L3 - Melody and Rhythm
Lesson Objectives:
To understand the differences in phrase lengths in 'Killer Queen' verse and chorus
To understand some of the rhythmic features including compound time, signature, swung quavers and syncopation
To analyse some of the melodic features focusing on the verse
To look at the contribution of the backing vocals
To look at the melodic structure of the guitar solo
Phrase Lengths
A phrase is a musical sentence and like in much poetry, a lot of music follows a regular pattern of phrase lengths. Music from Mozart to Ed Sheeran follows a repeated pattern of 4 or 8 bar phrases.
The melody of ‘Killer Queen’ does not conform to this pattern. Lets look at the 1st verse.
Rhythmic Features
The time signature of ‘Killer Queen’ is 12/8. This is a compound time signature, so every beat is a dotted crotchet made up of 3 quavers.
There are 4 beats in every bar (4 x 3 = 12) and so it is known as quadruple compound time.
It could be thought of as 4/4 but the beats are mainly divided into long-short patterns.
This long-short pattern, rather than the 2 equal quavers, is known as a shuffle rhythm or swung quavers - easier to write in 12/8 than 4/4.
Looking at the melody, you might also have noticed that hardly any phrases begin on the 1st beat (downbeat) of the bar but instead starts with a ‘pick-up’ or anacrusis.
Syncopation is present throughout much of ‘Killer Queen’ and is easy to spot by looking out for notes that are tied.
Melody
When we look at melodies in music with lyrics, we need to ask the question: How are the words set—melissmatic or syllabic? In ‘Music For a While’ we saw how there was a mixture of both. In ‘Killer
Queen’ the words are nearly always set syllabically.
Let’s look at the shape of the first 4 bar phrase of the verse
We can see how it is all set syllabically. The melody is in C minor and focuses on the notes C and G—the tonic and dominant of C minor (the relative minor of the tonic Eb).
The 3rd bar is the same as the 1st bar and in the 4th bar it rises to a top G.
The 2nd phase descends down from the top G to the dominant of Eb major (Bb) before returning to the top G
The final phrase of the verse has a 2 bar sequence and also shows off the huge range of Mercury's voice, moving up to a falsetto top Bb before ending on the dominant Bb, an octave lower for the start of the chorus
Backing Vocals
A massive part of the ‘Queen sound’ is the use of backing vocals.
This is most obvious and amazing in their song ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, which in places has over 180 separate vocal overdubs creating a wall of sound!
In ‘Killer Queen’ the beginnings of this can be heard in the chorus with Freddie Mercury’s multi-tracked backing vocals producing a series of parallel harmonies in 3 and 4 parts.
Review Questions:
1) What is the time signature of Killer Queen?
2) How many beats in each bar?
3) What type of time signature is this?
4) How would you describe the quavers is this had been in compound 4/4?
5) Describe the phrase length in the 1st verse of Killer Queen?
6) Describe three features of the melody of the first three phrases of Killer Queen?