She keeps Moet et Chandon in her pretty cabinet
“Let them eat cake” she says, just like Marie Antoinette
A built-in remedy for Khrushchev and Kennedy
At anytime an invitation you can’t decline
Caviar and cigarettes well versed in etiquette, extraordinarily nice….
Words of Freddie Mercury, who was not just a killer queen but also a killer vocalist! In fact, he is the greatest singer ever and it has already been proven by science!
A group of Swedish, Austrian and Czech researchers conducted a research, which was then published in Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology.
Even though there was no confirmation on the urban myth that the legendary singer’s range spanned four full octaves, they uncovered many spellbinding facts about Mercury’s voice.
Despite being recognized as a tenor, the singer was actually closer to a baritone. The researchers based this off six interviews he did which showed a median speaking fundamental frequency of 117.3 Hz.
That revelation, aside from “anecdotal evidence which Mercury once turned down an opera duet because he was afraid fans wouldn’t recognise his baritone voice,” was a great proof that he was talented enough to split away from the base range of his voice.
The researchers also brought in rock singer Daniel Zangger Borch to imitate Mercury’s voice. They observed and filmed his larynx at 4,000 frames per second to look at how Mercury managed to do what he did.
It was found he likely used subharmonics, a singing style in which the ventricular folds vibrate along with the vocal folds. Mercury’s vocal cords moved faster than other people’s. Typical vibrators move between 5.4 Hz and 6.9 Hz, Mercury’s moved 7.04 Hz!
Researchers wrote in the study:
“Quantitative analysis utilizing a newly introduced parameter to assess the regularity of vocal vibrato corroborated its perceptually irregular nature, suggesting that vibrato (ir)regularity is a distinctive feature of the singing voice.
Imitation of subharmonic phonation samples by a professional rock singer, documented by endoscopic high-speed video at 4,132 frames per second, revealed a 3:1 frequency locked vibratory pattern of vocal folds and ventricular folds.”
If you don’t understand what these mean, that’s okay. Many of us also don’t. Let’s just celebrate that it is proven by science that Freddie Mercury is indeed the greatest singer ever.
Happy 72nd birthday chief!
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