Who doesn’t know that Freddie Mercury of Queen (right) had a phenomenal voice – unparalleled, uncompromising, unique.
And I discovered that his amazing voice was the subject of an interesting research.
The study published on April 15, 2016 in Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology (via AlphaGalileo) – where European researchers revealed some interesting facts about the expanse of his incredible voice.
For one, despite being known largely as a tenor, he was more likely a baritone.
They based this assumption off analysis of six interviews that revealed a median speaking fundamental frequency of 117.3 Hz. That, coupled with anecdotal evidence that Mercury once turned down an opera duet because he was afraid fans wouldn’t recognize his baritone voice, led the conclusion that the singer was talented enough to jump out of his base range.
It’s true that without a living test subject, the researchers’ conclusions are largely speculative.
To get closer to the truth, however, the team brought in professional rock singer Daniel Zangger-Borch to imitate Mercury’s voice. They filmed his larynx at 4,000 frames per second in order to look at exactly how the Queen frontman created those iconic rough growls and jaw-dropping vibratos. What they discovered was that he likely employed subharmonics, a singing style where the ventricular folds vibrate along with the vocal folds.
Most humans never speak or sing with their ventricular folds unless they’re Tuvan throat singers, so the fact that Mercury was probably dealing with subharmonics is astonishing.
[About throat singing (xöömei in Tuvan and sometimes spelled 'khoomei', 'hoomei', or 'choomeij'): Russia’s Tuvan throat singers can produce two or three, sometimes even four pitches simultaneously. The effect has been compared to that of a bagpipe.
The singer starts with a low drone. Then, by subtle manipulations of his vocal tract and keen listening, he breaks up the sound, amplifying one or more overtones enough so that they can be heard as additional pitches while the drone continues at a lower volume. Despite what the term might suggest, throat singing does not strain the singer's throat].
What’s more, Mercury’s vocal cords just moved faster compared to the likes of us. While a typical vibrato will fluctuate between 5.4 Hz and 6.9 Hz, Mercury’s was 7.04 Hz. To look at that in a more scientific way, a perfect sine wave for vibrato assumes the value of 1, which is pretty close to where famous opera singer Luciano Pavarotti sat.
Mercury, on the other hand, averaged a value of 0.57, meaning he was vibrating something in his throat even Pavarotti couldn’t move.
The only thing the researchers couldn’t confirm was the long-held belief that Mercury’s range spanned four full octaves.
Here’s a video clip I also found that informs us of Freddie Mercury’s extraordinary voice:
On the movie scene, global ticket sales of Bohemian Rhapsody has crossed the $500 million mark – $539,564,825, to be exact (Box Office Mojo, December 02, 2018).
No comments:
Post a Comment