How do they do it?

"John`s exact quote is "In the albums, Roger, Freddie and Brian do most of the vocal harmonies. I don`t participate very often. On stage I do very little backing vocals ,but I can`t call myself a singer". So there you go, MAINLY is not ALL, and NOT VERY OFTEN is not NEVER"

And there are a half dozen quotes you could easily dig up that say he never sings on the albums. Maybe he sang on the albums, but those takes were not used in the final mixes. Otherwise, point out to me one place in one Queen song where you can identify a voice that is not Freddie's, Brian's, or Rogers.

"Roger vs Freddie: I don`t see Fred struggling for notes Roger could reach "easily". Roger had many problems in Lap Of the Gods and `39 (except in Rainbow, but that one might be an overdub). Note Lap Of the Gods in `75 concerts, his voice could hit the notes but not so easily as in the studio version. Same as `39, all the times I`ve heard it live (except the one from Live Killers which might also be overdubbed) he missed the last note, he just took off the mic before he did it. And that note is lower than the one Fred did in `Rock In Rio Blues`. Roger sang very high with an open throat in the recordings of `Tie Your mother down` (the last "all your love toNIGHT"), and it sounds great, but it`s the same note Fred did in `Hang On In There`, which he didn`t struggle for either. On stage Roger got the high part in We Are the Champions most likely because Fred "oxided" his voice much more, he didn`t take care of it. Moreover Fred sang during all the concert and Roger just in the choruses and I`m In Love With My Car. That gets it a lot less tired for the high C in `Champions`. But that doesn`t mean Roger could sing higher. that doesn`t mean he couldn`t either. I`m almost sure their ranges ended up in the same note, or if not, the difference would be just one semitone."

The bottom line is that Brian flat out said Roger had a higher voice, and I think he would know. If you refuse to accept that and you cannot hear the greater strain Freddie's voice at pitches where Roger has none, then there is no force on earth that will convince you.

That's true, but what about Freddie's Opera in Barcelona? There are some parts where you think it's Montsy-It's actually Freddie. It's amazing.

And also it's possible that when John made his comment about not participating vocally very often, he was thinking about things he (possibly) featured in such as the big singalong at the end of SSOR, all the chat at the end of LMEY, and possible the huge chorus at the end of ITLOTG(R).

Featuring vocally in sections such as these is a far cry from being a key element of some of the very precise Queen harmonies, as Seb seems to think John was.

[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]fatty wrote: [/QUOTENAME]Barry's right.They use multi-track tapes to acheive that sound. You can buy multi-track tape from most music shops and they cost about £4.99 a roll. You stick the tape over the microphone and when you sing into it, the tape vibrates and gives you that Queen sound.

fatty.[/QUOTE]Fatty...
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...That was great. :|

Parts that aren`t Fred, Brian or Roger - For example, the choruses in `Rock It`, checked with DTS, are obviously different people or themselves with vari-speed. But if there are more people, it`s equally probable that it`s john or the producers or whoever.

Roger vs Fred - I`m not saying Brian is ignorant, but do you think Brian has taken the time to analyse Fred`s impromptus and compare them with Roger`s highest parts and notice who struggled and who didn`t and then check the notes and who sang more than 880 Hz etc etc? No. I can assure you that the people in this forum are more likely to tell such details, because they, as Niek said once I believe, just write the songs, record them, rehearse them to play live (some of them), but that`s it. They don`t analyse them or make lists of "what`s the song Fred sings highest on...". Something I noticed lately is that the hidden direct fore-runner to Bo Rhap is `In The Lap Of The Gods` (not the revisited one). There are many details in common. But of course I doubt the band would take the time to transcribe each song`s form and to figure out common aspects. Fred did point out though that `Lap` did help him to write something like `Bo Rhap`, but anyway I personally think that he did "paraphrase" some parts in a subconscious level, not thinking of "I`m going to put 10 Lap trademarks in Bo rhap" or something to that effect. In the same way, I can assure you Brian, Roger or John know less about demos than half of the people in this forum. Or concert setlists.

"I can assure you Brian, Roger or John know less about demos than half of the people in this forum."

Er...somehow I don't think so.

Jeez Seb, just why? Who cares? Let it go. :)

Peace,
Adam.

I want to continue this, if you don`t want, don`T read further. I`m not fighting or anything, I just find it interesting. It`s not that I dream about wheter My Fairy King has or doesn`T have higher notes than It`s Late... I just like to analyse this things, as much as others like to collect bootlegs, or stamps or whatever.

As for demos, a concrecte proof - Brian in 1998 was interviewed by Jazz web, didn`t remember there`s a version of Silver Salmon sung by Freddie. Didn`t know about Assassin either. Recentely in his soapbox he has made other omisions - didn`t remember about Mike Stone singing in Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy, counted Masterstroke as part of either Opera or Races, admitted he didn`t remember they used to play Doin` All Right live. And it goes further: in a 1982 interview he said he played koto in `Teo torriate`.

And it makes sense. Brian probably recorded the koto in `Prophet`s Song` one night and that was, for him just another night. He didn`t read or anlyse it, so if he forgets, he doesn`t care. So a fan or a listener or an analist (and I don`t consider myself any of those things) is a way better source to know about a band than the band itself. I don`t mean Brian doesn`t know in which album is Bo Rhap, or how many weeks it stayed in #1, but I mean that he most likely doesn`t know in which concert he broke a string or in which song he sang higher or stuff like that.

