hey chris liepe here with marc martel
what's up chris hey thank you for coming to the channel my pleasure glad to be here
we are talking about how to sing like freddie mercury easy no problem if anybody is qualified
the most qualified on the planet then it's funny because
i've done some videos on freddie mercury on the channel and nearly every time i release a video
on freddie mercury someone says you should talk to mark martel well it's happening here it is
folks you got your wish if you'd like to go deeper with mark click the link below and join his free
warm-ups course vocal warm-ups so your voice won't bite the dust i don't know if
you can tell but we just came up with that name and that's what we're going with so
how to sing like freddie mercury well three easy steps of course okay that's all it takes folks
number one definitely play with your placement and your resonances freddie mercury was a guy who
milked his voice for all that it was worth i mean he explored every everything every range low high
uh resonances from the back to the front high larynx low larynx another thing is when people
ask me how do i sound like freddie mercury okay there's natural genetics at play but for me
now in particular when i'm singing queen you can still sing like freddie mercury
when you're not singing queen but queen in particular uh freddy had what is called the rp
diction or accent and and for me that's what i do because i'm not going to sing queen in
an american accent in my natural north american accent um and so to give that little bit extra
of well there's freddie mercury the pronunciat the pronunciation comes into play like the word tears
which is more of a one-syllable word when i would say it in a north american accent tears tears
tears tears and when freddie sang it in particular in that line it's almost two syllables tias
you're right so it's a fine line between singing like freddie mercury using his techniques and
imitating it's a really fine line that i play um and you can really
you know lean into that accent thing or just kind of pull the techniques out of it that
that cause you to have that exuberance that he had and the playfulness that he had with
vowels and consonants and resonance right um and that plays into the second thing we're
going to talk about all of this plays into the fact that he's he's always a character yes and
that feeds this i mean what he does with his face yeah and moving around and what he does
vocally moving his resonance forward and back and his his larynx is free to move all over the place
um so is his body everywhere absolutely if you press pause on any live queen performance
freddy is likely doing some kind of superhero pose and you know those were signature moves
for him but that just goes to say that you need to use your whole body and um he would he was not
afraid to step into the ugly if also you you press pause while he's singing he's likely making a voi
a face like you know something that's ugly but that's what he needs to get
his tone out um to push himself to where he's not being boring he was never boring and that's some
a phrase that people throw out a lot about freddie mercury if you're thinking about your own voice
you can't possibly sound animated if you are not animated you might be able to fake it a little bit
but the you know we we've said this multiple times this week that your body follows the mind that
follows the body yeah and so this full engagement that that is the essence of freddie mercury so
much is built off of that yeah and i don't want to speak into something i i don't know because
obviously i never met him but i would i feel like maybe on stage is where he felt the most himself
and that's where he felt the freest to express himself um to the you know to the the highest
extent and so um i think he he used that moment on stage to just really get his work out you know
and also it's a it's a fine line between uh pushing yourself and straining right and but
we also know that freddy would lose his voice i mean he he didn't hold anything back and and i'm
also always a little bit reluctant to talk about how to really sing like freddie mercury because
there's an element of danger in it and pushing yourself too far
for the sake of your craft and sometimes you got to do that and but be smart about it at the same
time but a line that comes to mind when i think of really getting your body and and face and you know
behind the resonance is the the line mama in in bohemian rhapsody
i mean you're like that one word mama has so much variation within the resonance of that
and not to mention the vibrato he's putting on it and uh he moves it back and forth mama
and the oohs are not just a a light it's it's down it's a lower you would say lower larynx
yeah and and he's usually sitting at the piano for that anyway but he's still getting
his body involved right yeah and it's that idea that you you can kind of be this mama
and exaggerating it in your own body even maybe more so than you would see him doing it yeah
so that you you get this feeling of getting everything involved take it to an extreme be
more ridiculous even and then dial it back that's going to get you into the essence of what he does
yeah and the cool thing about if you look at all of freddie mercury's singing career is that he
changed drastically throughout it he started a lot more leaning into the more i would say feminine
aspects of his voice he had a much lighter thinner rasp in the early days which i really love and
um you know in the late 70s he kind of changed the character he played on stage as to more of a macho
representation of his voice and leaned into the more gruff um um more intense growly um aspects
of of what he could do um and he still had that he could still do that that light rasp as well but he
i think he discovered that he had this extra gear of just power um later on in his career too so
what i draw from that is that he was open i mean supremely open to new sounds to experiencing new
sounds with his voice all the time he didn't get type cast into any one i've got to sound
like this or this is my sound or whatever which i think is easy to do as a vocalist right well this
is my sound he let his sound evolve i mean song to song line the line absolutely just
take bohemian rhapsody as the prime example it starts mama soft as you can get and then
all of a sudden we're ridiculous i see a little like the fake opera thing and he's doing
most of the voices in in that i know i know of the other guys got involved in that
middle section too but then after that he just powers into the most the rockiest of rock
so you think you can stomp me and spit in my eye and look at how when even when he just did
that line right there look at how much his face is changing you when you're listening to it in in
the whole context you don't really think about it that much or when you but then when you see
you talk just like like you're normally talking and then you you do that line there is so much
extreme going on there yeah we got to put that together when we're really thinking about how
to sing like freddie mercury it's in the execution yeah and it's so far removed from what most of us
would normally experience with our face and with our body that's right that's right and that that
kind of brings us into the third point that you were talking about and that is the issue of
of fear and like breaking out of your your normal shell right we've got the character
aspect get your whole body involved become sort of this alternate version of yourself and you can't
really do that if you're harboring fear absolutely singing like freddie mercury is in itself
an exercise in um unlocking your own personal boundaries and what you think are your boundaries
and not being afraid to fail uh there's so many videos like i said of freddie losing his voice and
and even when i'm struggling with vocal health on the road when it's back-to-back shows i remember
okay um in particular i think back to queen in tokyo at some point in the late 70s and
you can see these videos online and his voice is just in terrible shape but he's still having fun
with it he's chain he's on the fly changing the melody so that he can he can get out the words
um but to see a master of the craft still struggling gives me the encouragement that uh us
singers we tend to be very introspective and get down on ourselves when when um you know we don't
think that we can do something and when we just don't have the gas in the tank to do something
um you know it it's a challenge for us to it's its chance for us rather to work around those
limitations that we have but also look fear in the face and say you're not going to stop me
don't stop me now that's what i should have said the show must go on so many things you can say
thank you yeah if you want to go deeper with mark again click the link below and join his free
warm-ups course what was the name again mark martell's vocal warm-up so that your voice
doesn't bite the dust that sounds about right click the link below it's so catchy