QueenZone discussion #1151242
An observation about 'Spread Your Wings'
| mooghead 20.11.2008 16:47 |
Was listening to the karaoke version of this and I noticed that there is not one point in the song that contains any sort of harmony, backing vocal or double tracking. Its just a single lead vocal from start to finish. For a Queen song of this nature (full band, several guitars, quiet bits, loud bits etc etc) its a rarity. That is all. |
| david (galashiels) 20.11.2008 17:58 |
never noticed that before.maybe thats why it seems a soft or gentle rock song. |
| david (galashiels) 20.11.2008 18:12 |
the sort of song that will go well using headphones,turned up loud and with a large malt. |
| Saif 20.11.2008 22:24 |
It's a power ballad, not a soft rock song. I think... |
| ~~Procession~~ 21.11.2008 12:12 |
I read somewhere that this was Queen's first song that didn't contain any background vocals. |
| FriedChicken 22.11.2008 05:27 |
There IS harmony |
| mooghead 22.11.2008 08:41 |
Where? |
| thomasquinn 32989 22.11.2008 12:39 |
At every point where more than one (or if you're picky, more than two) notes sound at the same time? |
| mooghead 22.11.2008 16:18 |
hilarious |
| FriedChicken 23.11.2008 05:55 |
It's not a joke. |
| mooghead 23.11.2008 08:34 |
Pedantic then. You are so very clever. Have a biscuit. |
| queentel 23.11.2008 18:20 |
My favourite queen song, simple, but genius, anyone got any ideas on theory behind it? i will share my theory tomorrow, its late, and im sleepy ! |
| mooghead 24.11.2008 08:44 |
queentel wrote: i will share my theory tomorrow, Really, theres no need. |
| Dane 24.11.2008 09:24 |
News of the World was going to be a rough-fancyless album, very straightforward. The backing tracks of most songs are 80% of the final product. I guess Queen wanted to proove they could deliver a quick studio album wich rocked just as hard as their previous (very elaborate) albums. Sleeping on the Sidewalk is even a one take song with all band members playing in one room together. I Never noticed SYW had no VOCAL-harmonies, but that just increases my respect for the album. Great stuff! My favourite album of 1977 ;) |
| mooghead 24.11.2008 16:23 |
Dane wrote: Sleeping on the Sidewalk is even a one take song with all band members playing in one room together. A few duff bass notes backs that up. |
| kdj2hot 24.11.2008 21:24 |
~~Procession~~ wrote: I read somewhere that this was Queen's first song that didn't contain any background vocals. /queenzone/1017887.html Yes I noticed that last yr |
| Yara 24.11.2008 22:57 |
News of the World is my favorite Queen album and I think they got as good as they could get there musically and also lyrically. Spread your wings, for one, is a perfect example of a beautiful song with very interesting lyrics. Though I do tend to agree that the song isn't as overproduced, so to say, as many songs featured in A Night at the Opera, it is still, as almost always when it comes to Queen, deceptively simple. By there isn't "any harmony" Mooghead probably meant that there are no vertical vocal chords in the song. There's no music without harmony: harmony is the foundation of every piece worth calling music, and it is much more than people singing together or tunes sounding at the same time... But these are obviously technicalities. What I do disagree with is the notion that there are no vertical vocal chords in the song, for instance - there is. If you start analyzing the song, and with the help of both the ears and some studio tools, one does notice that Freddie's vocals have been mixed in a way that they are themselves vertical vocal chords, with slightly different melodic lines in each take. In the line "his boss said to him..." what one does listen to is a product of Freddie singing the verse first a 1/4 semitone up and then a 1/2 semitone down, as to live some room for tension and expectation to increase. That's one of the reasons why the song sounds so in desperate need of being resolved - the tension gradually builds on as the vocals become more complex and nuanced - and in order to produce such effect, it was necessary for Freddie to sing together with...Freddie in the studio. People often think that he avoided some of the most aggressive lines when he used to sing the song live because of a "fear of high notes", which is absolutely not the case because he hits them, and then higher ones, in parts of the song demanding lower notes in the original. His singing is deceptive and clever. Some of the live versions showcase this rather well: he enriches the verses so much in terms of choice of notes and phrasing that the song, instead of sounding, as in the original, as a cry for change or a call for some move, comes across to the listener in many live versions as a masterpiece of resignation - live, it sounds much more cruel, because it's as if Freddie were telling us the end of that story, which is sad: that was it, he aimed higher but he didn't have the energy to go through - and Freddie tells us this in the live performances as someone who's recalling a melancholic story: quite the opposite of the energetic, demanding and, above all, hopeful sounding original. The hope in the original gets replaced by a gorgeous, resignated and poignant account of how the guy didn't spread his wings, after all - it's subtle, and it's there all over. So one always wonders at Freddie's musical intelligence, which is remarkable. Even if the song may sound much more straightforward harmonically, it's simply not so - it's very complex in the original version - Freddie's vocals are vertically harmonized through the mixing process and the rest of the harmony, talking from the perspective of the singer, is quite complicated. Regards! |
| mooghead 25.11.2008 10:07 |
