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The song I will be analyzing from the band Queen is '**Bohemian Rhapsody.'**

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- Acoustic Piano - Electric Bass - Drums - Electric Guitars - Lead Vocals - Overdubbed Vocals - Chinese gongs (at the very last sound of the song)
 * Instruments:**

Although the song is quite long and dramatic, the instruments used in the song are few in number. They are the basic instruments of rock music. It is worth mentioning that they used over-overdubbed vocals (I will expand on this in the //Opera Part//) and, they never used synthesizers in the recording. In the jacket of their 4th album “A Night At The Opera”, which includes ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, there is a credit saying: “No Synthesizers!”. Queen refused to use synthesizers and tried to make their original sound by the basic rock instruments (Piano, Guitar, Bass and Drums). This policy made the identity of Early Queen Sound: Overdubbed Vocals and Guitar Orchestration (However, Queen started to use synthesizers 6 years after, in the album “The Game”). //(Taken and rephrased from [|here])//

//Bohemian Rhapsody has a very different structure to the songs we are used to (Verse, Chorus). The section under this I have structured to be a bit more easily understood, however it is not the final analysis.//

Intro //- lasts for about a minute// Verse 1 // - starts at around 1:04 // Chorus - //starts at around 1:27// Verse 2 //- starts at around 2:00// Chorus - //starts at around 2:27// Bridge/Opera Section - //starts at around 3:08// Hard Rock Section - //starts at around 4:13// Guitar Solo - //starts at around 5:05//

Intro A B Hard Rock Section A Guitar Solo

The song begins with four part a cappella sung by Mercury and the piano played by Mercury. Then other instruments gradually come in: bass, drums and finally, electric guitar. A slow half note rhythm is kept by the drums. Mercury’s vocal style is sorrowful, mellow and sings quietly, uses little bit of falsetto, and it is easy to get the meaning of lyrics. When the guitar comes in, the Ballad Part comes to the peak and moves on to the guitar solo by the guitarist Brian May. The guitar solo is bridging the Ballad Part and the next, Opera Part.
 * Ballard Part:**

This part is probably the most significant part of the song. This is perhaps the first song which contains the concept of opera in the rock song. This thick chorus is performed by only three singers: Freddie Mercury (Vocal, Piano), Roger Taylor (Drums) and Brian May (Guitar) in the promotion video, we can see four of Queen singing, but the bassist John Deacon does not sing in the recording. 'Bohemian Rhapsody’ took three weeks to record and in places featured 180 vocal overdubs. The element which made the choir so thick was that three different singers had three totally different characteristic voices. Freddie Mercury had sharp and clear voice and was able to sing in clean falsetto. Roger Taylor, who belonged to a church choir group in his childhood had a husky voice like Rod Stuart and also could reach very high tone. Brian May had normal, rounded soft voice and could reach low tone. The mixture of these three different voices could make this great opera part, which can be the good example of “Wall of Sound (actually the wall of voice)”. The instruments used were: piano, bass and percussion are also used effectively.
 * Opera Part:**

After the Opera Part comes the Hard Rock Part. May’s guitar riff with unison bass is pretty impressive and it sounds almost angry. Taylor’s drumming really rocks. Mercury’s vocal is double-tracked and the way he sings is very different from that in Ballad Part: emotional, angry and seems a little urgent. Then, the song calms down and moves back to the same theme as the introduction. As the bridge of hard rock and one minute of outro, May uses the guitar orchestration, double-tracked guitar melody. When doing it, he uses the amplifier called “Deacy Amp”, which was designed by the bassist John Deacon. At last, the song ends very quietly with only Mercury’s voice and his piano remaining, same as the introduction.
 * Hard Rock Part:**

//The majority of this section has been copy and pasted from [|here]. I have changed it around a lot to be more understandable, but the information is important so I have left it there.//

//References:// http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/queen/bohemianrhapsody.html http://www.youtube.com/ http://chiharu-bo-rhap.blogspot.com.au/2019_11_01_archive.html