Keep Passing The Open Windows
Written by Freddie Mercury
Recording information by Philipp (PraxisNothaft@t-online.de)
Recorded in 1983 at The Record Plant, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Released in February 1984 on the album The Works.
General:
A very nice and clever song, which was originally intended for the movie "The Hotel New Hampshire". It contains many of the classic Queen-trademarks, as well as more beat-driven passages. Many memorable vocals and sophisticated instrumental work!
Drums:
The basic drum-track (recorded as backing-track together with bass, piano and some guitar) features a very big drum-kit, containing bass-drum, a sharp snare, many toms and electric drums, some cymbals and a hi-hat (panned left).
Roger's drumming is very tight and he does really a great job (difficult stuff!).
Apparently they needed many mics for the kit and it occupied quite a lot of tracks. In the intro there are some cymbal-rolls overdubbed. Furthermore there's a collection of ride cymbals with different "pitches" to form a kind of melody.
Around 0:30 and 4:05 there were some clicks (Roger hits the rim of the snare with the stick: tack-tack-tack) added.
Bass:
The fast bass-riffs were probably played with a fretless bass.
The sound is very mellow and has lots of bass-frequencies.
Probably recorded via D.I and mixed into the center.
Piano:
Played by Freddie. The Piano was picked up with two mics (the low strings are slightly left, the higher ones are more right) and thus mixed stereo.
Keyboards:
There is a synth with a string-sound (with slow attack), that is playing little passages throughout the song.
Guitars:
Starring Brian and the Red Special (with some great licks).
The first guitar you hear in the song is a fill at 0:32. This is played through a VoxAc30-amp (distorted), a treble-booster and of course a delay.
This guitar appears several times throughout the song and is easy to spot.
The basic backing-track, however, is played on two other guitar tracks. This is all the distorted chord/rhythm-stuff (interludes,verses, bridge). Another guitar (high notes) joins at 1:43, 1:53, 2:38, 3:00 (feedbacks) and 3:15.
In the chorus and the outro there's another guitar which is panned around (sweeping from left to right and so on...) and fading in and out.
Brian is playing fast hammer-on/pull-off-licks here and is using (as well as on the other guitars) the Vox-amp. Furthermore this guitar is strongly reverbed and has tiny stereo delay (only noticable in the outro).
The solo-section:(3:18-4:00)
It starts with one guitar with lots of treble and mid-gain. Then two other guitar with a similar sound are continuing (one left,one right) and end in a break with lots of feedback. After this,a choir of three (and after some bars a fourth guitar is doubling) guitars is playing. The last part is done by a lead-guitar in the middle and three choir-guitar with lots of treble and gain (one guitar is left, the other two are right). Most of these guitars were probably recorded with a treble-booster and the Deacy-amp (a small hi-fi transistor-amp, built by John), which Brian used for such choirs with lots of treble.
Vocals:
The famous line in the chorus and the outro ("just believe, just keep passing the open windows"), was recorded separately (Freddie double-tracked his voice).
The backing-vocals in the bridge are done by Brian, Freddie and Roger (everyone double-tracked his voice).
The rest belongs to Freddie's lead-vocals. His voice is slightly stereo-delay on some places.
By the way:
The phrase "Just Keep Passing The Open Windows" is an important line from the book "The Hotel New Hampshire". Queen wanted to make a soundtrack for the film of the same name, but as their own album (The Works) was too time-consuming, they decided to stop the soundtrack-work. Keep Passing The Open Window is one of the songs that were written for the film.