If you have ever tried to learn one of Joni Mitchell’s early songs, you know the feeling: you look at the music, you watch her play on YouTube, position your fingers, and think, “Wait… how is she doing this?” Her guitar work from those formative years sounds like nothing else—orchestral, harp-like, graceful and wonderfully unique. It’s the kind of playing that makes you wonder if she’s got extra fingers hidden somewhere.

Here is the beautiful irony: Joni’s revolutionary guitar style was born from failure. She tried to copy someone else’s technique, couldn’t do it, and in that struggle, she created something entirely her own. And it all started with a folk legend named Elizabeth Cotten.

The Elizabeth Cotten Influence: A Left-Handed Legend

Before we dive into Joni’s journey, let’s talk about Elizabeth Cotten—because understanding her is key to understanding where Joni was trying to go.

 

 

Elizabeth Cotten was a self-taught guitarist who played left-handed on a right-handed guitar without restringing it. This meant her bass strings were on the bottom and her treble strings were on top—the complete opposite of how most people play. The result? A distinctive fingerpicking style that created a bass line and melody simultaneously, with the thumb handling melody notes on the higher strings and the fingers plucking bass notes on the lower strings.

Her most famous song, “Freight Train,” showcases this beautifully. If you’ve ever heard it, you know that hypnotic, rolling quality—like two guitarists playing at once. It’s mesmerizing, deceptively simple-sounding, and difficult to replicate, according to Joni.

In the folk revival of the 1950s and 60s, Cotten’s style became legendary. Pete Seeger championed her work, and her recordings circulated among young folk musicians who were hungry to learn from the masters. One of those young musicians was a girl from Saskatchewan named Roberta Joan Anderson—soon to be known as Joni Mitchell.

Joni’s Attempt: “I Went Straight to the Cotten Picking”

Picture young Joni in the early 1960s, guitar in hand, trying to unlock the secrets of the folk music she loved. Like many aspiring guitarists of her generation, she turned to the recordings that Pete Seeger had made popular, which featured Elizabeth Cotten’s distinctive style.

In a 1996 interview with Acoustic Guitar magazine, Joni was refreshingly honest about her early attempts: “I went straight to the Cotten picking… I couldn’t do that, so I ended up playing mostly the sixth string but banging it into the fifth string.”

Think about what she’s describing here. She’s trying to learn “Cotten picking”—that simultaneous bass-and-melody technique that made Elizabeth Cotten’s playing so special. But it wasn’t working.

For most people, this would be the moment to give up, or at least to move on to something easier. But Joni did something different: she kept going, and this time on her own terms.

The Adaptation: When Limitation Becomes Innovation

Now here is where the story gets really interesting—and really instructive for anyone learning Joni’s guitar style.

Joni described her early guitar efforts as attempting “Cotten picking,” but she had to adapt it because she simply couldn’t play it the standard way. Instead of the intricate fingerpicking patterns Cotten used, Joni found herself “playing mostly the sixth string but banging it into the fifth string.” It wasn’t what she intended, but it created a sound—her sound.

There was another factor at play, too: Joni had contracted polio as a child, which left her with weakened hands. This physical limitation made the already-difficult Cotten technique even more challenging. What might have been a devastating obstacle became, instead, a catalyst for innovation.

When you can’t play something the “right” way, you have two choices: quit, or find your own way. Joni chose the latter.

This is something worth remembering when you’re struggling with one of her songs. That unusual chord voicing that seems impossible? That strange tuning that doesn’t make sense? It might have started as Joni working around a limitation, finding a way to create the sound in her head even if her hands couldn’t do what someone else’s hands could do.

The Innovation: 60+ Tunings and an Orchestral Vision

Rather than eventually mastering Elizabeth Cotten’s exact technique, Joni Mitchell went in a completely different direction. Additionally, she began experimenting with alternate tunings—lots of them. Over her career, she would use more than 60 different tunings, each one opening up new possibilities.

This is where her “failure” to copy Cotten became her greatest success. Instead of the traditional fingerpicking patterns that Cotten used, Joni developed what she called a more “orchestral” approach. Her guitar didn’t sound like a guitar playing bass and melody—it sounded like a harp, or a dulcimer, or sometimes like an entire string section.

Those alternate tunings allowed her to create chord voicings that would be impossible in standard tuning. They let her play open strings that rang sympathetically with fretted notes, creating that shimmering, layered sound that defines songs like “Chelsea Morning,” “The Circle Game,” and “Both Sides Now.”

The Lesson: Do it once it’s a mistake – more than once, now it’s a style.

When you’re learning Joni’s early songs, remember this story. That strange tuning in “This Flight Tonight”? That unusual chord progression in “Marcie”? Those aren’t arbitrary choices—they are the result of Joni’s unique journey.

Elizabeth Cotten was undoubtedly an influence, and an important one. She showed that fingerpicking could be both rhythmic and melodic. But Joni’s inability to emulate Cotten exactly pushed her to develop her own approach. Fun, huh?

So the next time you’re struggling with one of Joni’s songs, or the next time you can’t quite nail a technique you’re trying to learn, remember that sometimes the best thing that can happen to an artist is failing to be someone else. It forces you to become yourself instead.

Have fun and keep learning my Friend!

Avigail