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
Father To Son
Composer: Brian May
Meter: 4/4
Key: (g minor), G-Major, F-Major, E-Major
Form:
Intro | Verse | Chorus |
| Verse | Chorus |
re-Intro | Bridge 1 I - II | Solo (AAAAAAB - AAAAC)|
| Verse | Bridge 2 |
| Chorus'| Chorus'| Chorus'| Chorus'| Chorus'| Chorus'| Chorus'|
"Father To Son" is a power ballad with balladistic and heavy parts. The form of the first half resembles to "Liar":
intro > two cycles of verse - chorus > re-intro > new sections. The second half of the song is mostly acyclic with a repetitive ending of seven choruses in a row fading slowly out. The live version ended with Bridge 2.
The homekey is G Major with sections shifting the tonal center to F and E respectively.
Intro
The song is segued from the outro of "Procession" with antiphonal pulsing guitar beeps. Music-wisey the song starts with falling arpeggios. Guitar chords join in m.3. From this point on the harmony is a combination of stepwise descending bass (shades of White Queen, the next track on the album) and double pedal point on top. The bass uses the minor scale creating a minor tonality. Note the minor-Major crossrelation between m5 and m9 (Dm vs. D).
g:
| Gsus2 | - |
| i | - |
| Gsus2 | - | Dm/F | - | D#* | - | D | - |
| i | - | v | - | | - | V | - |
Verse
The 16 meausre verse has square phrasing (4+4+4+4 A B A'B). The two subphrases of the first phrase are distinctly arranged with slow rhythms of accompaniment, especially in the third Verse where this phrase is slowed down and accompanied by piano. The rest of the section is accompanied by simple multitrack guitar harmonies building a massive wall of sound.
The second phrase features the Queen-favourized cliche: I > V > vi with descending bass. The dotted harmonic rhythm im m.9-12 returns in later songs of May ("Las Palabras...", "Dreamers Ball").
The use of Major ending chord (E) instead of the diatonic Em (vi) has a Pickardy third flavour - another cross-reference with "White Queen".
G:
| C | - | D | - |
| IV | - | V | - |
| G | D/F# | Em | -7 |
| I | V | vi | - |
| C | - G | D | - c |
| IV | - I | V | - IV|
| G | Bm | E | - |
| I | iii | VI | - |
The second Verse changes the tune and the repetition pattern (A'B'A B").
Chorus
The eight measure Chorus has four melodic phrases (2+2+2+2, ABBC), the last two can be threated as one. The second one is paralelling the first. The phrases start on downbeat except the last one with an upbeat. The vocals are three part harmonized in parallel thrids to eachother.
G:
| G (7) | - |
| I | - |
|C(maj7)| - |
| IV | - |
| Am (7)| - |
| ii | - |
| D | - |
| V | - |
The second chorus has altered lyrics. The song ends with series of choruses fading out. Lyrics-wise they creat an alternating ABABABA pattern. Some changes: the lead melody of the first three phrases are identicla of the top harmony part of the first chorus and sung unisono. The lead melody of last phrase is one is identical with that of the first chorus, but sung one octave higher and the harmonies are arranged one inversion higher. The closing dominant chord is changed to tonic creating a closed harmonic shape. The form is changed to a more repetitive DDDC' (from ABBC).
This chorus with its simple parallel diatonic vocal harmonies offers a good target for harmony and apoggiatura analysis in context of the actual chords:
first choruses the same in melodic degrees in contex
* * * * * * * : emphasys of the actual chords:
| G A B | G A B | G A B | B A | : top harmony vocal | 1 2 3 | 5 6 7 | 7 1 2 | 6 5 |
| D E F | E F G | E F# G | G F# | : middle harmony vocal | 5 6 7 | 3 4 5 | 5 6 7 | 4 3 |
| B C D | C D E | C D E | E D | : lead vocal | 3 4 5 | 1 2 3 | 3 4 5 | 2 1 |
| G | C | Am | D | | G | C | Am | D |
the final choruses:
| G A B | G A B | G A B | E D |
| 1 2 3 | 5 6 7 | 7 1 2 | 6 5 |
| G | C | Am | G |
As you can see the emphasized notes are dominated by the notes of the actual chord notes (1st, 3rd, 5th degrees - this is the usual way) except five places. Note the third phrase (Am) of the variant chorus, m7th and 2nd degrees are on both emphasized beat.
