Freddie's best album, vocally?

No, there are definitely two full C5's in YMBF.

I agree about Too Much Love, though he nails a spectacular D5 in that. Funny how he often strains less in the 5th octave than in the upper fourth.

About All Gods People - the highest note is a F5, which is his highest known "belt". Probably a whole lot of 5th octave notes in the backing vocals (they're all Freddie by the way).

Would have been interesting to hear him attempt "I Puritani" with the F. :)

Here's an interesting video, probably most of you have seen it. .

For those interested, here are excerpts from Freddie Mercury Interview, Melody Maker, May 2, 1981. http://mr-mercury.co.uk/freddie_1981_interview.htm


Interviewer: "Do you ever leave a stage feeling you've done a really bad gig?"

Freddie: "Yes, sometimes. We all scream and shout at each other and destroy the dressing room and release our energy. We set ourselves a very high standard and 99 per cent of the audience wouldn't agree with our assessment of a bad gig. In San Francisco I lost my voice and it was awful, my register was limited to virtually a monotone. I still gave it my all but I knew it was a bad performance. They had to reschedule the tour and take three or four shows off the tour. I have nodules on my vocal chords and most tours are now scheduled around my voice."

Interviewer: "But your voice sounds very powerful...."

Freddie: "I'm losing the range, believe it or not. I've lost the power I began with. But I've become a stronger singer so maybe my framework is diminishing but within that I can sing better than ever. My voice can do amazing things now."

Oscar J - the reason he, and many other singers, can sing better in some higher registers than in some lower registers is to do with the breaks in the voice, like where you have to switch to falsetto, or tilt the larynx up, and once you've shifted position, the other notes around there are easier.

Sometimes it's difficult to hear if a note is full voice, or mix, or falsetto - and in fact it is sometimes difficult for a singer to feel it in their own voice. There are, these days amongst vocal coaches and singing teachers, differing opinions of what 'falsetto' means and what exactly it is. Sometimes a coach will refer to falsetto as being the falsetto register but not actually using falsetto to sing them. Some coaches, particularly those who use the Jo Estill method of teaching, say that falsetto is only the breathy sound that you can't crescendo through, and everything else is a variant on the full voice.

I guess as long as we know what we mean LOL, I sure as anything get confused!

Hmm! Ok, I guess I am completely wrong.....lol There ARE some high notes in YMBF....I guess it's just maybe that that's not what I like most about his vocals in it......:D

Are we still talking about You're My Best Friend here? Because there are two C5's - at 0.58 and 1:50 respectively, and I don't think any of them can be mistaken for falsetto. Agree?

I must say I think his chest/head break is a little higher than G4, probably around A4, because that's where he often started to lose control live. G4's were a piece of cake for him in all but his worst gigs. Well, at least in the 70's, in the mid 80's he used overdrive for the notes above G4 - could it be that his break got lower as he aged? That'd explain the straining on Too Much Love.

About falsetto - I guess it's more scientific to use the term "head voice" to avoid confusion. :) Then there are the really high notes, like the E6 from It's Late, where you can actually hear his voice break from head voice to what some people call his whistle register.

maybe its just down to the types of voices they have or something, but I would have swore Geddy Lee had at least high of a range as Freddie, at least on early Rush recordings......totally wrong about that one!

Oscar J, if he started to lose control of the A4 live, the 'break' would have been a couple of notes below, believe it or not. When a tenor (or soprano in a different octave) moves between the upper-middle and high registers, there are two or three notes that the 'break' goes over (known as the 'passaggio' in classical training, literally the passage between the two registers). This would usually happen between E-Ab (with F-G being the main 'break') in a tenor or soprano.

The way you sing these notes determines whether you will be able to 'access' the higher register or not. Technically, it is literally like narrowing the focus of your sound to get through a corridor. If you don't, and try to hit the E-G in a broad, full-powered sound (like Freddie did), the larynx won't be able to take the strain above about a G, and your voice will crack. If you do it often, you'll damage your vocal cords (as Freddie did).

There are usually several breaks like this in a singer's voice, but the most important (and dangerous) for a tenor or soprano is this one. You would absolutely hear it on the A4-Bb4 in a big way (the first notes of the high register, over the break). Strangely, often for very high or flexible voices, it can sometimes come right again around the B4-C4 (for a tenor), but the A would be the one to crack, if any note was going to.

Interesting, thanks for the insight!

FACEPALM! Oscar you're right, I had actually forgotten about one of the other top Cs you talk about.

You know what, it's because he hits them with such ease that it was sometimes hard to realise exactly how high he was singing.

