Jeff Buckley - Musical Style

Musical Style

Buckley's voice was a particularly distinguished aspect of his music. He possessed a tenor vocal range, he had a vocal range of between three and a half to four octaves. Buckley made full use of this range in his performance, particularly in the songs from Grace, and reached peaks of high E in the tenor range at the culmination of "Grace" and "So Real". These high notes were unusual for a rock musician in that he sung them with his head voice, rather than in a falsetto, and that he sung them for sustained periods. "Corpus Christi Carol" was sung entirely in a high falsetto. The pitch and volume of his singing was also highly variable, as songs such as "Mojo Pin" and "Dream Brother" began with mid-range quieter vocals before reaching louder, higher peaks near the ending of the songs.

Buckley played guitar in a variety of styles ranging from the distorted rock of "Sky is a Landfill", to the jazz of "Strange Fruit", the country styling of "Lost Highway", and the guitar picking style in "Hallelujah". He occasionally used slide guitar in live performances as a solo act and used a slide for the introduction of "Last Goodbye" when playing with a full band. His songs were written in various guitar tunings which, apart from the EADGBE standard tuning, included Drop D tuning and an Open G tuning. His guitar playing style varied from highly melodic songs, such as "Twelfth of Never", to more percussive ones, such as "New Year's Prayer".