Vocal powerhouse Adam Lambert
has revealed that he's really glad that he chose to perform 'Bohemian
Rhapsody' on 'American Idol' because it led him to tour the world as the
frontman for legendary rock band Queen. Speaking to UNews Romania recently, the sensation admitted that he
can't believe that he is now singing with the group and he probably owes
it all to that performance on 'Idol': "No, I wouldn't have believed it if someone had told me, 'ok, fast
forward six years from now and you're going to be touring the world with
Queen." I'm really glad I went with that song for that reason, it
turned out well." Iconic guitarist Brian May then added that he believes they would have found Lambert even if he hadn't performed a Queen song on 'American Idol': "It would have happened anyway, it was written in the stars."
Freddie Mercury, the late frontman for the legendary band Queen, died almost 25 years ago. But he's still regarded as the best rock singers ever. But how did he manage to achieve such
vocal range?
A new study in Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology set out with the
ambitious task of analysing Mercury's voice. By selecting archive
recordings, as well as using a rock singer to imitate, a team of
Austrian, Czech and Swedish authors discovered some interesting findings
about the voice once described as "a force of nature with the velocity
of a hurricane."
The lead author on
the study, Austrian voice scientist Christian Herbst, states that
Mercury's voice range was "normal for a healthy adult -- not more, not
less." Contrary to his popular image, he was probably a baritone who
sang as a tenor with exceptional control over his voice production
technique. He is known to have rejected an offer to sing as baritone in
an opera duet with singer Montserrat Caballé because he worried that his
fans knew him only as a rock singer and would not recognise his voice
in baritone. In many ways, this deeper scholarly interest and analysis of
Mercury's voice moves to affirm many of the singer's stage persona
traits. In particular, the study examined the intentional distortion
Mercury used to produce so-called 'growl' sounds. With a rock singer
imitating this special type of singing, the authors filmed his larynx
with a high-speed camera at over 4,000 frames per second, giving them an
understanding of what Mercury would have done physiologically while
singing these 'distorted' notes. The authors could thus reconstruct how
Freddie Mercury, in his flamboyant and eccentric stage persona, drove
his vocal system to its limits.
What they found was an intriguing physical phenomenon called
subharmonics. This is seen in a more extreme way in Tuvan throat singing
where not only the vocal folds vibrate, but also a pair of tissue
structures called ventricular folds, which are not normally used for
speaking or classical singing. Mercury's more fragile side is also
fitting with his hallmark vibrato (a rapid, slight variation in pitch).
Most pop/rock singers maintain a regular vibrato, whilst his was more
irregular, and unusually fast.
This deeper study into one of the world's best known vocal artists
contributes not only to the scholarly understanding of voice but also to
Freddie Mercury's continuing legacy. You might be able to hear that vocal fingerprint in the vocals-only version of Queen's hit song "We Are The Champions" below.
