Queen’s Idiolect

This chapter documents the key characteristics of Queen’s idiolect as pertaining to harmonic gestures and structure, textural layers and the sound-box, and arrangement gestures. It is argued that the harmonic structures of Queen’s songs are defined through their consistent movement between tonic and dominant chords, which is embellished through rich chromatic gestures. The textures of Queen’s songs sit in one of five archetypal combinations involving piano, electric guitars, bass guitar, and drums, which are enhanced through vocals, lead guitars, synthesisers, and non-rock instruments. Queen’s sound-box structures are timbrally balanced and often present some form of dynamic movement of sounds in a virtual space. The different idiolect traits allow one to understand most of Queen’s songs either in terms of articulating a common compositional strategy (akin to a form of musical logic) or presenting sonic patterns that are like musical fingerprints.