The secret of Mercury's incredible singing voice revealed

Now, scientists say they have worked out how queen's Freddie Mercury, was so unique - and the answer lies in his throat.

They say the singer used a technique known as subharmonics, more known for its use in throat singing, to give himself an unparalleled vocal range.

The new study in Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology set out with the ambitious task of analysing Mercury's voice. 

It used archive recordings, as well as a rock singer to imitate Mercury's voice. 

There had been speculation that Mercury's range was over four octaves but this could not be substantiated by the study. 

The lead author on the study, Austrian voice scientist Christian Herbst, states that Mercury's voice range was 'normal for a healthy adult – not more, not less.' 

Contrary to his popular image, he was probably a baritone who sang as a tenor with exceptional control over his voice production technique, the researchers say.

He is even known to have rejected an offer to sing as baritone in an opera duet with singer Montserrat Caballé because he worried that his fans knew him only as a rock singer and would not recognise his voice in baritone. 

The study was unable to prove claims that Mercury possessed a four-octave singing voice. 

The analyzed data, it said, could not conclude nor rule out that 'such a phenomenon existed in Freddie Mercury's voice.'

Nonetheless, the scientists stated that 'it is not too far-fetched to conjecture that Freddie Mercury was rather skillful in adapting his laryngeal configuration to musical needs, thus exhibiting a great variability of sound timbres for enhanced musical expression.'

The team of Austrian, Czech and Swedish authors discovered some interesting findings about the voice once described as 'a force of nature with the velocity of a hurricane.' 

In particular, the study examined the intentional distortion Mercury used to produce so-called 'growl' sounds. 

A-cappella recordings of Mercury highlighted 'a surprisingly high mean fundamental frequency modulation rate (vibrato) of 7.0 Hz, reaching the range of vocal tremor.'

The scientists also identified 'subharmonic vibration' in Mercury's singing voice that likely created his famous 'growl.'

With a rock singer imitating this special type of singing, the authors filmed his larynx with a high-speed camera at over 4,000 frames per second, giving them an understanding of what Mercury would have done physiologically while singing these 'distorted' notes.

'Their occurrence aids in creating the impression of a sound production system driven to its limits, even while used with great finesse,' the paper said. 

'These traits, in combination with the fast and irregular vibrato, might have helped create Freddie Mercury's eccentric and flamboyant stage persona.' 

The authors reconstructed how Freddie Mercury, in his flamboyant and eccentric stage persona, drove his vocal system to its limits.

What they found was an intriguing physical phenomenon called subharmonics. 

This is seen in a more extreme way in Tuvan throat singing where not only the vocal folds vibrate, but also a pair of tissue structures called ventricular folds, which are not normally used for speaking or classical singing. 

Mercury's more fragile side is also fitting with his hallmark vibrato (a rapid, slight variation in pitch). Most pop/rock singers maintain a regular vibrato, whilst his was more irregular, and unusually fast. 

'The analysis of rock singer D.Z.-B.’s imitation of Freddie Mercury’s ‘rough’ singing style revealed subharmonic vibration created by 3:1 frequency locking of the vocal folds and the ventricular folds: during each vibration of the ventricular folds the vocal folds completed three oscillations,' the team wrote.

This type of voice production, involving vibrating ventricular folds at various degrees, has been termed ‘growl’ (45), ‘dist’ (14), ‘throat-singing’ (46), or ‘vocal-ventricular mode’ (VVM) (42). The umbrella term ‘distortion’ (47) or ‘intentional distortion’ (ID) (48) has been suggested for singing voice effects where, in addition to the ventricular folds, also other supraglottal structures are engaged in vibration.

'Spectrograms of sound production by both D.Z.-B. and Freddie Mercury show comparable subharmonic patterns (period tripling). 

'It is therefore likely that frequency-locked ventricular fold vibration also occurred in the original sample of Freddie Mercury’s ‘rough’ singing which was imitated in this study.' 

(www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3548327/The-secret-Freddie-Mercury-s-incredible-singing-voice-revealed-Scientists-say-exceptional-vocal-control-turned-Queen-frontman-force-nature.html#ixzz46RXmyZ2s)