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The voice of Freddie Mercury (Queen).

A study published in the journal Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology said that Mercury's voice...

What is the secret to Freddie Mercury's unique voice?

Queen is one of the greatest rock bands ever to hit the world stage (that's an obvious fact by now). The band has sold over 100 million records and released such iconic hits as "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "I Want To Break Free"... and many other hits too.  Much of the success was due to the outstanding vocal abilities of the frontman, Freddie Mercury. In a new study, scientists have sought to find out why the Tanzanian-born singer, Farrukh Bulsar, had a voice described by some as

"...as powerful as a force of nature, as fast as the speed of a hurricane."

Scientists have investigated Freddie's voice

About the journal published in the journal Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology the study said that a team of Austrian, Czech and Swedish scientists analysed video interviews with Mercury and a cappella tracks from a collection of backing vocals that Freddie constantly overlaid on the main part. This was devised to highlight the frequencies at which he spoke and sang, and the range at which he could hold a note for a long time. The results were impressive.

Freddie Mercury. Photo: Denis O'Regan
Freddie Mercury. Photo: Denis O'Regan

When he spoke, his voice had a mean frequency of 117.3 Hz, which provided a rich baritone. The study confirmed that his range ranged from 92.2 Hz to 784 Hz, meaning that he could reliably take notes from the rapidly rising low note of F#2 to the high G5 - that's a full three octaves! While the scientists could not confirm the long-held illusion that Freddie's range spanned four full octaves, they did discover some interesting features of his voice. For example, when listening to recordings, you can hear higher / lower noteswhich proves wider rangeHowever, the research team found this to be an unreliable indicator (for example, it could have been an epic Brian May guitar solo).

Freddie Mercury
Freddie Mercury

To get closer to the truth, the team invited professional rock singer Daniel Zanger-Borch to try to copy Freddie's voice. A video camera was used to film his larynx at 4,000 frames per second. Eventually it was discovered that Freddie was probably using subharmonics, a style of singing in which the ventricular folds vibrate along with the vocal folds. Most people never engage the ventricular folds, unless of course they are Tuvan singers practising throat singing... So the fact that Freddie was probably dealing with subharmonics is quite unusual.

Range is one thing, but speed is quite another. Mercury's vocal cords moved faster than other people's. While a typical vibrato ranges between 5.4 Hz and 6.9 Hz, Mercury's was 7.04 Hz. Let's look at it another way... The ideal sine wave for vibrato takes a value of 1. Mercury had an average value of 0.57, and when compared to the legendary opera singer Luciano Pavarotti, Mercury used something for vibrato that Pavarotti didn't even realise....

Conclusion

In conclusion, a few excerpts from a speech by the author of the study, Dr Christian Herbst:

"I am both a certified vocal coach and a biophysicist, and I am very interested in how the singing voice works on a physiological and physical level. I'm also interested in how singing can be taught effectively."

"Freddie Mercury was an incredibly skilful and versatile singer, capable of a wide range of artistic vocal expressions. Naturally, I was interested in objectively describing his singing style with adequate empirical methods: not only on an acoustic level, but also in terms of what happens in the larynx."

"Queen have been one of my favourite bands since I was a teenager and this was certainly an added incentive to do the research."

Freddie Mercury gets his moustache cut.
Freddie Mercury gets his moustache cut.

Anyway, as cryptic as he sounds, let's just listen to Freddie and remember why he became one of rock's greatest legends!

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