MusicRadar column on “Lilac Wine” by Jeff Buckley

My latest MusicRadar assignment was to pick something from Jeff Buckley’s Grace to write about. I chose the weird old showtune. The column was mainly an excuse to meditate on the difference between classical timekeeping (expressive, rubato) and pop/rock timekeeping (metronomic and steady). I also got into Buckley’s complex gender presentation.

Improvising over secondary dominants

This week in aural skills we are improvising sung countermelodies over various chord progressions. The goal is to help the students feel the voice leading, the chromatic alterations and so on. This is especially important for playing over secondary dominants or “applied chords” as classical theory folks call them. I won’t explain these chords in …