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Queen has always loved playing live. It is
one of the bands with the greatest number of live concerts in the history
of rock. In fact, Queen has performed around 680 concerts.
When live, Freddie never sang the songs
as he did in the albums. He kept on making changes to the songs. In
concert, seldom
did he resort to the falsetto and hardly ever did he sing the highest
notes he sang when recording in studio; he either took the note an octave
down or harmonized with seconds, thirds or fifths which were lower than
the original note. In other cases, he sang the high note directly, and in
doing so he used his head register. But in most of the cases Roger did the
backing vocals in falsetto and sang the high note.
Now, I’m giving a link
for you to download an extract of the song 'In The Lap Of The Gods…revisited',
taken from the album Live at Wembley ‘86. This is an ideal example,
since it is mostly done in falsetto. In the studio version he sings the
most important phrases of the song like "It’s so easy", "so risky" and "so
funny", in a piercing falsetto, while, when live he sang the first two in
falsetto and the last one using his head voice. Now I’ll give you the
link; each file is
5 seconds long, and they are rated in 44.100 hz and 128 kbps:
itssoeasy.mp3
and
sofunny.mp3.
This song is, also, a great example to show how Freddie's interpretation
has changed over the years. Between 1974-1975, Freddie used to sing the
first twos sentences of the song in falsetto, but on the '75 concerts, he
sang the falsetto parts one octave lower, and avoided to have to use that
resource. The audio clip is 14 seconds long, and it's rated at 128 kpbs
and 44.100 hz:
inthelap75.mp3. From 1976 till 1986, he sang it the original way,
again.
Contrarily, in other
songs like 'Somebody To Love' or 'Play The Game', he avoided
the falsetto or sang directly with his chest or head register. In 'Somebody
To Love', at the beginning of the song, he sang the word "can" in
falsetto (an Ab4); when singing live, he shouted it with his most
resonant register. Such is the case in the first phrases of 'Play The
Game'. Instead of singing them in falsetto as he does in the album, he
preferred singing them with his most powerful register, which gave greater
body and volume to the song, while depriving it of the typical sweetness
of the falsetto.
The fact that in other
songs, like the demanding 'Brighton Rock', Freddie alternated
between his falsetto and his full voice, is a different story. Freddie
always sang the lowest octave of the song while Roger sang the highest
octave in falsetto.
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