Anthology

Piano/Vocal/Chords

By Joni Mitchell

I was very disappointed in this book. I bought it to save myself some time charting out Joni's songs but they are not even in the correct keys and I ended up having to chart them out myself anyway. For instance, Both Sides Now, which she sings in G...

, is in C in this book and does not even contain the correct guitar chords transposed into C. Woodstock is missing the beautiful bluesy piano solos Joni plays and just has a generic melody, not to mention it is written here in G and she wrote it in Eb. Very, very disappointed that I wasted my money on this anthology. It would have been a great book if the songs were really her versions and she wrote them, so I have no idea why someone's very generic, very easy versions are in here. It does not say for Easy Piano or Easy Guitar. P/V/G books are supposed to be the correct versions.

The song selections are good but one thing lacking is the open tunings Joni uses on all her songs. She does not use standard tuning on any of her songs and it would have been great if each song showed which open tuning was used for it.

There are some great songs on here (River, Rainy Night House, Conversation, and My Old Man to name a few). But there are too many guitar radio hits included, and the transition between guitar and piano is damaging. Raised on a Robbery, Free Man in Paris, Coyote, Carey, and Big...

Yellow Taxi are some of the greatest victims here. Joni has so many great piano-based songs (Court and Spark, Blue, The Arrangement, The Last Time I Saw Richard, and Same Situation) it's a shame these titles weren't included. I'm sure hit songs like Help Me and California were included to increase the appeal of the collection, but the arrangements cannot help but dissappoint because they can be so sparse and unexciting, despite their great melodies. Still, this book will keep me busy while I try to create my own versions of the guitar-to-piano arrangements (I'll have to start with "A Case of You"!).

i was pleased with this book. my biggest disappointment is that her song "Blue" is not included. "River" and "Woodstock" are especially fun to play...a few of the pieces are unfamiliar to me, but overall a good buy.