structure

From almost the very beginning of the song, you can hear the differences in structure and instruments. Our version of under pressure begins with the riff repeated 4 times, accompanied by the piano, and then the guitars join in for another 4 times, before the vocals begin, whereas in the original the riff is heard ten times, before scatting begins and then the vocals. In our version, quite a few verses have been cut, which makes our structure a lot more stripped down and simple than the original, where the structure can be written as: intro, verse 1, bridge 1, verse 2, bridge 1, bridge 2, outro, compared to ours, which is: intro, verse 1, verse 2, verse 2, bridge, outro. 

tone colour

The next main difference that can be heard is the difference in the tone colour of the vocals. In the original, the vocalists are obviously male, and ours female, but there are also two voices singing (Freddy mercury and David bowie) but ours only has one. The tone colour of the original song could be described as heavy, energetic, strong. ours would be more careful and quiet words such as warm, light, etc. Our version also differentiates itself with the original instrument-wise, with 1 vocalist, 2 guitars, 2 basses, piano and drumkit, compared to the original with 2 vocalists, synth, drums, bass and electric guitar.

duration

There was a bit of a debate about this with my fellow band members, but I believe our cover of under pressure was slower than the original version. It is not so much as to be a significant detail, but I do think that our version is a bit behind the original, if only by a few microseconds (and it was definitely intentional). Both versions of the songs are played in a regular metre of 4/4.

pitch

While the key of the song remains the same (D major), some pitches change in the individual instrument groups. The two main ones that stood out to me were the bass guitar riff at the beginning and the vocals. The bass guitar notes are slightly different for some reason I can't explain because I was not in charge of the bass, but if you listen closely, you can hear that they don't quite correspond. The second aspect of pitch that is changed is in the singing. there are a few factors that influenced this decision to be made, such as the difference in the vocal range of the original singers (Freddy mercury and David bowie) and me. The fact that there were two of them also helped us to change the pitches of the notes to suit my vocal range better.

texture

As soon as the song begins, the texture of both songs can be described as polyphonic, with only the bass playing the riff, alongside the piano or synth. As the song continues, though other instruments start joining in, making the song homophonic, with the vocals taking over the melody, while the other parts accompany it. The texture could be described as full, although neither versions sound overly cluttered or complicated.

dynamics

The original version of under pressure has a variety of changes in dynamics and loudness/quietness and uses these techniques to create suspense and to make the song intriguing and interesting to listen to, again our version is a quieter and more stripped back cover of the original so we use fewer dynamics and expressive techniques to keep the laid back feel to our song.