The closing choruses are superimposed with semi-improvised guitar solo. You can identify the fragments that must be more or less composed and the ones that must be improvised. Remarkable how much the composed fragmets are superior to the improvised ones in terms of catchiness.
Both the guitar solo and the rhythm department make frequent use of triplets (both slow and fast). The melodic fragments of the guitar solo are intervening the that of the lead vocal frequently with overlap. Guitar feedback fades in and segued to the next track "White Queen".
Bridge 1 I-II
After the re-Intro we have a Bridge-like middle section with two longer subsections.
The first of these shifts the tonal center to F major. Over "pedal" chord we have three phrases of descending parallel harmonies, joined by ascending harmonies from the second phrase with half tempo. These harmonies resemble in style to both "Good Vibrations" (Beach Boys) and "Day Tripper" (Beatles).
The stereo beeps are borrowed from the intro.
| F | - | - | - |
| I | - | - | - |
| F | - | - | - |
| I | - | - | - |
| F | - | - | - |
| I | - | - | - |
| G# | -9 | -#4 | - |
|bIII | - | - | - |
The next subsection shits the tonal center to E Major. We have five four-measure phrases (ABB'BB") where the vocal phrases fall on the first half of the harmonic phrases and the last measure add some guitar riff-work.
| E | - | - | D A |
| I | - | - |bVII IV|
| E | - | - | D A |
| I | - | - |bVII IV|
| E | - | - |riff Asus4 |
| I | - | - | IV |
| E | - | - | D A |
| I | - | - |bVII IV|
| E | - | D | - |
| I | - | bVII | - |
Solo
This is like an instrumental development of the preceding Bridge. The backing track is based on four-measure riff-phrases (AAAB). The riff is substituted with pentatonic bass figures during phrases 3-4. The second phrase of the guitar solo has some randomized fragments achived by using the tremolo bar while playing simple pentatonic figures.
| E* | E* | E* | D A |
| I | - | - |bVII IV |
| E* | E* | E* | D A |
| I | - | - |bVII IV |
| E5 | E5 | E5 | A |
| I | - | - | IV |
| E5 | E5 | E5 | D A/C# |
| I | - | - |bVII IV |
| E* | E* | E* | D A |
| I | - | - |bVII IV |
| E* | E* | E* | D A |
| I | - | - |bVII IV |
The last phrase slows down (just virtually) and ends with a dramatic guitar feedback.
| E5 | - | D | - | C | - | - | - |
e:i | - | VII | - | VI | - | - | - |
Then the intrumental solo goes on with some stereo trickery and some short fragments echoed.
E:
| E5 | E5 | E5 | D A |
| I | - | - |bVII IV|
| E5 | E5 | E5 | D A |
| I | - | - |bVII IV|
| E5 | E5 | E5 | D A |
| I | - | - |bVII IV|
| E5 | E5 | E5 | D A |
| I | - | - |bVII IV|
The last phrase is similar to the slow down phrase of the previous subsection.
| E5 | - | D | - | Cmaj7| - |...Verse overlap
e:i | - | VII | - | VI | - |
G:| IV | - |...
Bridge 2
We have a 14 measure alternate Bridge following the last Verse. The first two measures phrase with a single prolonged chord is a melodic (more precisely: rhythmic) variant of that of the Chorus. A seventh is also dropped in the harmonies.
| G | -7 |
| I | - |
| C | - G | D | Em | Asus4 | A |
| IV | - I | V | vi | V/V | - |
| C | - | Am | - | G | - |
| IV | - | ii | - | I | - |
The third phrase is characterized by triplets and stepwise ascending melodic phrases. Drums holds a pause of approximately three measures.