Sue McNamara

I've been a rabid Joni Mitchell fan since I heard Blue on my favorite progressive rock radio station in 1973. I started playing guitar when I was about 20 and was completely underwhelmed with the Joni Mitchell Easy for Guitar songbook I had. So I gave up the guitar, thinking I was talentless, for many years. Then one day I was surfing the net and came upon the OLGA guitar tab site and discovered Howard Wright's tab for People's Parties. I retuned the guitar, played the barre chords for the intro, and PRESTO! Like my fairy godmother had just hit me with her wand, I was a guitar player!! It sounded awesome and I needed more. I connected with Howard online and I started trying to figure out more of Joni's songs. Then I wanted a place to put all my Joni songs, so through a number of connections and the benevolence of our own Les Irvin, I created the Joni Mitchell Guitar Page as the storehouse for everyone who ever wanted to play it "just like Joni does." Fear not, fellow bunglers. If I can do it, you can do it, too. I still have not mastered The Master's wrist on her more complicated shuffles, but I can now play a mean "Priest" where 5 years ago I thought it was impossible for any human to do so (Joni doesn't count because she's a Goddess)!!! Hope you enjoy this site as much as I do!! Share the Love...(and any new tunings you come across!)

My first stringed instrument was a ukelele, which I learned to play when I was nine years old. We always had music in our house when I was growing up. I became enchanted with the guitar on the island of Guam in 1966 when I saw a live performance at a children's party of two young women who played guitars and sang Puff The Magic Dragon. I saved up my paper-route money and bought myself a guitar! It was the songs of Peter, Paul and Mary that I learned first of all. Since I had nothing more than a book describing how to tune the guitar and basic guitar chords, and a couple of records by Peter, Paul and Mary, but no teacher, the ony way I could learn was by listening to the recordings over and over again, a learning technique I have never abandoned and one that has proven very useful in transcription work. Shortly after I got my guitar, my younger sister, Jennifer, also bought a guitar and we spent many hours playing duets together. The duets with Jennifer became trios when my older sister Kate returned home to live with us in 1967. It was Kate who introduced me to the music of Bob Dylan and the concept of open tunings. I discovered Joni in 1968 when I bought the Clouds album and the first thing I did was work out how to play Both Sides Now and The Gallery. Although Joni's music has always dominated my repertoire, I also enjoy playing songs by Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Donovan, Jonatha Brooke, Michael Hedges, Shawn Colvin, Sheryl Crowe, and Patty Larkin. I am especially fond of songs in alternate tunings and have done quite a number of transcriptions of Jonatha Brooke's songs which you can see on my personal page. I recently bought an electric guitar and VG-8 + GK-2A pickup and have been having a lot of fun exploring its possibilities. Although changing tunings has never been a problem for me, it's pretty amazing and quite nice to be able to switch tunings by turning a dial or pressing a few buttons.

I started playing guitar at age 7, and I've been playing for over 20 years now. I mostly taught myself by listening to songs and trying to work out the guitar parts. As well as playing acoustic and electric guitars, I also play some piano.

The first album I ever bought was "Help" by the Beatles. I slowly got to know the other Beatles albums, and I guess I did a lot of listening and playing along to Beatles songs in the early days! My musical tastes started to widen (thanks partly to the music my older brother Gordon would play me), and I started getting into people like Neil Young, Steely Dan and Joni Mitchell.

I started working out the guitar tunings that Joni uses about 7 years ago. I was already a big fan of her music, and albums like Hejira and Court and Spark were among my favourites, but for some reason I had never tried working out her guitar parts. Once I had figured out a couple of her tunings, I was hooked, and started a long quest to get to know all of her guitar tunings and to understand her unique and highly rhythmic guitar style.

As well as working out songs for fun, I have done some freelance guitar transcription work for Barnes Music in the UK, who produce guitar songbooks, and I also contributed some guitar material to the Warner Bros. songbook that accompanied Joni's "Taming the Tiger" album.

Other than Joni Mitchell, some of my favourite musicians are Steely Dan, The Beatles, Debussy, Jimi Hendrix, Thelonious Monk, Neil Young, Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares, Frank Zappa.