in the Billboard charts in February 1973. Court and Spark , released in January 1974, saw Mitchell begin the flirtation with jazz and jazz fusion that marked her experimental period ahead. Court and Spark went to No. 1 on the Cashbox Album Charts. The LP made Mitchell a widely popular act for perhaps the only time in her career, on
17612-404: The so-called Baroque pitch , has been set in the 20th century as A = 415 Hz—approximately an equal-tempered semitone lower than A440 to facilitate transposition. The Classical pitch can be set to either 427 Hz (about halfway between A415 and A440) or 430 Hz (also between A415 and A440 but slightly sharper than the quarter tone). And ensembles specializing in authentic performance set
17760-601: The songs " Voodoo Child (Slight Return) " and " Little Wing ") occasionally tune all their strings down by one semitone to obtain E♭ tuning . This makes the strings easier to bend when playing and with standard fingering results in a lower key. It also facilitates E shape fingerings when playing with horn instruments. Grunge band Nirvana also used this tuning extensively throughout their career, most significantly in their albums Bleach and In Utero . D Tuning , also called One Step Lower , Whole Step Down , Full Step or D Standard ,
17908-490: The sounds being assessed against sounds with pure tones (ones with periodic , sinusoidal waveforms). Complex and aperiodic sound waves can often be assigned a pitch by this method. According to the American National Standards Institute , pitch is the auditory attribute of sound allowing those sounds to be ordered on a scale from low to high. Since pitch is such a close proxy for frequency, it
18056-445: The story of the adoption to a tabloid magazine. By that time, Mitchell's daughter, renamed Kilauren Gibb, had already begun a search for her biological parents. Mitchell and her daughter met in 1997. After the reunion, Mitchell said that she lost interest in songwriting, and she later identified her daughter's birth and her inability to take care of her as the moment when her songwriting inspiration had really begun. A few weeks after
18204-416: The strength of popular tracks such as the rocker " Raised on Robbery ", which was released right before Christmas 1973, and " Help Me ", which was released in March of the following year, and became Mitchell's only Top 10 single when it peaked at No. 7 in the first week of June. " Free Man in Paris " was another hit single and staple in her catalog. While recording Court and Spark , Mitchell had tried to make
18352-399: The strings are tuned lower by the same interval , thus providing the same chord positions transposed to a lower key. Lower tunings are popular among rock and heavy metal bands. The reason for tuning down below the standard pitch is usually either to accommodate a singer's vocal range or to get a deeper/heavier sound or pitch. Common examples include: Rock guitarists (such as Jimi Hendrix on
18500-408: The strings or a subset. The tuning is named for the base chord when played open, typically a major chord, and all similar chords in the chromatic scale are played by barring all strings across a single fret. Open tunings are common in blues and folk music . These tunings are frequently used in the playing of slide and lap-slide ("Hawaiian") guitars, and Hawaiian slack key music. A musician who
18648-602: The studio in early 1975 to record acoustic demos of some songs that she had written since the Court and Spark tour. A few months later she recorded versions of the tunes with her band. Her musical interests were diverging from both the folk and the pop scene of the era, toward less structured, more jazz-inspired pieces, with a wider range of instruments. The new song cycle was released in November 1975 as The Hissing of Summer Lawns . On "The Jungle Line", she made an early effort at sampling
18796-441: The tension of the strings) and heavier strings for lower-pitched notes (to prevent string buzz and vibration). A dropped tuning is one of the categories of alternative tunings and the process starts with standard tuning and typically lowers the pitch of ("drops") one or more strings, almost always the lowest-pitched (E) string on the guitar. The drop D tuning is common in electric guitar and heavy metal music . The low E string
18944-416: The time of Blue , our pop stars never admitted these things." In its lyrics, the album was regarded as an inspired culmination of her early work, with depressed assessments of the world around her serving as counterpoint to exuberant expressions of romantic love (for example, in " California "). Mitchell later remarked, "At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on
