by Mark Hansen

Created on: March 09, 2009

Recently I've been watching documentaries about the making of famous albums. The one I saw last night revealed the secrets of Queen's classic album - "A Night at the Opera". The band Queen are renowned for their distinctive vocal harmony style. When Freddy Mercury was alive they excelled at background vocals. Their worldwide hit "Bohemian Rhapsody" is a testament to brilliant vocal layers. But how did they do it?

Firstly lets look at their vocalists. They had three main singers - Freddy Mercury, Brian May and Roger Taylor. Each of them had their own particular sound. Together their voices blended perfectly, in much the same way that ABBA's Agnetha and Anni-Frid's voices did. When they sang live, they sang in 3 part harmonies but when they recorded they used some other tricks to build an incredibly thick and rich vocal blend.

They loved the recording process because in the studio they could experiment and were free to try anything. "A Night at the Opera" is sometimes said to be the most expensive album ever made. This is mainly because of how many instrument tracks and vocal layers they recorded to mix down. Sometimes they ran out of new tracks on the recording tape and had to use existing tracks in places where the instrument or voice part was silent.

Today, with modern technology it is possible to record almost unlimited tracks, so you can now emulate what Queen pioneered. Their main trick with layering background vocals was for all 3 singers to sing all the vocal parts. By that I mean if there were 4 vocal parts, say bass, tenor, alto and soprano, then Freddy would sing all 4 parts, and so would Brian, and finally Roger. In practice they sang each part together so they achieved perfect synchronisation and pitch. They also triple tracked each part, which means they sang each part 3 times and then mixed them together to form, say, one bass part.

Let me sum this all up so you can see just how clever and effective they were. Each of the 3 singers sang the 4 vocal parts 3 times, which adds up to 36 voices (3 x 4 x 3). In effect, they created a large choir using only 3 people, and because they sang and recorded together so tightly, the end result sounded less like a choir and more like "Bohemian Rhapsody". Sometimes there were more than 4 vocal parts to sing, so there were even more voices in the background layer.

I can highly recommend listening to "A Night at the Opera" to hear layered background vocals at their finest. Watching documentaries about famous albums can also give you lots of tips and tricks to help with your own singing and recording.

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