Without video it might have been impossible to recreate her unusual technique.
Programming has been this weird mix where I would see a simple problem. Say a fibonacci sequence. Something I could do in my sleep.
I would look at it. Understand that I can solve this in seconds. Then it would take me a week to muddle through it, badly.
So I know how to program just fine, but I somehow I can't actually do it. So it's been relearning things I think I know how to do.
The saving grace is people would often ask how to approach a difficult problem and I could still quickly figure out what the issue is, and what approach to take to resolve it. So I was very helpful to others, but I couldn't do the work I suggested.
Weird stuff.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/583/itll-make-sense-when-yo...
What is interesting is he is able to analyze why he has difficulty reading a clock. (As he explains, it's a surprisingly difficult problem.)
Fascinating and a bit heartbreaking. I'm happy to hear you're coping and recovering. Best of luck!
One minute I'm solving the hardest problems a company has. Next I can't remember where I'm working, Resolves itself in a few minutes, but leaves me exhausted for a couple hours. Scares the crap out of people.
[1] example: knowing what a square root is, and all the common roots, but not knowing Newtons method or any trick for finding them.
Then you should remember, if you practiced an hour everyday, it took you less than a month to learn to play guitar and less than a few to be proficient (especially with folk music as opposed to classical or jazz). Guitar is among the easiest instruments to learn. What is exceptional about Mitchell is that she probably lost fine motor control entirely, and no doubt with great effort and determination, created new neural pathways in her brain in order to duplicate the fine motor control she once had. Learning to play guitar is not all that impressive, but reconfiguring the brain to bypass permanent brain damage truly is.
Playing at Joni Mitchell's level with all of her alternate tunings is something that fewer than 0.01% of guitar players will ever achieve regardless of the hours invested.
Again, no disrespect to the artist, but Joni Mitchell is not Eddie Van Halen or Jerry Garcia or Pat Metheny. She is a folk artist that plays guitar, not a guitar player in the sense of Steve Vai or Carlos Santana. Mitchell's guitar is her accompaniment; her instrument is her voice.
No matter how the guitar is tuned, it would not make composition more difficult, and it could be argued, because of the limiting nature of alternate tunings, that it is easier to compose in alternate tunings.
But this is beside the point. I'm not even sure Mitchell often uses alternate tunings, but if she does, it is likely one of two or both drop D or open G, which are used for the lower bottom note to give more bass, but also to make songs in those keys much easier to play.
What I suspect is that Mitchell uses standard tuning most often, and if she needs to transpose to a different key, she'll use a capo. I also suspect she composes, like nearly all folk music, using I-IV and I-IV-V progressions and in the keys of E, F, C, Am, G, or D, if the capo was actually at the nut (meaning, she might finger a song in D, but because the capo is on the 3rd fret, technically the song is in the key of F).
I haven't listened to enough of Mitchell's catalog to say unequivocally, but I suspect the music itself is not necessarily what is original or so compelling about her work, but instead her poetries and rhythms are what makes her stand out among folk artists.
And just because we like something doesn't mean we need to invent reasons why something is the best. That is more or less tribalism and kind of ridiculous.