FREDDIE
MERCURY'S

VOICE VISUALIZED



Freddie Mercury, British singer-songwriter and lead vocalist of rock band Queen, defied stereotypes and shattered convention to become one of the most beloved entertainers on the planet. With timeless hits like Bohemian Rhapsody and Don't Stop Me Now, his unique stage presence and his great vocal range has left a resounding legacy that provokes and inspires listeners and musicians alike.


One of Freddie Mercury's greatest claims to fame is his four-octave pitch range.

The singers’ voice range was 48 semitones within the pitch range of F2 (about 87.31 Hz), in All Dead All Dead, to E6 (about 1318.51 Hz), in It’s Late.

An analysis of voice tracks isolated from instrument recordings with data from Spotify and aubio confirms the extraordinary range of the singer.

This piece takes a closer look at Queen’s 10 most popular tracks, to better understand Freddie Mercury’s voice.

Freddie Mercury's pitch range

The singer's vocal range compared to other great vocalists from the 70s.

Hover over the bars to see the vocalists' lowest and highest pitch.
Hover over a note to see the song where the vocalist reached the corresponding note.
Click on a piano key to hear the note.


Although Freddie Mercury did not have the largest pitch range of all time, he stacks up pretty decently against other well-known singers of his time. Surprisingly, Freddie Mercury beats Whitney Houston when it comes to higher pitch and also ranks higher on pitch range than Tina Turner.

However, he has a smaller pitch range than Paul McCartney, David Bowie and Axl Rose. The latter, a baritone who occupies the first position in the rank, is known for using falsettos, a method of voice production used to sing notes higher than their normal range.

Besides having a surprisingly high pitch range, Mercury also stood out for his atypical vibrato, a rapid and slight variation in pitch. A 2016 study published in the journal Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology concluded that Mercury's vocal cords moved faster than the average person's. While a typical vibrato will fluctuate between 5.4 Hz and 6.9 Hz, Mercury’s was 7.04 Hz, according to the report. "These traits, in combination with the fast and irregular vibrato, might have helped create Freddie Mercury's eccentric and flamboyant stage persona”, states the report.



Freddie Mercury’s pitch range in Queen’s most popular tracks

The pitch commonality between Queen’s top 10 songs on Spotify

Press the buttons to hear the songs.





When comparing Queen’s most popular tracks, some similarities can be noticed. The most evident one is probably the flow of pitch throughout the song: almost every track starts with a higher pitch, which decreases halfway through it (on the bottom of the radial).

The visual pattern of each chart also convey some interesting aspects about the songs. For example, We Will Rock You has fairly distinct blocky plateaus, as it has many sections of contiguous near-monotone, whereas Bohemian Rhapsody or Don't Stop Me Now are visually much finer, representing a more constant pitch variation.



Sentiment of tracks

In addition to pitch range, another interesting aspect of Freddie Mercury’s music is the sentiment attached to the songs’ lyrics. When compared to the popularity score, the positiveness of the tracks also vary.

The relative proportion of happy songs seems to have a slight inverse relationship with popularity - the most highly popular songs tend to be either neutral or sad.




Popularity vs. Positivity

Popularity of 0 Queen songs by positiveness:
how popular are happy, neutral and sad tracks?






    Team: Júlia Ledur, Ivy Chen, Natachi Mez, Fei-Tzin Lee.

    Methodology:

    The analysis on Freddie Mercury’s pitch was performed on a cappella versions of the 10 songs by Queen with the highest popularity scores on Spotify. The popularity of a track is a value between 0 and 100, with 100 being the most popular. It is calculated by algorithm and is based, in the most part, on the total number of plays the track has had and how recent those plays are.

    Data on the songs’ pitch was collected using aubio, a Python library that includes a collection of algorithms and tools to extract musical meaning from audio signals, such as tempo, pitch, and onset. The data was then cleaned and transformed, using a calculation that averaged the pitch per second. This transformation was necessary since Freddie Mercury’s vibrato is higher than average, meaning that his pitch oscillates more constantly than most singers’.

    Valence data was collected from Spotify’s API. It’s a measure from 0.0 to 1.0 describing the musical positiveness conveyed by a track. Tracks with high valence sound more positive (e.g. happy, cheerful, euphoric), while tracks with low valence sound more negative (e.g. sad, depressed, angry).