Sheer Heart Attack song Speeded up?

As they always played live it in D major, i was wondering if anyone had any backstory on if the studio version was sped up?

Great question.

It wouldn't surprise me. Brian played around with tape speed from day one to the end, from the guitar orchestras in Son And Daughter to the overall playback of No-One But You.

Page pulled the same tricks all over the Zeppelin catalogue too. It's probably where he got the ideas from.

The drum roll always sounded like warped tape wound forward. Being how it was their sort of answer back to punk maybe they were mocking the music style.


The words suggest it. Either that or a more articulate description of angst.
I used to think the solo was either feedback or played far beyond the neck of the guitar, It's possible with either a steel slide (like Morello uses) basically tapping the notes or also ifyou're crazy enough to lower the action and play bend notes using the covers of your pick ups as a fretboard.

Unique thing. But later it made sense that he'd played the solo and pitch shifted it/sped it up (whatever was used to that end at the time)

.... so. .. basically nobody knows?

I hadn't considered the drum fill being sped up, and had just assumed it was an intentional 'phase' effect. Interesting post because now you mention it the whole song does have a 'sped up' feel.

plus roger wouldn't write a guitar based song like that in Eb.

Undoubtedly it was played in D and sped up a smidgen under a semitone.

As has been said, Rog is unlikely to have written it in Eb, and it has always been played live in D, which seems pretty conclusive on its own. Add to this the fact that this is exactly the kind of song where a slight speeding up of the original recording might improve the feel of the song, and that in the chorus you can clearly hear the open strings of the G5 chord rather than the fretted strings of an Ab5, and I'd say the evidence is overwhelming.

Whether Fred sang against the original version or the sped-up version is another question, though I'd imagine it's the former, given that he sounds almost unrecognisable on this song (although this is mostly due to his delivery rather than any tape manipulation).

Hopefully someone can be bothered with slowing the whole song down a semitone and posting the result here.

Makes sense. I didn't think of hearing that G - Ab. It'd definitely be a tricky one to fret but not impossible especially Brian's big hands.

Anyways. They did it almost a semitone with AOBTD as well.

cheers guys I agree it was indeed sped up!

This is all very interesting.
What i do know about the NOTW sessions is that Brian admited to speeding up the tape to the orchestrated guitar solo of "All dead, all dead" to achieve the right pitch - that was out of his guitar fret board. Maybe he experimented that on other songs as well.

But now that you mention this, the song really has that "feel", and now it makes more sense why we can´t tell Roger´s voice from Freddie´s. Maybe Roger´s voice was speeded up as well.

[QUOTE] [b]Mr.QueenFan wrote:[/b]

This is all very interesting.
What i do know about the NOTW sessions is that Brian admited to speeding up the tape to the orchestrated guitar solo of "All dead, all dead" to achieve the right pitch - that was out of his guitar fret board. Maybe he experimented that on other songs as well.

[/QUOTE]

Brian did 'pitch up' some of the guitar voices by an octave. This adds that 'organ' effect to the orchestrations. He has used this method on 'Lily of the Valley' and also the bell-type 2 guitar thing on the start of the 3rd verse in '39.
'Son and Daughter' also has it.(as mentioned by The Real Wonka ;-) )

I'm sure that certain vocals were also 'upped' and 'lowered' too. 'Lap of the Gods' and 'Bring Back Leroy Brown' to name just 2 examples.

Here you can see/hear from my recording (transcription of the piece) how this effect added to the existing normally-pitched section:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odPPi6tj_F0

[QUOTE] [b]The Real Wizard wrote:[/b]
Brian played around with tape speed from day one to the end, from the guitar orchestras in Son And Daughter to the overall playback of No-One But You.
[/QUOTE]

I didn't know that about No-One But You - how much is it altered by? I'd like to listen to it at the original pitch and tempo.

Here is Sheer Heart Attack slowed down so it's in D (technically a fraction lower than D, as I just went a semitone down from the original). I'm not sure if it sounds more natural or not. 

[url=http://clyp.it/t5iplwru]http://clyp.it/t5iplwru[/url]

Also, when on earth does Roger sing lead vocals on this song? Does he actually sing them at all? Because I've read that he sings the second verse, but I swear it's Freddie the whole way through.

@tomchristie22

The story I'd always heard about the pitch thing came from Brian/Roger. Basically, Roger heard Brian's demo and liked it, but changed the tempo which also altered the pitch. So, it wasn't Brian playing with pitch at all.

[QUOTE] [b]matt z wrote:[/b]

Makes sense. I didn't think of hearing that G - Ab. It'd definitely be a tricky one to fret but not impossible especially Brian's big hands.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, but most guitar players just don't play like that.

Bohardy is absolutely spot on.

[QUOTE] [b]ludwigs wrote:[/b]

Here you can see/hear from my recording (transcription of the piece) how this effect added to the existing normally-pitched section:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odPPi6tj_F0
[/QUOTE]

GENIUS. You are one of a handful of people in the world who has this stuff figured out. Bloody well done.

There's a similar video of the original studio tapes of Page layering the guitars in the middle of Ten Years Gone. But you've actually gone through the trouble to dissect it all and replicated it to complete perfection.

You should be writing a column in the top guitar magazines about achieving Brian's studio sound.

Contact them. Seriously. Nobody has done it. You're the guy.