Yeah, but to say that you (or we) know better than Brian as to who had the naturally higher register out of Fred and Rog as absolutely absurd!

No, Brian most probably doesn't sit there poring over every single harmony part, making bar-charts and venn-diagrams of the frequency and range of certain high notes sung by Rog and Fred.

No, Brian probably doesn't know that (in the recordings available to fans) live Fred technically sang a higher note (by a semitone I believe) than Rog's best, or that in the studio they matched each other for the highest recorded head-voice note.

But what Brian does know is what he's learned from playing nearly 800 gigs with the 2 of them (far more concerts than you/we have ever heard), from recording about 15 albums with the 2 of them, and from basically living, working, playing and singing with them for 20 years of his life.

Bri's heard, in the flesh, Fred and Rog sing more times than anyone of us has had hot dinners.

1: Freddie, Roger and Brian were singing at the same time, the same phrase, at the same key. then,

2: sing at the same time, the same phrase, but in a diffrent key.

3: again, sing at the same time, the same phrase, but in a new diffrent key.

after doing this, they put it all together to make a choir.

this is diffrent from a live choir, for example, where every person sings at a diffrent key. What Queen did was the 3 singers singing exactly the same part at the same key identically as the other 2 singers to make a stronger voice.

Comparing it to a live choir, Freddie, Roger and Brian were doing the part of one person at the same time, then they recorded the part of another person, and so on. at the end they put it all together making it sound like big choir.

you can see this in QVH 1 related by Brian and with some examples. it´s really cool.

Just a couple of notes:

Same key is not correctly used in what you said. The key and the chord is the same, what changes is the note. For example Rog sang an A, Fred sang the F# below it and Brian sang the D below it, so it`s a D chord.

About Brian - The difference between Rog and Fred isn`t so big (in either case Roger could get higher or Fred could get higher), so that can`t be concluded without an anlysis. Different is if we compare Roger with Brian, you don`t have to make diagrams or measure the Hz of their notes. Brian has heard Rog and Fred sing a lot of times, but 99.9% of them were notes of their "regular" range and not their limits, so he couldn`t compare them. And in such cases - like any of them trying to do a D5 and not being able or something like that - I doubt he would write that in a diary or something. Maybe he just assumed, as well as Elton assumed Fred wrote the lyrics of `Show Must Go On`. Maybe in fact they sometime decided to "compete" and Roger won and that`s why Brian said so. Even in that case, that doesn`t mean it`d be definitve. I mean, let`s say they measured the range and Rog won by one semitone, in the year of `76. It`s still possible that Fred acquired a bigger range in let`s say, `81, or not neccesarily a bigger range, just a higher end, and then Fred could sing one tone above what he could in `76. Or perhaps in `87 Roger could sing not one but four semitones above Freddie. Etc etc.

So the point you seem to be making then Seb, is that even if you do do an analysis of who sang the highest notes in any given year, or over a certain period, you would not really get a conclusive result with any real meaning.

So in that case, is it not better to just trust one man's informed opinion about who generally had the naturally higher register, especially if that man is probably in a better position than anyone else alive (except maybe Roger himself) to make that judgment?

What I find funny is that Seb outlines the basic knowledge of harmony above and demonstrates it really badly with his BoRhap cover!

But seriously, what annoys me about Seb's rantings are that they sound like a lawyer's attitude, e.g. quotes some minor errors of a persons recollection of something, therefore showing them up. Then correcting their mistake with the supposed truth.

Peace,
Adam.

I don`t try by any means to suggest or imply that what I say is the absolute truth or something like that. What I mean is that Brian isn`t more informed than anyone of us about that, except in the case they actually did compete. As I said, most likely most of times he heard them, they were doing the notes they could reach easily, not the ones they`d struggle for, and even in those cases he wouldn`t be there with a piano or something to measure them. For instance I always thought the screams of Lap Of The Gods were higher than the highest "for me", until I played each note on the piano together with the record and realised it was the other way around. So, what I mean is that Brian saying once that "he`s got the highest voice" doesn`t imply that it was always that way, or that it was that way anyway.

As for Bo Rhap cover, it is well constructed, of course the production isn`t the best or anything, and the voices are still weak. But the harmonies I arranged - as opposed to copy them from the original arrangement - were well done. On paper I mean.

"As for Bo Rhap cover, it is well constructed"

HAH! The harmonies sounded erratic and lost. You even admitted that in the thread for the cover!

"But the harmonies I arranged - as opposed to copy them from the original arrangement - were well done. On paper I mean"

Eh? Like I said, they sounded lost and just plain weird. Scan your notes and post them. Maybe we'll record them and see what they're 'really' like. If what you say is true, that is. Getting harmonies right and getting them to sound right are two different things. :)

Peace,
Adam.

The harmonies are good, the plan. I kind of did the whole version "in a hurry" because I wanted to make sure I could do it. Next time - in a couple of months or years, so I can really see evolution - my goal is to do it, and do it awesomely. But I don`t have any rush in making the perfect version (by "perfect" I mean exactly how I want it), I can make 20 or 30 more re-takes if that`s neccesary. Life`s too short but it`s wasted with hurries. Moreover, a one mile journey starts with one step.