This shows that Freddie was Queen

This is my OPINION.
I can see where Amir is coming from, even if he is not expressing it too well (and tending to wind people up as a result).
One of the key things that is relevant to this discussion is Musical Theory - the study of how chords, chord progressions, intervals, counterpoint etc. work and how they create moods, tensions, resolutions and all sorts of feelings in a piece of music.
This stuff is not easily learnt and takes a lot of study. Freddie passed Grade 5 on the piano, not theory, but I would imagine that a lot of theory would have been dealt with in his studies and picked up from his tutor. Of course learning the piano in a structured way also opens the door for the individual to explore  there own ideas based on their new knowledge.
Brian, John and Roger, on the other hand, are self taught on the guitar. Brian and John do not read music (which would make the understanding of theory very difficult) and as far as I know, neither does Roger (unless he learnt to read part lines when he was a choirboy, but, again no formal musical training regarding chords etc.).
Now, it's one thing to write a melody while bashing out a few basic major and minor chords while strumming a guitar or banging out block chords on a keyboard), quite another to structure a song with the full musical arsenal that Freddie had in his head with diminished, augmented and various inverted chords, suspensions and his classical influences).
To see the intricate differences between Freddie's and the others compositions maybe you do need to have studied music. From Amir's YouTube video he clearly has and that's why I think I can see his argument.
Freddie's compositions are clearly musically superior in both melody and chord structure and maybe, by the same token, Brian is better at rockier numbers that don't rely on musical sophistication.
Freddie also had a clear vision of where the band should go. He was the one who badgered Brain Roger about what Smile where doing wrong and about his ideas on presentation. The imagery from the early days came from Freddie's graphic art education, designing the crest, the initial Queen typeface, the gothic feel, even copying the Marlene Dietrich imagery for Queen 2 and the BR video (I mean, how gay is that).
And it is exactly the early days that caught the public's eye and made Queen huge. All the top 10 hits until AOBTD were penned by Freddie. It is fair to say that he was not just the lead singer but The Leader period (whatever the offical line may have been).
There is no doubting the contributions of the others but, certainly in the 70's you can detect a great dollop of Freddie's help in some of the other's arrangements.
For example, we will never know but I think Save Me absolutely reeks of Freddie's involvement in the arrangement and suggestions on maybe changing a chord here and there.
As Amir said, since Freddie's passing there have been no quality compositions from Brian or Roger. (I saw that Butterfly /Glitters bollocks on Fern the other day and it really is shocking that it should be played in earshot of anyone except Brian).
 There is no question that Brian is a very accomplished guitar player, Roger a stunning drummer and John a competent bassist. It's just that, from where Im standing Freddie was the musical lynchpin and probably guided the others.

JOHN was Queen, and I have proof. The surviving members were still able to make good music until he left the band in '97.
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Page one, 3rd post, first two words, I've already given this as proof.
it was ignored by amir, obviously.

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Emrabt: Yea really you convinced me, ive started to think that it was John deacon that was guiding Freddie how to sing and how to make songs....
+==================

I didn’t say that, but the queen sound comes from “queen”, and according to the fact that they have lost a lot of the sound since john left, johns studio work. More people = higher standard.

you’ve admitted that they sounded like queen up until JOHN LEFT, right?

no one but you had the queen sound, RIGHT?

it’s not because they were “thinking of Freddie”, a perfect example is Rogers song “old friends” ABOUT Freddie, just like “no one but you” but doesn’t have the queen sound.
without john, things just sound like solo work (cosmos rocks) with John it was still queen sounding.
Please explain that to me.

Freddie didn't invent the queen sound, but without him there wouldn't be "queen" the band.

emrabt wrote: JOHN was Queen, and I have proof.  The surviving members were still able to make good music until he left the band in '97.