You boring bastard. There is no double tracking in this song. Freddies voice never appears more than once at the same time throughout. If it does, tell us the minutes and seconds. |
| Phoenix501 25.11.2008 11:34 |
mooghead wrote: You boring bastard. There is no double tracking in this song. Freddies voice never appears more than once at the same time throughout. If it does, tell us the minutes and seconds. I disagree with you, whether Yara is right or wrong with the studio analysis, he (or she) is only telling us how they personally interpret this great song. That's the beauty of Queen, we all see different things in different songs... it's what makes us love the band so much. It's what makes them such a great live act too, some people may think Freddie cleverly disguises not being able to hit certain notes live, while others look deeper into why he may have changed the notes to give the song a new slant. Maybe Yara should have just written, "I think it's a good song too"... save being called a "boring bastard" for telling us what the song means to him. |
| Rick 25.11.2008 13:21 |
Jesus mooghead, please sod off with your negativity. |
| FriedChicken 25.11.2008 15:56 |
"By there isn't "any harmony" Mooghead probably meant that there are no vertical vocal chords in the song. There's no music without harmony: harmony is the foundation of every piece worth calling music, and it is much more than people singing together or tunes sounding at the same time... " Gregorian chants don't have harmony, but it definately is music |
| Yara 25.11.2008 19:30 |
FriedChicken wrote: "By there isn't "any harmony" Mooghead probably meant that there are no vertical vocal chords in the song. There's no music without harmony: harmony is the foundation of every piece worth calling music, and it is much more than people singing together or tunes sounding at the same time... " Gregorian chants don't have harmony, but it definately is music There is! By definition! First, Gregorian chants have a quite rich history and can't be reduced to a single model. That said, even the earliest gregorian chants, never mind the intervals involded (whether unison or not), followed a quite strict harmonic pattern. Very strict, in fact. @ Phonenix -> Yara is usually used to name females. As for the rest, nonsense: if I just said that the song is good, of course I'd not be contributing with anything to the discussion of the song - it's exactly because I laid out what I think of both the studio and live performances that the basis for a discussion, whether there's agreement or disagreement, can be established. @ Mooghead -> It's not the first time you come on me. And you do it specially when we're discussing Queen musically: if you don't like my messages, if they are so boring and irritate you so much, I do advise you not to read them, just to skip it. I tried to make your thread relevant: you started a thread to just to state something, not to generate discussion. You made your observation, which I think most people are familiar with, and then just ended with something like: "that's it". So you opened up a thread not to generate any discussion, but simply to spend some of your time with something or to receive a confirmation of what you stated. Ah, and I did mention where I think there's the vertical vocal chord in disguise: "His boss said to him...", for instance. You may agree with it or not, fair play, but if you're duty bound to pick up on me personally everytime I post something, I think it's better for you, for your health even, to skip my messages. I do debate such statements as "Gregorian chants didn't have harmony" or "There isn't any harmony in Spread Your Wings". I don't say "with all due respect", as Allen's character Splendini obsessively says in the movie "Scoop", because respect should be often implied in any decent discussion and it depends on both sides of the debate. Harmony is the principle of music - it's one of the main points of controversy between Schoenberg and John Cage: the former being a genius in harmony, the latter being quite limited in his understanding of the matter - when he realized that his failure to grasp harmony as well as one would expect, he tried to experiment with new things, like 4:33... Regards. |
| FriedChicken 26.11.2008 03:21 |
Hmm, I don't agree, I learned that harmony is the vertical structure of music. And the original Gregorian music is ALWAYS unisono. When there's a second, or third melody line added, it's no longer Gregorian music. Of course later there were instruments, like organ or additional vocal melodies added. But then you can't call it Gregorian music anymore. |
| mooghead 26.11.2008 06:55 |
Yara What I don't like is the way you continually hijack other people's threads to spout your drivel about the song that happens to be being discussed. Ultimately, as always, your mini novel has added absolutely nothing to the conversation, just your massive ego being wanked into oblivion. |
| mooghead 26.11.2008 06:57 |
Phoenix501 wrote:mooghead wrote: You boring bastard. There is no double tracking in this song. Freddies voice never appears more than once at the same time throughout. If it does, tell us the minutes and seconds.Yara should have just written, "I think it's a good song too"... Exactly, that is what was said after all. Why use a thousand words when seven will do. |
| mooghead 26.11.2008 06:58 |
Yara wrote:FriedChicken wrote: "By there isn't "any harmony" Mooghead probably meant that there are no vertical vocal chords in the song. There's no music without harmony: harmony is the foundation of every piece worth calling music, and it is much more than people singing together or tunes sounding at the same time... " Gregorian chants don't have harmony, but it definately is music@ Mooghead -> It's not the first time you come on me. Hmmmm...... |
