Freddie's Piano

Doin` All Right has piano from Brian only in the album version. The others - BBC & live - are all Freddie. But I even have doubts about the album version too, there are three different piano parts, the one at the beginning, the one in the interlude and the one at the end. Brian could have played one of them, two of them or the three. I personally would be almost certain that the middle part (during the heavy bit) is Freddie, it has his licks.

cool topic indeed.

Doin` All Right has piano from Brian only in the album version. The others - BBC & live - are all Freddie. But I even have doubts about the album version too, there are three different piano parts, the one at the beginning, the one in the interlude and the one at the end. Brian could have played one of them, two of them or the three. I personally would be almost certain that the middle part (during the heavy bit) is Freddie, it has his licks.

A very interesting point - in fact what you said suggests a whole lot of other things. When I first played Doing All Right the arrangement in the intro and the first verse came in very easy - which is what everyone is pointing out right now - until the small sixteenth notes that the left hand plays (barely audible in the studio version and that is regrettable because it makes such a nice variation) it is a tricky part to play smoothly. The fact that Brian played them may explain why those little notes sound so weak.

On the 22nd bar the piano is slightly out of sync - possibly because of triplets that were played in the previous bar. (If my notes are right, that is.)

So far the difficulties are just the little 16th notes and the triplets, but according to the version I play there are piano parts that come at 43rd bar (which is the loud, exciting, crashy rock part) and the hands play nearly the same thing as the lead guitar. That is where I referred to as the "hard part". Listening to the track again, it is difficult to tell if the official version has that part included, so my note may be arranged differently for the piano (but then again, if it is arranged, it is way sensible to include a piano part during Freddie's falsetto solo). It gets very fast and fairly complicated until the repeated verse which basically repeats the beginning (so it's possible that the mid part is arranged by Freddie, or whoever played it). Piano is extremely subdued in this song anyways so it is quite a hard job to transcribe it accurately.

But then again, it is a lot more challenging to play "Lily of the Valley" - Freddie's piano arrangement in that song is simply so effective and elegant.

I wish I could reach Freddie's level...Any newborn britneylike star should...;)
Anyway I love Freddie's piano playing in Don't Stop Me Now.

I don't have anything brilliant to add to this, but here's an example of why I enjoy Freddie's pianism:

**no longer available**

Just Freddie's piano by itself. Simply beautiful. Thanks to Dan the dangly puppet dude for providing me with 'The Eye' which this was taken from.

I read somewhere that Freddie mostly trained himself at the piano (much like myself). He was never the best at sight reading or anything - but it's clear that he knew the scales and that, I think, is very important to piano playing. And yeah, I believe Mike Moran did play on the Barcelona album - great player, too!

I don't think Brian's piano playing is dull or boring. I like how he approaches music with it. I especially enjoy it when they do Save Me live (ex: the We Will Rock You video). Though they play differently, they go great together.

here is something I made on a MIDI program. It's an untitled tribute to Freddie. Hope you like it. Any and all feedback is welcome (email me).

http://www.geocities.com/bohemianqueen7091/freddie.mid

Sorry I just now saw replies after mine in this topic.

Daja, "The Eye" is a CD-Rom game that Queen released several years ago. It's on five discs and all of them also feature original Queen music, mostly in instrumental form.

Check out Ron's site for info about 'The Eye' here: http://www.queenpicturehall.com/theeye/index.shtml

Zander05, your midi sounds nice. Thanks for sharing that!

I looked for this topic so I could remove the link to the instrumental I posted. I need the space for something else. But it's been quoted so I can't get rid of it completely. Anyway, the file isn't there anymore :-P