Freddie Mercury, lead singer of legendary rock band, Queen, gave the world one of the most famous and recognisable singing voices in music history. But how did he manage to achieve such vocal range? 
 
 A new study in Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology set out with the ambitious task of analysing Mercury's voice. By selecting archive recordings, as well as using a rock singer to imitate, a 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." 
 
 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. He is 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. 
 
 In many ways, this deeper scholarly interest and analysis of Mercury's voice moves to affirm many of the singer's stage persona traits. In particular, the study examined the intentional distortion Mercury used to produce so-called 'growl' sounds. 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. The authors could thus reconstruct 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. 
 
 This deeper study into one of the world's best known vocal artists contributes not only to the scholarly understanding of voice but also to Freddie Mercury's continuing legacy. 
 
 Explore further: Just sing! 
 
 More information: Christian T. Herbst et al. Freddie Mercury—acoustic analysis of speaking fundamental frequency, vibrato, and subharmonics, Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology (2016). DOI: 10.3109/14015439.2016.1156737 
 
 

 Regardless of what they might think personally about Queen, most rock critics and music fans alike recognize the immense vocal talent that was the great Freddie Mercury. Still, in case there was ever any doubt, new analysis of both Mercury’s singing and speaking voices has shed fresh light on just how special his pipes really were. 
 
 A group of Austrian, Czech, and Swedish researchers conducted the research, the results of which were published on Friday in Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology (via AlphaGalileo). While they couldn’t confirm the long-held belief that Mercury’s range spanned four full octaves, they did discover some interesting tidbits about the expanse of his voice. For one, despite being known largely as a tenor, he was more likely a baritone. They based this assumption off analysis of six interviews that revealed a median speaking fundamental frequency of 117.3 Hz. That, coupled with anecdotal evidence that Mercury once turned down an opera duet because he was afraid fans wouldn’t recognize his baritone voice, led the conclusion that the singer was talented enough to jump out of his base range. 
 
 
 
 It’s true that without a living test subject, the researchers’ conclusions are largely unconformable. To get closer to the truth, however, the team brought in professional rock singer Daniel Zangger-Borch to imitate Mercury’s voice. They filmed his larynx at 4,000 frames per second in order to look at exactly how the Queen frontman created those iconic rough growls and jaw-dropping vibratos. What they discovered was that he likely employed subharmonics, a singing style where the ventricular folds vibrate along with the vocal folds. Most humans never speak or sing with their ventricular folds unless they’re Tuvan throat singers, so the fact that this popular rock vocalist was probably dealing with subharmonics is pretty incredible. 
 
 What’s more, Mercury’s vocal cords just moved faster than other people’s. While a typical vibrato will fluctuate between 5.4 Hz and 6.9 Hz, Mercury’s was 7.04 Hz. To look at that in a more scientific way, a perfect sine wave for vibrato assumes the value of 1, which is pretty close to where famous opera singer Luciano Pavarotti sat. Mercury, on the other hand, averaged a value of 0.57, meaning he was vibrating something in his throat even Pavarotti couldn’t move. 
 
 There’s a lot of scientific and analytical music terminology in the full study (which can be read here), but the conclusion was clear from the beginning: Freddie Mercury had a voice unlike anyone else in rock ‘n’ roll, and that led to one of the most unique singers and stage performers of all time. 
 
 As they say, the proof is in the pudding:
– Freddie Mercury had one of the most memorable voices in music, and now researchers have unlocked some of the mystery behind it. For one thing, his vocal chords moved faster than normal. But the bigger part of the puzzle involves something called subharmonics, which the Consequence of Sound defines as a "singing style where the ventricular folds vibrate along with the vocal folds." It is most famously employed by Tuvan throat singers, and while Mercury didn't achieve Tuvan levels, it's still quite a feat for a rock vocalist to even come close. Subharmonics help "in creating the impression of a sound production system driven to its limits, even while used with great finesse," write the Austrian, Czech, and Swedish researchers in the Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology journal. "These traits, in combination with the fast and irregular vibrato, might have helped create Freddie Mercury's eccentric and flamboyant stage persona." The researchers figured this out in part by asking a singer to imitate Mercury's style, and then filming what was happening in his larynx with a high-speed camera. They also analyzed several old interviews with Mercury to get a sense of his normal speaking voice. After all this, they were not able to substantiate long-held speculation that Mercury's voice spanned four octaves. In fact, his range was "normal for a healthy adult—not more, not less," says one of the researchers. But they did conclude that Mercury was likely a natural baritone, albeit one "who sang as a tenor with exceptional control over his voice production technique," says a post at Phys.org. The bottom line: Mercury "had a voice unlike anyone else in rock 'n' roll, and that led to one of the most unique singers and stage performers of all time," writes Ben Kaye at CoS. (If you can't carry a tune like Mercury, keep singing to get better.)