| Yara 26.11.2008 12:05 |
@ mooghead: you're just wrong. First, the thread isn't yours as long as it addresses a subject of interest to many people in a public forum. Most importantly, regardless of what you think about me or how boring I sound to you, I didn't hijack your thread: it was precisely the opposite - I respected your thread by making comments on, and restricting these comments to, the song you refered to: the fact we don't agree doesn't mean that I hijacked "your" thread. Again, I didn't insult anybody. If one thinks I'm boring or doesn't like my message, one's fully entitled to skip it - it's so simple. I try to express my thoughts about the songs and maybe generate some discussion on it: I get support and agreement, many times, and also disagreement, which is fine. But this personal ranting against someone who's actually trying to develop your thread further and keep it going is just nonsense. And it's not the first time; and it has happened before in threads that had not been created by you and where what I had to say was deemed interesting by many people, whether they agreed with me or not. I respected the topic you created and took it seriously, otherwise I'd just say "the song is good" and there would be no point in creating the thread anyway - if the thread is aimed at getting people to say "I guess this is good", "I guess not", well, it gets kinda poor, doesn't it? @ FriedChicken - Well, one can harmonize a melody aiming exactly at producing monotony or a certain degree of it and a homophonic texture. If you're thinking about dealing with intervals based on any given scale, whether it's unison or not, you're already thinking harmonically by definition - harmony is the foundation of all music, be it horizontal or vertical, be it a five part harmony vocal chorus with consonant notes, a sophisticated counterpoint or the lullaby one happened to listen to when they were children. Music is harmony. That's what modern composers came to realize - and that's what Schoenberg not only thought, but demonstrated - he showed that struggling with harmony, as John Cage did, would inevitably lead to such pieces as 4:33 -> that is, once you try to deny in or eliminate harmony from music - that is, eliminating the very notion of organizing the sound material according to a certain pattern, chaotic as it may be! - you're already challenging the definition of music itself, which was precisely what John Cage did. |
| Lester Burnham 26.11.2008 12:16 |
mooghead wrote:Phoenix501 wrote:Exactly, that is what was said after all. Why use a thousand words when seven will do.mooghead wrote: You boring bastard. There is no double tracking in this song. Freddies voice never appears more than once at the same time throughout. If it does, tell us the minutes and seconds.Yara should have just written, "I think it's a good song too"... Yeah man, let's suppress creative discussion and make it all seven word soundbites about what's good and what's not. In fact, who needs discussion at all when we can just go around spouting off monosyllabic insults at each other? Maybe we can just post pictures of people giving each other the finger, or a thumbs up or thumbs down whenever we like or don't like something. Oops, sorry, I know that was a lot of text to digest. Here, I'll condense it for those hard of thinking: You're an idiot. |
| gnomo 26.11.2008 12:26 |
Lester Burnham wrote: Oops, sorry, I know that was a lot of text to digest. Here, I'll condense it for those hard of thinking: You're an idiot. ... chapeau ...! |
| gnomo 26.11.2008 12:40 |
Yara wrote: Some of the live versions showcase this rather well: he enriches the verses so much in terms of choice of notes and phrasing that the song, instead of sounding, as in the original, as a cry for change or a call for some move, comes across to the listener in many live versions as a masterpiece of resignation - live, it sounds much more cruel, because it's as if Freddie were telling us the end of that story, which is sad: that was it, he aimed higher but he didn't have the energy to go through. Very interesting points you raised, Yara. I'll have to listen again (I generally avoid it), but maybe you finally found the answer to one of my biggest questions about Queen - why that song, on a purely emotional level, always grated on my nerves so much... Thank you. |
| Wiley 26.11.2008 13:14 |
Ahh, 4'33" by John Cage. That's the only musical piece from that particular period that I can perform in its entirety and it sounds as good or better than what Cage intended it to be :). Now seriously, if we supress posters that take time to put their thoughts into words and place them in related threads, this forum would finally implode into a big pile of poo. Come on, give Yara a break. It's not like she's W. K. Mahler. |
| April 26.11.2008 13:52 |
As far as I remember SYWings was written by John Deacon, which means he's a perfect ballad writer. |
| Phoenix501 26.11.2008 23:22 |
Yara wrote: @ Phonenix -> Yara is usually used to name females. As for the rest, nonsense: if I just said that the song is good, of course I'd not be contributing with anything to the discussion of the song - it's exactly because I laid out what I think of both the studio and live performances that the basis for a discussion, whether there's agreement or disagreement, can be established. Are you saying I'm talking nonsense? I was defending what you said and agreeing with you? Why is it nonsense? My whole point was that you COULD have just said "it was good" to stop being called a "boring bastard" by people like Monghead, but instead you told us what the song meant to you which WAS interesting to me. Absolutely baffled! Maybe you should take time to read other messages before trying to be so articulate with your own responses? WOW |