==========================

Page one, 3rd post, first two words, I've already given this proof.

it was ignored by amir obviously.

lol,  are you serious?...listen,  I love John and he did play an important role in Queen.  Wrote some great songs, a very good bass player and played a key role behind the scenes,  but let's not try and be somehow smarter than the rest of the world and say John was the true genius of Queen. ... Innuendo is considered one of Queen's best albums, and what did john write?...did he even write a song on the entire album?....Made in Heaven was a  decent album,  but it was Brian's work that stands out, and maybe roger, also freddie's vocals are strong on most songs.....  John wasn't that involved with much of anything.  What did John do on the song  No One but You?...Brian wrote it and it was a nice duet with roger.  john didn't do much on the bass.   Of course he was Important,  but even if he stayed the queen machine was fininshed.   Actually freddie was more Involved with MIH than John was....He wrote most of the album.  some amazing vocal performaces to.  As a writer and bass player John had very little impact on Innuendo and Made In heaven.

lol, are you serious?
=================
i'm talking to amir from amir and max, what do u think?

my point was clear, amir said freddie was queen, but then said No one but you was also queen, so i was pointing out it makes DEACON queen and not freddie.

splicksplack wrote: This is my OPINION.
I can see where Amir is coming from, even if he is not expressing it too well (and tending to wind people up as a result).
One of the key things that is relevant to this discussion is Musical Theory - the study of how chords, chord progressions, intervals, counterpoint etc. work and how they create moods, tensions, resolutions and all sorts of feelings in a piece of music.
This stuff is not easily learnt and takes a lot of study. Freddie passed Grade 5 on the piano, not theory, but I would imagine that a lot of theory would have been dealt with in his studies and picked up from his tutor. Of course learning the piano in a structured way also opens the door for the individual to explore  there own ideas based on their new knowledge.
Brian, John and Roger, on the other hand, are self taught on the guitar. Brian and John do not read music (which would make the understanding of theory very difficult) and as far as I know, neither does Roger (unless he learnt to read part lines when he was a choirboy, but, again no formal musical training regarding chords etc.).
Now, it's one thing to write a melody while bashing out a few basic major and minor chords while strumming a guitar or banging out block chords on a keyboard), quite another to structure a song with the full musical arsenal that Freddie had in his head with diminished, augmented and various inverted chords, suspensions and his classical influences).
To see the intricate differences between Freddie's and the others compositions maybe you do need to have studied music. From Amir's YouTube video he clearly has and that's why I think I can see his argument.
Freddie's compositions are clearly musically superior in both melody and chord structure and maybe, by the same token, Brian is better at rockier numbers that don't rely on musical sophistication.
Freddie also had a clear vision of where the band should go. He was the one who badgered Brain Roger about what Smile where doing wrong and about his ideas on presentation. The imagery from the early days came from Freddie's graphic art education, designing the crest, the initial Queen typeface, the gothic feel, even copying the Marlene Dietrich imagery for Queen 2 and the BR video (I mean, how gay is that).
And it is exactly the early days that caught the public's eye and made Queen huge. All the top 10 hits until AOBTD were penned by Freddie. It is fair to say that he was not just the lead singer but The Leader period (whatever the offical line may have been).
There is no doubting the contributions of the others but, certainly in the 70's you can detect a great dollop of Freddie's help in some of the other's arrangements.
For example, we will never know but I think Save Me absolutely reeks of Freddie's involvement in the arrangement and suggestions on maybe changing a chord here and there.
As Amir said, since Freddie's passing there have been no quality compositions from Brian or Roger. (I saw that Butterfly /Glitters bollocks on Fern the other day and it really is shocking that it should be played in earshot of anyone except Brian).
 There is no question that Brian is a very accomplished guitar player, Roger a stunning drummer and John a competent bassist. It's just that, from where Im standing Freddie was the musical lynchpin and probably guided the others.

I agree with a lot of you're points...it doesn't take a genius to see that freddie was the man on the first 8 albums.....but one point i believe you were wrong.  Brian studied piano....i think he went even further than freddie if i'm not mistaken.   like sir paul said....you could tell that freddie and Brian had real musical talent.  funny he didn't mention John and Roger.

Thanks for that Mike. I just seem to remember someone saying in an interview (maybe Brian himself) that he couldn't read music. The fan club says "At the age of five, Brian's parents enrolled him in piano lessons. Brian hated those lessons-he had to practice on Saturday when he would rather be out playing." and "At the age of six, Harold decided that Brian was old enough to play the ukulele. Brian showed amazing aptitude and soon wanted to take up the guitar."  That leads me to believe that he didn't have anywhere near the same musical education that Freddie had and certainly didn't do any music exams. I'm not saying that means he can't write or arrange. He obviously can. I just mean that the knowledge available to draw from is more limited than Freddie's, and that is where I believe Freddie helped the other members. Actually the one I think is least helped by Freddie it's Roger. His stuff is quite unique.

