Well whoda thunk it! Boh. Rap.

ESBlonde

Probably not the right section but anyway.

After about 43 years I finally have cause to learn the guitar parts to Bohemian Rapsody. I'm in the pit band for a Panto/show in mid Feb next year and among the pieces the MD has selected is Boh.Rap. The cast are expected to sing it like a choir, should be quite something.

I worked it all out and then started to play it up to speed. I then went online to see if there were any cheats/easy fingerings for the multi-layered parts only to find many of the 'tutorials' were close but not right anyway.

The other big suprise was which guitar was best to play it on.

I started on the strat and that got closest to the sound I think (hence why I started there).

I then tried it on theTele, nice enough but i need to raise the top E string for that big bend near the end otherwoise it chokes out.

I tried it on my Aria PE1000 and that was the easiest to play it on, not bad tone either.

Finally (only because I'd not tried it yet) the 335. I was astonished at how good it felt and sounded, I would have thought it was all wrong but no, the best of the bunch.

I don't have a red special or a bunch of AC30s so I used a mid based overdrive with a soft clipping and some decent treble.

It was a bit of a fistful, but getting better with repatition. Anyone else do this live?

crunchman

ESBlonde said:

Probably not the right section but anyway.

After about 43 years I finally have cause to learn the guitar parts to Bohemian Rapsody. I'm in the pit band for a Panto/show in mid Feb next year and among the pieces the MD has selected is Boh.Rap. The cast are expected to sing it like a choir, should be quite something.

I worked it all out and then started to play it up to speed. I then went online to see if there were any cheats/easy fingerings for the multi-layered parts only to find many of the 'tutorials' were close but not right anyway.

The other big suprise was which guitar was best to play it on.

I started on the strat and that got closest to the sound I think (hence why I started there).

I then tried it on theTele, nice enough but i need to raise the top E string for that big bend near the end otherwoise it chokes out.

I tried it on my Aria PE1000 and that was the easiest to play it on, not bad tone either.

Finally (only because I'd not tried it yet) the 335. I was astonished at how good it felt and sounded, I would have thought it was all wrong but no, the best of the bunch.

I don't have a red special or a bunch of AC30s so I used a mid based overdrive with a soft clipping and some decent treble.

It was a bit of a fistful, but getting better with repatition. Anyone else do this live?

Played a version of it for a We Will Rock You production at my daughters' school.  We had two guitars, and the other guy was really good so I was mainly playing rhthym, plus some of the harmony lead parts.  I used my Strat.

Learning some of those songs gave me a new appreciation of how good Queen were.

thegummy

I thought "boh rap" was going to be a Craig David thread

stickyfiddle

Humbuckers are definitely the right answer if you have them. The Red Special has the pickups wired in series, and BR uses at least 2 of them (or possibly all 3 with neck out of phase?) so it's a seriously fat sound from an SS setup.

EricTheWeary

When the cast of We Will Rock You were on TV the other week their guitarist had a FretKing semi with humbuckers. IIRC Spike Edney used Gibson's with P90s to cover the secondary guitar parts in Queen.