Without turning this into a 'could Freddie have toured post '86?' thread.... personally I would LOVE to have heard his voice on an 'Innuendo' tour, to hear exactly how he would have sung on it. Condition would be that he was healthy of course, but he was pretty much at his peak as a singer by 1990, and it would have been amazing if Queen had been able to tour then. Fact is they couldn't of course, but can you imagine the sound at the concert? It would have been awesome. Note, I mean if Freddie wasn't ill.

An Innuendo tour would have been awesome, not least because we would hear a whole new bunch of songs from their two last albums that I always wanted to hear live. Your last note is interesting though, because I think that if Freddie didn't get ill and his chest support didn't diminish, he wouldn't have adopted the slightly lighter and much more flexible technique we can hear on the Innuendo album. So he'd probably sound something like this: [url=http://]https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9171CA6DAED4D7B9[/url]

[QUOTE] [b]miraclesteinway wrote:[/b]

The second one is a falsetto one, but you're right, when he was on form in the studio, he had outstanding range. The vocal performance on Show Must Go On, with the D5 in a couple of places, All God's People is a great performance too, but I haven't tried to work out the highest notes in it (but they are spectacular), there is some beautiful singing on The Golden Boy, Ensueno gives us a rare opportunity to hear Freddie in baritone mode and it's again a lovely performance simply because it isn't trying to be spectacular. Thinking back, there are so many wonderful things - for high notes, Let's Turn It On is a masterclass in technique even though it's far from my favourite song, Somebody To Love is one of the most beautiful vocal performances ever, period, then there are some live things I love like the Earl's Court '77 vocal improv, and the little bit in Milton Keynes '82 where he pulls off an Aretha Franklin impression. Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon is also pretty hot stuff too. I'll have written down the entire back catalogue before I finish this post.....

There are some performances of his which are less good - I think Made In Heaven sounds a little strained, and Too Much Love Will Kill You doesn't sit well in his voice really, the G in the chorus is just on his break and you can hear a little fatigue there. There are a couple of others that don't work so well, but not many. Given that all of his recordings were done before the words 'Auto Tune' had entered our vocabulary, I think all of his performances are pretty spectacular. These days a glitch here and there is corrected, producers leave virtually no flaws in takes, and we're not really used to hearing real singing anymore. Freddie was really working at a time when the take was the take, and perhaps later on there was a bit more stop start and cutting, but nothing like today.

Oh there's also that wonderful performance of 'The Kiss' in both the early and the album versions, the backing vocals are almost tearjerking actually! When you listen to that and realise that there was no studio trickery other than multi tracking and a little reverb, it makes you stand back and realise exactly what an artist and musician Freddie was. I'm still bowled over by some of the things he could do, and I must have heard the whole released catalogue 100 times through, like the rest of us on this forum.[/QUOTE]


Great post :-)

Oscar I've no idea about that, I suspect that the differences in sound might have been to do with a little help from Montserrat, and learning different voice placement techniques. To me it sounds more like voice placement changes.

Also, it sounds like a voice on the mend rather than a voice on the decline - it sounds like a voice being repaired from all the years of touring, smoking, drinking, straining, and it sounds like he did a little re-training for Innuendo.

Montserrat was the first to encourage him to sing in his baritone register - it's not that he didn't use it before (don't try suicide, flick of the wrist), but he really used it effectively on ensueño and the golden boy, and what a lovely baritone register he had actually.

I wonder if he had lived, if in the twenty years after Queen we might start to see 'Freddie Mercury sings Schubert' or something, which would be slammed by all areas of the press, but it would be very interesting and probably very good - once people had got over the shock of Freddie daring to do it, but I think he could have done it. Now, as for Rudolpho, I'm not sure about that....

[QUOTE] [b]miraclesteinway wrote:[/b]
Montserrat was the first to encourage him to sing in his baritone register - it's not that he didn't use it before (don't try suicide, flick of the wrist), but he really used it effectively on ensueño and the golden boy, and what a lovely baritone register he had actually. [/QUOTE]

Exactly! That's what I like about Barcelona, and particulary The Golden Boy.....

also, you said about how he hit high notes with ease......I think that's why I thought other singers had an equal range, sometimes they sound I dunno............kinda strained, if thats the word.....

true - in the early years Freddie could naturally tilt his larynx, it was part of his natural technique, but later he would go for power over tone (Magic album, for instance), and after Barcelona, he found a way to make a compromise between tone, range and power, which I think came from training that was never publicly disclosed. But then, why should it be? Many great artists continue to study all their professional lives, nobody knows about it but them!