19092-459: The title track "Both Sides, Now", two early hits transposed down to Mitchell's new dusky, soulful alto range. It received mostly strong reviews and motivated a short national tour, with Mitchell accompanied by a core band featuring her ex-husband Larry Klein on bass plus a local orchestra on each tour stop. Its success led to 2002's Travelogue , a collection of re-workings of her previous songs with lush orchestral accompaniments. Mitchell stated at
19240-489: The tone, especially at frequencies below 1,000 Hz and above 2,000 Hz. The pitch of lower tones gets lower as sound pressure increases. For instance, a tone of 200 Hz that is very loud seems one semitone lower in pitch than if it is just barely audible. Above 2,000 Hz, the pitch gets higher as the sound gets louder. These results were obtained in the pioneering works by S. Stevens and W. Snow. Later investigations, e.g. by A. Cohen, have shown that in most cases
19388-822: The top 20 of the Billboard albums chart in September and also hitting the British Top 3. The lushly produced " Carey " was the single at the time, but musically, other parts of Blue departed further from the sounds of Ladies of the Canyon . Simpler, rhythmic acoustic parts allowed a focus on Mitchell's voice and emotions ("All I Want", " A Case of You "), while others such as " Blue ", " River " and " The Last Time I Saw Richard " were sung to her rolling piano accompaniment. Her most confessional album, Mitchell later said of Blue , "I have, on occasion, sacrificed myself and my own emotional makeup, ... singing 'I'm selfish and I'm sad', for instance. We all suffer for our loneliness, but at
19536-399: The two tones are played simultaneously as the listener is then able to discern beat frequencies . The total number of perceptible pitch steps in the human hearing range is about 1,400; the total number of notes in the equal-tempered scale, from 16 to 16,000 Hz, is 120. The relative perception of pitch can be fooled, resulting in aural illusions . There are several of these, such as
19684-475: The west, the twelve-note chromatic scale is the most common method of organization, with equal temperament now the most widely used method of tuning that scale. In it, the pitch ratio between any two successive notes of the scale is exactly the twelfth root of two (or about 1.05946). In well-tempered systems (as used in the time of Johann Sebastian Bach , for example), different methods of musical tuning were used. In almost all of these systems interval of
19832-490: The world's last great smokers"), Mitchell believes that the changes in her voice that became noticeable in the 1990s were because of other problems, including vocal nodules, a compressed larynx, and the lingering effects of having had polio. In an interview in 2004, she denied that "my terrible habits" had anything to do with her more limited range, and pointed out that singers often lose the upper register when they pass fifty. In addition, she contended that her voice had acquired
19980-455: Was a great influence on many artists, such as Rage Against the Machine and Tool . The same drop D tuning then became common practice among alternative metal acts such as the band Helmet , who used the tuning a great deal throughout their career and would later influence much alternative metal and nu metal bands. There also exists double drop D tuning , in which both E strings are down-tuned
20128-504: Was also used for several songs on the Velvet Underground 's album The Velvet Underground & Nico . Metal band Megadeth has also been using this tuning since their album Dystopia to facilitate frontman Dave Mustaine 's age and voice after his battle with throat cancer. In standard tuning, there is an interval of a major third between the second and third strings, and all the other intervals are fourths. The irregularity has
20276-496: Was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002 . Mitchell produced or co-produced most of her albums and designed most of her own album covers, describing herself as a "painter derailed by circumstance". A critic of the music industry , she quit touring and released her 19th and last album of original songs in 2007. She gave occasional interviews and made appearances to speak on various causes over
20424-490: Was being managed by Elliot Roberts , who, after being urged by Buffy Sainte-Marie, had first seen her play in a Greenwich Village coffee house. He had a close business association with David Geffen . Roberts and Geffen were to have important influences on her career. Eventually she was signed to the Warners-affiliated Reprise label by talent scout Andy Wickham . Crosby convinced Reprise to let Mitchell record
