I was just thinking- how many tracks are there in the vaults with the guide vocals sang by Roger or Brian- songs that eventually ended up on albums with Freddie's vocals...? Anyone knows any egzamples...? There was sth about "Innuendo" sang by Roger, Brian sang "Hitman" on demo... What else...?
ALSO- are there any known versions sang by Freddie in the studio of the songs that on the album feature either Brian or Roger...?
PS.:
Forgive my poor gramma...:)
I think Rock It was recorded completely sung by both Roger and Freddie, then they chose to take the intro of Freddie's version and the body of Roger's.
I think there's Tear It Up with Brian's vocal too. There must be Headlong as well
I think most of the songs Brian and Roger wrote were recorded with guide vocals by them, just to show Freddie the melody and the way they wanted him to sing. But the question is....do they still excist?
What I want to know is: how did John present songs to the band? He would have had to do some sort of a guide vocal to show them how the tune would go. Imagine John presenting them with You're My Best Friend or Break Free?
John did sing Another One Bites The Dust to Freddie. In the later days John recorded the demo in his house with melody lines and handed the lyrics to Fred
I could sell you the following demos sung by Brian:
Prophet's Song
Dreamer's Ball
Save Me
Sail Away Sweet Sister (bridge)
Hammer To Fall
Who Wants To Live Forever (second verse and refrain)
Scandal
I Want It All
One thousand euros each could be a fair price, considering all the efforts to get hold of them...
Of course Fred could read scores, but he didn't do it. It'd be faster for John to sing the notes to Fred or in later years do them in keyboard and handle the lyrics. Also consider that a big part of melodies in John's tracks come from Freddie (My Baby Does Me, probably Cool Cat or Pain Is So Close...)
"One thousand euros each could be a fair price, considering all the efforts to get hold of them... "
Getting friendly with David Richards probably helped eh? ;) I'm refering to your profile pic. BTW, you're the most handsome person I've seen around here.. no offense to anyone else :-P
Why do you say "Of course Fred could read scores" Seb?
I'd be very surprised if he could sight-read at anything more than the most basic level. There was never any need for him to be able to sight-read during his career, and I suspect the only time he encountered the practice was during the piano lessons he took at a young age.
But being a proficient sight-reader involves a lot of work and practice, and if those skills are suddenly dropped from use at a youngish age it would be hard to easily recall them for use in later life.
We know that Fred used his own crazy form of notation, involving As Bs and Cs for the harmonies in the opera-section of Bo Rhap. If Fred was able to sight-read, he should have been able to write in standard notation, which would have been the best way of annotating the harmonies he had in mind for that opera section.
> I'd be very surprised if he could sight-read at anything more than the most basic level. There was never any need for him to be able to sight-read during his career, and I suspect the only time he enocountered the practice was during the piano lessons he took at a young age.
It's a good point. But I didn't mean that he could play a Rachmaninov's concert reading the score. I mean that he could read. On basic level? on an expert level? I didn't specify that. If what Freddie said is true - perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't, sometimes he's too humble about his own skills, maybe he wasn't Yngwie Malmsteen but I'm sure he knew more than three chords in the guitar - then yeah it's on a basic level - just like me, I guess.
I have one in which he says he can't : "Very little. I don't need it".
But also he mentioned he sometimes has to go back to the musical sheets to work out old songs. As I said, I don't think he can read a piano concert by Rachmaninov and play it right away, but I think he went beyond "very little". Also, what's "very little" for him?
Btw:
> If Fred was able to sight-read, he should have been able to write in standard notation, which would have been the best way of annotating the harmonies he had in mind for that opera section.
You said it, he had them in his mind, and he was going to sing over 70% of them, so why would he write them in a score, it's not like he was writting it for a choir or something, same as the instrumental parts. Moreover, I doubt Roger could read them and if Brian could it'd be on a very basic level too.