RE: splickspack's post
"Freddie also had a clear vision of where the band should go."

yeah, you have his letter to elektra's jack holzman, speaking on the band's behalf. he sounds so much like a mother hen looking after her brood, letting everyone know he's proud of them :D
ian hunter talked about fred fretting indignantly, "why don't they get it?!" after a particular american crowd didn't take to them (probably the oddity of precious stage banter following good, heavy rock.) he remembers fred's absolutely convinced Queen will be big when nobody saw it (even ratty.)
sure they were all competent musicians - hungry, precocious (as brian loves to say) young men, but the biz was kicking their head in at every corner. (progarchive gave me a taste with quite a few oldies' lifelong disdain of Queen as a joke; they're scathing enough to make the music press's Queen-hate a mere pissy grudge!)
so fred was really a big cheerleader for band morale, whipping their mental game into shape - this may explain why even if 17yo rog sounded prime-time ready while fred's wreckage demo was amateur shit, Smile took to the flashy, self-appointed "muse": his entrepreneurship.
Startups have to succeed on absorbing every tool of competitiveness mad fast (we have fred's progress as vocalist/writer as proof...in hindsight:P) he's akin to a ceo headhunting for top talents to staff out the important departments, who stepped back appropriately to let the top guns of their respective fields do their bidding (and this explains why he was allowed that - mock horror - hideous mustache, or some1 as vanilla as deaky accepting "he's who he is, always been that way":P)
in principle they're all co-founders sharing equal stock in the company (as any1 of them would settle for less:D), so when the profits roll in the power dynamics distributed themselves accordingly (look at john's surge in confidence/authority after AOBTD lol.) it's only when the now prosperous, well-oiled machine of the corporation came into crises again (pre-Live Aid, terminal illness), the "mastermind" among the co-founders had to step up to the plate and strategize the operation through to next quarter.

(and it's quite obvious his caretaking of john - like jumping to his
defense with something flippant on '89 BBC interview when the host sorta
bullied tongue tied, less starry/forward deaky a bit. deacon does bounce back to his credit, without further hand holding.)

a bit digression...i guess it all sorta makes sense of what brian/rog are doing with Queen name and invoking fred at every turn, even if it's perverse to outsiders. So many bits and pieces suggest building Queen into something grand was fred's life's work (sniff.) from letting himself used as "figurehead" to denying he's more than 25% to not ruffle any feather, the important thing was the Dream, Queen that's larger than ANY of them individually. it must survive (leave that u2 in the dust! :P) using whatever tool at their disposal.

splicksplack wrote: This is my OPINION.
I can see where Amir is coming from, even if he is not expressing it too well (and tending to wind people up as a result).
One of the key things that is relevant to this discussion is Musical Theory - the study of how chords, chord progressions, intervals, counterpoint etc. work and how they create moods, tensions, resolutions and all sorts of feelings in a piece of music.
This stuff is not easily learnt and takes a lot of study. Freddie passed Grade 5 on the piano, not theory, but I would imagine that a lot of theory would have been dealt with in his studies and picked up from his tutor. Of course learning the piano in a structured way also opens the door for the individual to explore  there own ideas based on their new knowledge.
Brian, John and Roger, on the other hand, are self taught on the guitar. Brian and John do not read music (which would make the understanding of theory very difficult) and as far as I know, neither does Roger (unless he learnt to read part lines when he was a choirboy, but, again no formal musical training regarding chords etc.).
Now, it's one thing to write a melody while bashing out a few basic major and minor chords while strumming a guitar or banging out block chords on a keyboard), quite another to structure a song with the full musical arsenal that Freddie had in his head with diminished, augmented and various inverted chords, suspensions and his classical influences).
To see the intricate differences between Freddie's and the others compositions maybe you do need to have studied music. From Amir's YouTube video he clearly has and that's why I think I can see his argument.
Freddie's compositions are clearly musically superior in both melody and chord structure and maybe, by the same token, Brian is better at rockier numbers that don't rely on musical sophistication.
Freddie also had a clear vision of where the band should go. He was the one who badgered Brain Roger about what Smile where doing wrong and about his ideas on presentation. The imagery from the early days came from Freddie's graphic art education, designing the crest, the initial Queen typeface, the gothic feel, even copying the Marlene Dietrich imagery for Queen 2 and the BR video (I mean, how gay is that).
And it is exactly the early days that caught the public's eye and made Queen huge. All the top 10 hits until AOBTD were penned by Freddie. It is fair to say that he was not just the lead singer but The Leader period (whatever the offical line may have been).
There is no doubting the contributions of the others but, certainly in the 70's you can detect a great dollop of Freddie's help in some of the other's arrangements.
For example, we will never know but I think Save Me absolutely reeks of Freddie's involvement in the arrangement and suggestions on maybe changing a chord here and there.
As Amir said, since Freddie's passing there have been no quality compositions from Brian or Roger. (I saw that Butterfly /Glitters bollocks on Fern the other day and it really is shocking that it should be played in earshot of anyone except Brian).
 There is no question that Brian is a very accomplished guitar player, Roger a stunning drummer and John a competent bassist. It's just that, from where Im standing Freddie was the musical lynchpin and probably guided the others.
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Was freddie taking piano lessons? I always thought that he was selftaught and couldnt read notes? Anyways the thing is , i have not read a single thing regarding music. Ive learned everything by myself. I learned how chords are positioned and how they are connected by just playing with it , figureing it out myself. I also learned that you need to go places thats not that predicted, makes the song much more interesting.

