B^b-B^b-D^b-F-A-B^b

• OVERVIEW •

Deep-sided tuning used by Joni Mitchell for Black Crow, track seven of her 1976 Hejira album – surely among the funkiest drum-less songs of all time (…just the trio of Joni, Jaco Pastorius on bass, and Larry Carlton on electric). Much of the percussive spice instead comes from her own low end, which features a ‘slack thwack‘ adjacent octave (on 6>5str).

 

The notes form a min. 7th arpeggio, ordered (ignoring octave jumps) in straightforward ascending sequence: as 1-(1)-b3-5-b7-(1). Similarly, you could view it as a ‘Bb drone + D^bmaj chord’ (laid out on 6-5-1str & 4-3-2str respectively). I’d usually say be delicate with the tension differentials (e.g. 6 vs. 5str) – but actually, just strum hard and embrace the chaos they bring – it worked for Joni. Try moving a 6-5-4str barre vertically (=up-and-down the neck), in the manner of the track…

Pattern: 12>3>4>3>2

Harmony: Bbmin7 | 1-1-b3-5-b7-1

• TUNING TONES •

• SOUNDS •

Joni recounts how the impulse for the song came directly from observing a black crow diving for shiny objects (“a weakness I can understand”). Lyrics detail her multi-step trips across British Columbia, required to reach her holiday home on the rugged Sunshine Coast. In a 2006 Ottawa Citizen interview, she recounts how the song is “another lament about travel, but this time about the difficulty of leaving” – with the journey itself being described in near-literal sequence (“I took a ferry to the highway, then I drove to a pontoon plane, I took a plane to a taxi, and a taxi to a train”).

 

Her poetic wanderlust is balanced by a distinctively choppy, funk-inclined steel-string groove, opening up a world of space for the smoother timbres of the electrified instruments. This is a real case of ‘playing the lyrics, not just the melody’: aside from Joni’s mellifluous vocal evocations, I can’t help but feel the crow’s glide in Jaco’s ‘floating’ bass harmonics – and also in Larry’s long, high bends, which almost seem to ‘paint’ the bird’s flight through the air. Sounds like they’re all having a divine time…

 

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• Black Crow (album) – Joni Mitchell (1976):

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“I took the ferry to the highway,
Then I drove to a pontoon plane,
I took a plane to a taxi,
And a taxi to a train,
I’ve been traveling so long,
How am I ever gonna know my home?”

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Joni also recorded the song on other occasions – notably during her 1979 Mingus tour, as captured on the 1980 Shadows & Light live album, featuring an all-star band of Joni, Jaco, Pat Metheny on guitar, Michael Brecker on sax, Lyle Mays on keys, and Don Alias on congas & percussion. There’s also a fantastic acoustic take from the 1976 Rolling Thunder Revue tour (see Coyote tuning) – seemingly the song’s first performance.

 

Many other artists have covered the track with imagination too – including Cassandra Wilson in 1993, Richard Thompson in 2000, and Diana Krall in 2004 (Krall also lives just across the Georgia Strait, and can “relate entirely to the travel difficulties and the rugged terrain it describes”). Giulia Galliani MAG Collective’s continue this tradition into the 21st century with their sultry, jazzy, jungle-laden rendition.

 

(Its unique groove also directly inspired the creation of kd lang’s 1992 hit Constant Craving. Lang “hired a little place in Vancouver to write songs. I’d been listening to Black Crow…and said to Ben [Mink], my songwriting partner: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could do a song with similar, flowing open chords?'”)

 

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• Black Crow (first performance) – Joni Mitchell (1976):

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“In search of love, and music,
My whole life has been,
Illumination, corruption,
And diving, diving, diving, diving,
Diving down to pick up on, every shiny thing,
Just like that black crow flying,

In a blue sky…”

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• NUMBERS •

	6str	5str	4str	3str	2str	1str
Note	Bb	Bb	Db	F	Ab	Bb
Alteration	-6	+1	-1	-2	-3	-6
Tension (%)	-50	+12	-11	-21	-29	-50
Freq. (Hz)	58	117	139	175	208	233
Pattern (>)	12	3	4	3	2	–
Semitones	0	12	15	19	22	24
Intervals	1	1	b3	5	b7	1

• See my Tunings Megatable for further such nerdery: more numbers, intervallic relations, comparative methods, etc. And to any genuine vibratory scientists reading: please critique my DIY analysis!

• RELATED •

—Associated tunings: proximities of shape, concept, context, etc…

• Zigzag Thirds (Min): another ascent-ordered arpeggio
• Coyote: more imaginative reconfiguration from Joni
• Haja’s Bb: superlow island tuning with shuffled tensions

• MORE INFO •

—Further learnings: sources, readings, lessons, other onward links…

• Joni’s tunings: As ever, the purpose of all this isn’t really to teach specific tunings – but to remind us that we can take a ‘step back’ in our creative process, making deliberate choices about the natural colours of our tuning patterns as well as the chords and melodies we set to them. Joni’s creative approach embodies this better than virtually anyone else’s – read more about how she winds the pegs in my article Stringed canvas: Joni Mitchell’s musico-visual imagination (“…after all, what painter would stick to the same six colour pots, when a near-infinite selection lie within arm’s reach?”)
• Black crows: learn about the remarkable intelligence and varied learning skills of the American crow (corvus brachyrhynchos) in a National Geographic feature (“researchers donned masks and, while holding dead, taxidermied crows, laid out food in areas frequented by crows in Washington State. Almost universally, the crows responded by scolding the people – and even alerting other crows in the vicinity. When the researchers returned weeks later wearing the same masks, but empty-handed, the crows continued to harass them…”) – and also check out the Cornell Ornithology lab’s All About Birds overview and Know the Crow video lecture (“American Crows are very social, sometimes forming flocks in the thousands. Inquisitive and sometimes mischievous, crows…are also aggressive, and often chase away larger birds including hawks, owls, and herons…”)

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Header image: a black crow flying in a blue blue sky