20572-470: Was changed to a photo of Mitchell’s face seemingly inside the open mouth of a wolflike dog, an outtake from the 1985 photo sessions for the later album Dog Eat Dog . No announcement was made about the change nor any official reason given, and Mitchell has not commented on the matter. A few months after the release of Don Juan's Reckless Daughter , Mitchell was contacted by the esteemed jazz composer, bandleader and bassist Charles Mingus , who had heard
20720-645: Was from a Norwegian family that may have had some Sámi ancestry. Her mother was a teacher. Her father was a Royal Canadian Air Force flight lieutenant who instructed new pilots at RCAF Station Fort Macleod . During World War II , she moved with her parents to various bases in western Canada. After the war ended, her father worked as a grocer and her family moved to Saskatchewan , living in Maidstone and North Battleford . She later sang about her small-town upbringing in several of her songs, including " Song for Sharon ". Mitchell contracted polio at age nine and
20868-401: Was hospitalized for weeks. She also started smoking that year, but denies that smoking has affected her voice. She moved with her family to Saskatoon , which she considers her hometown, at age 11. Mitchell struggled at school; her main interest was painting. During this time she briefly studied classical piano. She focused on her creative talent and considered a singing or dancing career for
21016-511: Was immediately attracted to her and impressed by her performance, and he told her that he could get her steady work in the coffeehouses he knew in the United States. Mitchell left Canada for the first time in late April 1965. She travelled with Chuck Mitchell to the US, where they began playing music together. Joni, 21 years old, married Chuck in an official ceremony in his hometown in June 1965 and took his surname. She said, "I made my dress and bridesmaids' dresses. We had no money... I walked down
21164-484: Was impressed with her songwriting ability. He took "Urge for Going" to the popular folk artist Judy Collins , but she was not interested in the song at the time, so Rush recorded it himself. Country singer George Hamilton IV heard Rush performing it and recorded a hit country version. Other artists who recorded Mitchell's songs in the early years were Buffy Sainte-Marie ("The Circle Game"), Dave Van Ronk ("Both Sides Now"), and eventually Judy Collins ("Both Sides Now",
21312-469: Was on October 31, 1962, at a Saskatoon club that featured folk and jazz performers. Although she never performed jazz herself in those days, Mitchell and her friends sought out gigs by jazz musicians. Mitchell said, "My jazz background began with one of the early Lambert, Hendricks and Ross albums." That album, The Hottest New Group in Jazz , was hard to find in Canada, she says, "so I saved up and bought it at
21460-506: Was released in September 1980, and made it up to No. 38 on the Billboard charts. A single from the LP, "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?", Mitchell's duet with The Persuasions (her opening act for the tour), bubbled under on Billboard , just missing the Hot 100. For a year and a half, Mitchell worked on the tracks for her next album. While the album was being readied for release, her friend David Geffen , founder of Asylum Records , decided to start
21608-444: Was told " 'You can't sing that. That's my song.' And I named another one. 'You can't sing that. That's my song.' This is my introduction to territorial songs. I ran into it again in Toronto." She resolved to write her own songs. Mitchell discovered that she was pregnant by her Calgary ex-boyfriend Brad MacMath in late 1964. She later wrote, "[He] left me three months pregnant in an attic room with no money and winter coming on and only
21756-485: Was transposed to any of her tunings in real-time. It was around this time that critics also began to notice a real change in Mitchell's voice, particularly on her older songs; the singer later confirmed the change, explaining that "I'd go to hit a note and there was nothing there". While her more limited range and huskier vocals have sometimes been attributed to her smoking (she was described by journalist Robin Eggar as "one of
21904-415: Was written mostly while I was traveling in the car. That's why there were no piano songs ..." Hejira was arguably Mitchell's most experimental album so far, owing to her ongoing collaborations with jazz virtuoso bass guitarist Jaco Pastorius on several songs, namely the first single, " Coyote ", the atmospheric "Hejira", the disorienting, guitar-heavy "Black Crow", and the album's last song "Refuge of
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