In The Lap Of The Gods analysis

http://sebastian.queenconcerts.com/3/lap.htm

You`re all invited. Any suggestion or ideas about the design is welcome, since I want to make sure how I`m going to do it before I continue with more articles. so far the design looks a bit weird since the other analyses haven`t been made yet. This is the foundation of a "coming late" new version of my website, with full analyses of the songs and instruments.

Enjoy it.

I find it amazing to read, although I don't really understand it very well. My knowledge of making music kinda stopped at the triangle. Still fascinating though. I wonder if Queen talked as "scientific" about what they wanted in their songs as you do now. I think they didn't, but just "fooled around" a bit in the studio.

Awaiting more songs.

By the way, you've made some spellingerrors...

Content-wise: excellent. Designwise it's very poor... Comic Sans in the menu is not done and the Photoshop filter you used on the picture at the bottom is not done either.... The font you used at the top looks strange too, like you originally had it at 10px high and then re-scaled it to the size it is now.... It's not really a design, just some frames with text. Of course the main focus is the content, but it looks like a site from 1995.

A site with crap content and perfect fonts would be sooo much better ...

The content is perfect, you are the master Sebastian.

First of all, if you want a black backfround, you'll have to play with more colors than the white.

And to enlarge the lyrics, I hardly can read them!

Anyway, I adore you!

Thanks for the comments

About spelling - thanks, I`ll double check this afternoon

Design - this is of course a prototype (or a "naked" version), I want to polish it until I get the right one, and then I`ll start with the next analysis - Save Me - so I can apply the same design to everything.I want to have a precise dynamic design not complex at all.

Frames worked well for what I wanted, although in this song it can`t be noted so much. I originally wanted the right frame for little "bonus" sections, like quotes collections or perhaps a list of chart positions in the case of the singles.

Any way, any ideas you guys can give me about the organisation of the analyses is welcome. Maybe I can use the right frame for "technical" explanations, so the main text wouldn`t be so dense

Make the site a bit more 'eye friendly' and a bit easier to navigate. Drop the frame on the right. and make the top of the page (the title) a bit smaller. So the box where the words are gets bigger > easier to read

Very ambitious, indeed, and interesting, for sure. Can the musical notation be 30-50% larger, perhaps? I find the accidentals (sharps/flats/naturals) quite difficult to read, particularly in the first chord in the middle staff.

Keep in mind, anyone may put whatever they like on their site - don't take any of my comments as demands or anything... do what you like! But since you asked... in the interests of perfecting an already excellent site:

I'd love to analyze the notes along with you, myself, but my keyboard's still packed away since my big move this spring. I do think, however, that there may be some inaccuracies among your musical notation (although you get an A for effort on this difficult intro passage). I'm nearly certain that the voice that comes in in the 3rd measure is singing a melodic Augmented 2nd (e.g. C# to Bb - spelled as a second, but comprising 3 half-tones like a minor 3rd), not a Major 3rd from D to Bb. That gives it the eerie quality (or Middle-Eastern in some contexts). Anyone with a keyboard or guitar not packed away that can verify?

The only other thing, though... I do think you could soften your point about how under-appreciated this song is... I get the feeling you take it's relative unpopularity quite personally... and I actually get uncomfortable as I'm reading that! :-(

Anyway, I don't think that point needs to be "proven", really - I'd think a mere single mention would help your prose flow a bit better. And your comparison to the very obscure "The Kiss" is extremely distracting (can't really puzzle that one out). It's only my opinion, but being on Sheer Heart Attack (one of the top Queen LP successes & best sellers), can it really be "relatively unknown" (like The Kiss from the dismal seller, Flash Gordon)? If it makes you feel any better, I'll let you know it's always been one of my faves, however strangely delivered the vocal was! Maybe a comment on how many (or how few) times the song was performed live would neatly make your point?

OH, sorry, I found one more PICKY, PICKY thing: you might re-word the part saying "Very technically skilled piano fast arpeggios were played by Mercury in the intro". Because it's Mercury who is skilled, and not the arpeggios, I'd suggest "Very technically demanding, fast piano arpeggios in the intro were skillfully played by Mercury", or something similar.

Keep up the wonderful work - love to see the ambition - your hard work is really paying off!

Sebastian, are you sure you still don't want to use PHP? Even a couple of simple 'includes' could save you a lot of code.

I don't like the different fonts. In fact I'm quite happy with your current design, I don't think this is a major improvement. But I agree that in your case frames are probably the best solution.

Great work, Sebastian, very well researched and very well written. I cannot imagine how much time you must have spent getting all these facts together. I like the "sub articles" which makes it easy to find specific information. Your website is sure one of the best on the net.

Sebastian you are the man!
I really love reading this kind of things.
I'm very interested in harmonies and do a lot of analyzing/singing myself. When I create own songs I always have the harmonies in focus. Especially the vocals (but also guitar). So theories around these subjects are super interesting for musical nerds like myself.

Keep up the good work!

/Adam Steen

Great site, I love the quotes from the band and producers.

Definately one of the top sites related to Queen!

The content is unique - I don't really matter the design since it is very simple it is easy to find what you are looking for quickly.

Congratulations :)

Very good and ambitious, all in all.

It's good that this kind of exhaustive analysis of all Queen's songs is finally getting somewhere. This should end up being the ultimate reference for Queen 'songs', but it's gonna need a lot of collaboration and improvement before it fulfills its potential.

There are lots of areas that I feel could be improved, one of the main ones being the 'tone' that the articles are written in. Some of it just doesn't sound professional or academic enough for the subject matter at hand. But I can't really be bothered to list all the thoughts I had when reading the analysis.

But I do have to say, as GUMP touched on, that I'm sure some of the harmony you have is fairly off. Certainly in the very opening section, the chords are not all minor; I'm sure there's a dim7, and a half-dim, and possibly even a major chord in there somewhere.

I'm not at home now, so can't check, but off the top of my head I'm sure that opening progression is more like:

F#m7b5 - G - Gdim7 (or maybe Gm7b5) - Am - Dm.

You have that Dm as a Dm6, which it most definitely isn't (at least in the piano part) as Fred doesn't play a B-natural at all in that passage.

Phrase C starts with a Cmajor chord, before going to, and fluctuating around, some kind of Cdim/Ebdim chord if I remember rightly.

I get a bit confused about what you're doing in Phrase D. As far as I'm concerned, the sequence Ebdim/B - Ebdim/A - Ebdim/B - Ebdim/A doesn't occur anywhere in the whole song. The Ebdim part is about right, but I don't know where you got the bass-notes from.

The Bbm chord in that section is not entirely correct, as the chords again fluctuate around some form of Bbdim, rather than staying on a simple Bbm.

Phrase E is surely wrong too. I'm sure the harmony progresses up a Dim7 chord in Dim7s, ie it goes:

Bbdim7 - Dbdim7 - Edim7 - Gdim7.

Phrase F again is wrong, as the piano chords alternate between G and (I'm pretty sure) Gm7b5, rather than the simple Gm you have.

Would it not be simpler to label the chord at the start of section J as F#dim7? And I may be wrong, but isn't there another repeat of the Gm7 - C in that section, or at least just the Gm, that you seem to have missed?

I'll try and have a better look at this when I'm at home with my piano and the CD, but although this is all from my head right now, I'm pretty confident in all I've said.

Anyway, hope this helps and keep up the good work on your excellent site.

I really doubt if he'll change it to be honest, Bohardy