Recommendations of the Editorial team
An updated contribution from 2019.
Certainly Freddie Mercury, the singer of Queen, who died in 1991, has one of the most recognizable voices in rock music history. Without his bright vibrato, songs such as “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “We are the champions”, “Radio Gaga” and “A Kind of Magic” would probably still be great songs. But only half as urgently.
A group of scientists from Austria, the Czech Republic and Sweden teamed up a few years ago to filter out with empirical cutlery why Mercury’s voice is so unique.
The heads of the study published their results in the specialist magazine “Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology”, which was rather less frequented by Queen supporters. The most important realization: The rumor that Freddie Mercury’s sound scope was over four octaves could not be proven. Rather, the tuning range was normal for a healthy adult. It says in the investigation.
Freddie Mercury and Tuwinian larynx singing
Mercury was very likely a baritone, but deliberately trained his voice (with exactly 117.3 Hertz) for a somewhat different rock singing. Also not to scare supposedly conservative listeners. The study demonstrated that Mercury used deliberate distortions in singing in order to create so-called “growl” sounds.
To examine this, the scientists looked at Queens live recordings and looked at the movements of Mercury’s larynx. In addition, they commissioned a singer to imitate Mercury’s voice and also filmed this process. Which could finally be analyzed in slow motion with image editing software.
What they found was a physical phenomenon called subharmonic. Otherwise, observing in an extreme form in Tuwinian larynx singing, in which not only the vocal folds vibrate. But also the so -called ventricular folds, which are usually not used for speaking or classic vocals.
Accordingly, the irregular vibrato (fast, slight change in the pitch) of the singer is striking. Most rock singers kept a consistent vibrato, while Mercury’s vibrato was more irregular and unusually fast at 7.04 Hertz. According to the study, frequencies from 5.4 to 6.0 Hertz are normal.
In other words: Freddie Mercury probably had the most extraordinary voice of rock music.