I was asked to choose a commercially available piece of music and analyse the recording techniques used. The piece I have chosen is ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by Queen from their 1975 album ‘A Night at the Opera’ (Queen, 1975).
Written by the band’s lead vocalist, Freddy Mercury, the song was recorded in 4 different studios between August and September of 1975.
These were: - Rockfield Studio 1 - Roundhouse - SARM (East) - Scorpio Sound
Bohemian Rhapsody was produced by Roy Thomas Baker and engineered by Mike Stone, Gary Lyons and Geoff Workman (Cunningham, 1995).
The song was released on the 31st October 1975. It stayed at number 1 in the UK singles chart for 9 weeks and sold over 1 million copies by the end of …show more content…
I believe that they may have used heavy panning to make the song sound as though a large orchestra and choir are performing it. Some examples of where they have used panning are: - Harmonies in the opening section are panned on both sides. - On the vocals (0:36) the line “little high, little low” is panned fully left first and then fully right. - In the opera section (beginning at 3:02) there are many examples of use of the stereo field including “Thunderbolts and lightning” and “Galileo” which is sung at first in a falsetto voice panned one way then Mercury’s lower voice on the other side.
Although most of the panning occurs on the many vocal tracks, there are a few guitar sections that are panned, in some cases they are double tracked with one track playing on the left and the other on the right.
Despite attempting to find information from various sources about the heavy use of panning in the version I analysed, I only found information about the more recent 5.1 surround mix. In keeping with the idea that they were trying to use orchestral sounds, Brian May says “So over there what you have is, kind of, in my mind, a trumpet section” (Queen, Queen, The DVD Collection: Greatest Video Hits 1, 2002). However this is played on …show more content…
I believe that this was to make the band sound like it was a full choir or orchestra when everything was playing together and give the listener the impression that they were hearing more instruments than were actually recorded. To me, it didn’t seem as though there was much use of ambience, only in some small sections. The frequency response I found to be heavily weighted in the mid-frequencies with quieter highs. I believe that producer Roy Thomas Baker and the band used the four categories I have analysed extremely well to produce a brilliant sounding
Written by the band’s lead vocalist, Freddy Mercury, the song was recorded in 4 different studios between August and September of 1975.
These were: - Rockfield Studio 1 - Roundhouse - SARM (East) - Scorpio Sound
Bohemian Rhapsody was produced by Roy Thomas Baker and engineered by Mike Stone, Gary Lyons and Geoff Workman (Cunningham, 1995).
The song was released on the 31st October 1975. It stayed at number 1 in the UK singles chart for 9 weeks and sold over 1 million copies by the end of …show more content…
I believe that they may have used heavy panning to make the song sound as though a large orchestra and choir are performing it. Some examples of where they have used panning are: - Harmonies in the opening section are panned on both sides. - On the vocals (0:36) the line “little high, little low” is panned fully left first and then fully right. - In the opera section (beginning at 3:02) there are many examples of use of the stereo field including “Thunderbolts and lightning” and “Galileo” which is sung at first in a falsetto voice panned one way then Mercury’s lower voice on the other side.
Although most of the panning occurs on the many vocal tracks, there are a few guitar sections that are panned, in some cases they are double tracked with one track playing on the left and the other on the right.
Despite attempting to find information from various sources about the heavy use of panning in the version I analysed, I only found information about the more recent 5.1 surround mix. In keeping with the idea that they were trying to use orchestral sounds, Brian May says “So over there what you have is, kind of, in my mind, a trumpet section” (Queen, Queen, The DVD Collection: Greatest Video Hits 1, 2002). However this is played on …show more content…
I believe that this was to make the band sound like it was a full choir or orchestra when everything was playing together and give the listener the impression that they were hearing more instruments than were actually recorded. To me, it didn’t seem as though there was much use of ambience, only in some small sections. The frequency response I found to be heavily weighted in the mid-frequencies with quieter highs. I believe that producer Roy Thomas Baker and the band used the four categories I have analysed extremely well to produce a brilliant sounding