Under Pressure

Words and music by Queen and David Bowie

Recording information by Philipp

This song started as a private jam-session and ended up as a no.1 hit.

First thing to record was drum and bass. Then there are two piano tracks. The first track plays all the chords and most of this stuff, the other track is an overdub, containing this famous little riff which appears all the time.

Then there were two keyboard tracks recorded:

Keyboard 1 plays a analogue voice-horn mixed sound, which you can hear very good. It plays small fills during the whole song.
The other keyboard plays a bell like tone from the last verse ("Can't we give ourselves") till the end. It always plays a note on "1" and "3".

And there's an organ,too. I think that the organ is done with keyboard, although it sounds very close to an original organ. It plays some chords between 2:08 and 2:15.

But now: GUITAR! At first Brian recorded a basic track with clean sound, compressor/limiter and little bit of a phasing sound. Than he did a second track with the same sound, but playing a bit different things. These two guitars make a very tricky kind of "sound carpet" together. They're playing nearly the whole time and it's very difficult to hear what is guitar 1 and what is guitar 2. At 2:17 there is a third guitar fading in, at that part where the song gets aggressive.The sound has got a bit of distorton and the guitar plays chords till 3:29.

Vocal: There is the backing vocal track doing the Mmmhs and Ohhs in the second verse and the backing choir in the last verse (cause love's such an old...). There are actually three and not two lead vocal tracks. The third one is a overdub at the end of the second verse by Freddie (Pray tomorrow gets me higher). The rest is one track by David Bowie and one Track by Freddie.... and I love this song.....

Tempo:114
Key:D