The Book
Introduction What is it all good for? Scope of work Project History
Music theory in nutshell Harmony Chord notation used in the analyses The degrees of notes Chord functions Keys, Sharps and flats, neighbour keys Guitar friendly and piano-friendly keys Modulations, key changes Parallel key modulations Relative key modulations Neighbour key modulations Combined modulations Step-up/down modulations Unusual modulations Key-shifts Pivot Modulation Borrowed chords Cliche chord progressions Modes Ambigous harmony Rhythms Exercies Syncopations Shuffle beat Metrical modulations, metrical anomalies Compound meters Disorienting Rhythms Songforms General aesthatics of popular and rock music
Queen - The four of them as musicians Brian May Roger Taylor Freddie Mercury John Deacon
Songwriting Analyses
Smile
Ibex
"No Synth" era
Queen
Keep Yourself Alive
Doing All Right
Great King Rat
My Fairy King
Liar
The Night Comes Down
Modern Times Rock'n'roll
Son And Daughter
Jesus
Seven Seas Of Rhye
Silver Salmon
Hangman
Mad The Swine
Queen II
Procession
Father To Son
White Queen (As It Began)
Some Day One Day
The Loser In The End
Ogre Battle
The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke
Nevermore
March Of The Black Queen
Funny How Love Is
Seven Seas Of Rhye
See What A Fool I've Been
Sheer Heart Attack
Brighton Rock
Killer Queen
Tenement Funster
Flick Of The Wrist
Lily Of The Valley
Now I'm Here
In The Lap Of The Gods
Stone Cold Crazy
Dear Friends
Misfire
Bring Back That Leroy Brown
She Makes Me
In The Lap Of The Gods... Revisited
A Night At The Opera
Death On Two Legs
Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon
I'm In Love With My Car
You're My Best Friend
Sweet Lady
'39
Seaside Rendezvous
The Prophet's Song
Love Of My Life
Good Company
Bohemian Rhapsody
God Save The Queen
A Day At The Races
Tie Your Mother Down
You Take My Breath Away
Long Away
The Millionaire Waltz
You And I
Somebody To Love
White Man
Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy
Drowse
Teo Torriate
News Of The World
We Will Rock You
We Are The Champions
Sheer Heart Attack
All Dead All Dead
Spread Your Wings
Fight From The Inside
Get Down Make Love
Sleeping On The Sidewalk
Who Needs You
It's Late
My Melancholy Blues
Feelings
Jazz
Mustapha
Fat Bottomed Girls
Jealousy
Bicycle Race
If You Can't Beat Them
Let Me Entertain You
Dead On Time
In Only Seven Days
Dreamers Ball
Fun It
Leaving Home Ain't Easy
Don't Stop Me Now
More Of That Jazz
Live performances in the 70s
Modern-era Queen
The Game
Play The Game
Dragon Attack
Another One Bites The Dust
Need Your Loving Tonight
Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Rock It (prime Jive)
Don't Try Suicide
Sail Away Sweet Sister
Coming Soon
Save Me
Human Body
Sandbox
Flash Gordon
Flash's Theme
In The Space Capsule
Ming's Theme
The Ring
Football Fight
In The Death Cell
Execution Of Flash
The Kiss
Arboria
Escape From The Swamp
Flash To The Rescue
Vultan's Theme
Battle Theme
The Wedding March
Marriage Of Dale And Ming
Flash's Theme Reprise
Crash Dive On Mingo City
The Hero
Hot Space
Staying Power
Dancer
Back Chat
Body Language
Action This Day
Put Out The Fire
Life Is Real
Calling All Girls
Las Palabras De Amor
Cool Cat
Under Pressure
Soul Brother
The Works
Radio Ga Ga
Tear It Up
It's A Hard Life
Man On The Prowl
Machines (or 'Back To Humans')
I Want To Break Free
Keep Passing The Open Windows
Hammer To Fall
Is This The World We Created?
I Go Crazy
A Kind Of Magic
One Vision
A Kind Of Magic
One Year Of Love
Pain Is So Close To Pleasure
Friends Will Be Friends
Who Wants To Live Forever
Gimme The Prize (Kurgan's Theme)
Don't Lose Your Head
Princes Of The Universe
The Miracle
Party
Khashoggi's Ship
The Miracle
I Want It All
The Invisible Man
Breakthru
Rain Must Fall
Scandal
My Baby Does Me
Was It All Worth It
Hang On In There
Chinese Torture
Hijack My Heart
My Life Has Been Saved
Stealin'
New Life Is Born
Dog With A Bone
Guess We're Fallin Out
Innuendo
Innuendo
I'm Going Slightly Mad
Headlong
I Can't Live With You
Don't Try So Hard
Ride The Wild Wind
All God's People
These Are The Days Of Our Lives
Delilah
The Hitman
Bijou
The Show Must Go On
Lost Opportunity
Face It Alone
Self Made Man
My Secret Fantasy
Made In Heaven
It's A Beautiful Day
Made In Heaven
Let Me Live
Mother Love
My Life Has Been Saved
I Was Born To Love You
Heaven For Everyone
Too Much Love Will Kill You
You Don't Fool Me
A Winter's Tale
My Life Has Been Saved
It's A Beautiful Day (reprise)
No-One But You
Live performances in the 80s
Appendix Special instruments Special effects Special playing techniques Classical quotes Musical terms Index References
In Only Seven Days
Composer: John Deacon
Album: Jazz, track 8,
Single (B-side of Don't Stop Me Now): 26 january, 1979
Meter: 8/8 (3/8 + 3/8 + 2/8 compound meter), metric anomalies in Bridge 2.
