Hi all,
I have read a few things saying that the harmonies during the chorus are some of the most intricate queen did.
I am no expert and to me I can't hear anything that special.
Can someone explain what is so good about the harmonies during the choruses?
The harmonies for the live version are more or less the same as the studio - the differences are:
- The vocal harmonies go all the way through the chorus in each iteration, rather than having 'though you're many years away' be a solo line in the first chorus.
- Freddie takes the lead vocal and Brian takes the lower harmony, which is done by Freddie on the studio version (for the first half of the chorus, anyway - the second half of the chorus from 'write your letters...' is all Brian on the album).
- Hence, the second half of the chorus is rearranged much more so than the first - Brian sings one of the two low harmonies on the album, the other is dropped, and Roger adds a high harmony which wasn't present on the album. Of course, Freddie sings the high vocal line rather than Brian.
- The notes sung by all three on the line 'calling you' in the last chorus are different than on the album.
- Studio version has each vocal line multi tracked many times, as Queen tended to do.
Houston 77 is the only version of '39 I've heard where the harmonies are really bad - Brian was just completely out of key, clearly struggling to hit the low notes.
As for Liam's question - they're very nice harmonies, and there's moments which you might call intricate (a suspended second, a major seventh, and a fifth harmonising together at one point, for instance, as well as multiple points where the vocal lines diverge), but they're not earth-shattering or anything, as far as my understanding tells me. One thing I find pretty interesting about the chorus harmonies is that the high harmony on 'hear me calling you', while not really what we'd consider the lead vocal, is the defining melody for that section.
In fact, the more I listen, the more pops up - e.g. the slide down on the word 'call' in 'hear my call' by the high falsetto harmonies, done by Roger and Brian, which is entirely unique to the second chorus. Also, in the third chorus, the completely different note choices on 'hear me calling you' are noteworthy. These wonderful details they worked in can certainly be called intricate.
Listen to the point at about 2:50 in c_matt's stripped mix for what is the most unusual harmony line in the song, in my opinion - it's brought to the forefront of the mix, so you can't miss it. It's a low one of Brian's which is fairly buried on the official version, and it appears in the section 'write your letters in the sand for the day I take your hand in the land that our grandchildren knew'. Its melody seems to jump all over the place, but it works. This is the harmony that was dropped for the live version.
This is all without even touching on the intro and bridge vocals, which I haven't tried to analyse - there's so much going on there.
Intricate? No, not really, although it's certainly interesting.
Brian was (is?) an absolute master of arranging each iteration differently (see 'Prophet's Song' for a song where he went even further).
I'm not sure where to find the original link either, but I reuploaded the stripped mix as well as his normal mix of '39, as the latter also highlights some stuff which isn't as prominent on the album version. link
I analysed this song for quite a while doing a cover version of it for a guitar lesson video-type thingy...
I don't believe the intro and middle sections were really that involved. I always tended to think there was more going on than actually was. (if that makes any sense)?