Like you have to see the song like an story from an begining to an end. I like to just go somewhere with my chords then somehow figure out how to make it back to the original melodies so it all can make sense.

But KEY is to have a musical memory i call it. You have to have an human "RAM" so to say when you create good stuff. Cause then you can come up with the whole song in your head. You can continue your writing of melodies for a long period of time if you have good memory. If you have short memory , it would almost always result in predictible melodies ,short loopy melodies or that you would just give up cause your not going anywhere and you get bored.

I think Freddie had huge memory hence why he could write those complex stuff cause he had the memory to continue building on his ideas and not get insufficient memory.

It is widely known and acknowledged that Freddie Mercury passed Grade 5 of the Associated Royal Schools of Music practical piano Grade 5 exam. That would have have been impossible without being able to read music.

splicksplack wrote: It is widely known and acknowledged that Freddie Mercury passed Grade 5 of the Associated Royal Schools of Music practical piano Grade 5 exam. That would have have been impossible without being able to read music.

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Alright didnt know that but still you dont have to read anything to become a musician. Actually its almost the other way around. Music isnt something you can just read to become, its all about innerfeelings that comes out in form of notes. So one could read music his whole life and still couldnt produce something significant.

Now you can always learn to play an instrument , but thats not an true musician , a true musician is the one who can write his own songs as well as playing the instrument. Those are two separate things.

But you are right , there arent many people who see the difference between freddies writng and others. You have to have a sense for it to actually see in what ways freddies compositions are truely superior than others.

I fully agree that you don't have to read music to write songs and "be a musician". However, the study of theory makes it a whole lot easier. You can bang away at the piano for ages before you come across something that sounds good or means something to you. But if you have studied music theory you will have a good idea of how to quickly achieve what you want to put across. You can also listen to other peoples music and suggest, for example, a chord change or a different bass note that can totally enhance a song or even change it's whole emotion. This is what I believe has been one of Freddie's greatest contributions.

Thing is , not everyone know what they want to put across. Those stuff usually just comes from inside , at least for me, i play depending on how i feel. I dont think you can just matematically throw out some cords and expect it to sound good. You have to put the chords down according to feelings, emotions.

Even though Freddie went and learned to play in musical school i still dont think that was the reason he was so good. He was soo good cause he was pure emotions, he wrote off his emotions.

Ultimately its all about emotions and if you cant convert your emotions into melodies then no school in the world can help you.

Yes. But if you have the emotions and feelings within,  then the knowledge of how harmony works and the relationship between the notes, then that will enable you to express those emotions on, for example, a piano, a lot quicker and more easily, rather than just playing away until something sounds right.
All the great composers from Bach right up to R Vaughn Williams (who wrote extremely emotional music) fully understood musical theory. Their music follows Western musical harmony theory as it is still taught today. Also, of course Freddie's favourite Chopin.