Key: D Major
Form:
| Intro | Verse | Verse | Bridge 1 |1| Bridge 2 |
| instr. Verse | Verse | Bridge 1 |1'| Outro I-II |
In Only Seven Days is a sweet ballad in a end-of-summer mood. The song nicely backed with nice jazzy chords arranged for piano a buzzy sounding acoustic guitar (probably played by John Deacon himself) and Brian May's guitar harmonies with a sweet, unique sound. IOSD is the only song on the album without any vocal harmonies. The guitar harmonies are mostly just "backing" the song most of the time simply playing the chords in multitrack format. The instrumental third verse is not something we could call a lead guitar solo.
The 3+3+2 compound rhythm shows a curious cross-reference with Brian's ballad "Leaving Home..." on the same side of the album. One must have influenced the other in this respect. While the irregular beat in Bridge 2 is not characteristic for Deacon's songwriting, it is somewhat characteristic for the Jazz album as whole.
Freddie's singing is occassionally spiced with sentimental "flat" notes and ornaments.
The songform has no Chorus, but has two different bridges. The Bridge 2 section has duobled phrases, except this the song is remarkably non-repetitive.
Notable similarities with Spread Your Wings:
- key of D Major, with no modulation (SYW has an enharmonic modulation to b minor)
- the songform of two cycles, where the cycles are built from three different vocal sections where the last section of the cycle is not repeated. We also have instrumental spacer with an acoustic guitar fill in both SYW and IOSD where the song stops for a moment.
- no vocal harmonies,
- no "real" guitar solo,
- occassional use of bVII chord
- "additional" acoustic guitar
- story-telling lyrics
- appeearance of the iv and bVII chords
Walkthrough
-----------
Intro
It's a one measure figure repeated on piano in the treble range. The chords are those starting the Verse.
| A D/A | A D/A |
| V I | V I |
Verse
This section is eight measure long but with a non-square phrasing. The chord progression is full of those jazzy things.
| A/D D | A/D D | A/B Bm7 |
| V I | V I | V vi |
| E7/9 | D5/maj7 G#dim/D | D5/maj7 : D - A - C# E7/9: E - B - D - F#
| ii |...
| Bm A7 Am/D | Gmaj7 > 6 | Gmaj7/A A(6)|
| vi V v | IV | V |
The drums start playing steady beats in the second verse, while in the first one Roger just plays sparely some cymbals. Bass also enters on the downbeat of the second verse. Note the second verse is tad faster than the fisrt.
Note the second and fourth Verses a myxolydian scale (ie. A to A in D Major) orchestrated for unisono/octave guitars and piano that substitutes the closing A chord.
The third verse is instrumental. The guitar orchestration (with many multiple recorded tracks) mainly follows the backing chords with occassioal short melodic motifs. Note the guitar harmony with that sweet hawai-esque tone closing the section and opens the next Verse.
Bridge 1 - Spacer
The first phrase of this seven measure section has a chain of fifth bass progression.
| D(7) | B7 | Em7 | A7 | D |
| I |V-of-ii| ii | V | I |
| C9 | D |
| bVII | I |
Note how measure 3-4 repeats the melody of measure 1-2 a third lower.
The second incarnation of Bridge 1 plays the spacer in a repeated form, and completed with piano. The fourth measure of this second Bridge 1 has 4/4 scanning of words against the assymetric beats.
Bridge 2
In contrast with the other two this section starts its melodic phrases with upbeats (A B A) of three eighths that makes the backing beat sound like 3+2+3 during the first double phrase. Each four phrase start with a non-tonic and close on the tonic chord.
/--------- 2x --------\
| Em7 (9>8) | Gm D |
| ii | iv D |
Note measure 4 is shortened to 5/8. For the rest of the section the backing beat gets somewhat irregular which still sounds natural because it follows the beat of the lyrics. The harmony keeps the repeated form.
6/8 9/8 4/4 2/4
| Gdim/Bb | Bm7 E7 | A* | D | A* : parallel sixth driven harmony (A > D > Em > F#m)
| | vi V-of-V| V | I | over pedal bass A
4/4 2/4 4/4 4/4
| Gdim/Bb Bm7 | E7 | A* | D |
| vi |V-of-V| V | I |
More rhythmic anomalies start in measure 4 which is shortened to 5/8. From here the measure lengths:
5/8 > 6/8 > 9/8 > 4/4 > 2/4 > 4/4 > 2/4 where the measure lengthts are combined with pre-downbeat and off-beat accents, the latter in the "A*" measures. Note there are other ways of parsing these phrases to measures.
Outro I-II
The instrumental first subsection of the Outro is a variant of the beginning of the Verse. It closes with a fermata.
| A/D D | A/D D | C * | Bm7 | C* : C-G-D-F#
| I | I | bVII | vi |
The song closes with ad-lib jazzy chords played on buzzy acoustic guitar and some lead vocal.This time I spell the chords:
G#-F#-B > E-G#-D > D-G-D-F#-B > G-D-F# > D-A-D-F#
The closing one is the tonic (D).