'Grace' - Jeff Buckley
- Created by: Cadence Dawn
- Created on: 16-01-17 18:54
View mindmap
- 'Grace' - Jeff Buckley
- Texture
- thickens towards the end especially in the coda
- synthesisers and strings help to vary the texture
- Context
- Folk music
- usually traditional music of a country
- often learned and performed by ear, songs are memorised and passed through generations
- started to die in the 20th century which lead to folk revival in the 1950s
- A combination of rock, pop, and folk made FOLK ROCK
- Jeff Buckley
- American singer and guitarist
- 'Grace' was his first and only album before he dies age 29
- Grace
- comes from the album Grace released in 1994
- other tracks on the album are, 'Hallelujah', 'Last Goodbye', 'Lilac wine', and 'Eternal Life'
- a rock ballad- rock song about love in a slow tempo
- Folk music
- Instruments
- guitars, bass guitar, synthesiser, strings and drum kit
- the guitars use 'Drop D tuning' - low E tuned down to D
- Guitars score printed on a tab to show the finger positions of each note
- the drums and guitar (playing rhythmic pattrns and broken chords) accompany Jeff throughout most of the spng
- the synthesisers and strings drop out in some places: they are used to add effects or to vary texture
- Use of Technology
- Modulation on the synthesise at the start of the song
- Distortion and flagging on the guitars, which helps intensify the sound in the coda
- Overdubbing on the guitar parts, which creates a thicker sound, the extra vocal parts in the bridge are also produced through overdubbing
- EQ in the final verse which is used to remove the lower frequencies of Jeff's voice
- Structure
- verse chorus form:
- Intro - instrumental
- Verse 1 - Voice
- Chorus 1 - Voice 'Wait in Fire'
- Intro - instrumental
- Verse 2 - voice
- Chorus 2 - Voice 'Wait in Fire'
- Bridge - Voice (vocalisation)
- Intro-instrumental
- Verse 3 - voice
- Coda - Voice (improv)
- Verse 3 - voice
- Intro-instrumental
- Bridge - Voice (vocalisation)
- Chorus 2 - Voice 'Wait in Fire'
- Verse 2 - voice
- Intro - instrumental
- Chorus 1 - Voice 'Wait in Fire'
- Verse 1 - Voice
- Intro - instrumental
- verse chorus form:
- Tonality
- E minor, although ambiguous- the intro focuses on the chord of D so the key of E minor only becomes clear halfway through the first verse
- Harmony
- unusual for a rock song - not the standard I-IV-V chord progressions
- many chords are chromatic and move in parallel motion(by semitone steps)
- some harmonies are very dissonant, particularly the chorus
- Melody
- vocal part has a improvised quality and a very wide range of over 2 octaves
- most vocal phrases at falling, reflecting the melancholy mood
- frequent ornamentation in the melody line, with glissandos (slides) between various notes
- Word Setting
- mostly syllabic (some long melismas, emphasising certain words, e.g. 'love' in verse 1 and 'fire' in the chorus)
- in the bridge there is a passage of vocalising - wordless singing - where Jeff uses a falsetto, technique of singing used for high notes
- Word Painting
- Verse 1 - 'cries' is set to falling 5th, sounds like crying
- Bridge - 'pain' and 'leave' are very high in register and sound fraught
- Verse 3 - 'slow' is set to a long note
- Coda - a very thick texture is built up for 'drown my name'
- Rhythm
- frequent syncopation in vocal melody, rhythmically very free, as well as bass line
- Cross rhythms are created through the use of two-against-three rhythms (quavers against dotted quavers)
- Metre
- 12/8 - compound metre, 4 dotted-crotchet beats per bar
- Tempo
- the bass drum plays 1 and 3, and the snare drum accents the backbeats (beats 2 and 4)
- Texture
Comments
No comments have yet been made