Tie Your Mother Down

Queen

Brian May = treble booster into a cranked AC30: saturated but vocal, with huge upper mids and singing sustain. On a Marshall we use Ultra Gain at moderate gain, the Tube Screamer standing in for the treble booster, light compression for sustain, and a mid-forward GE-7 curve.

Front of amp: Cheeky Pint (light) → TS Mini (on) · FX loop: GE-7 (on) → Spark Mini (solos) → Flashback (off) → HOF (on, light).

Marshall DSL20H Ultra Gain — Lead 1

Channel: Ultra Gain

Mode: Lead 1

Tone Shift: OFF (May's tone is ALL mids)

Neck or middle pickup gets closest to the Red Special's warmth; roll your guitar tone knob back to ~7 for leads.

Tube Screamer Mini On — treble-booster stand-in

Moderate drive, tone up, level hot — pushing the amp's front end hard with extra top is exactly what May's Treble Booster does.

Cheeky Pint Compressor On — light

Just a touch to even things out and feed the sustain on held bends. If your Cheeky Pint has a blend knob, set it around 60% wet. It should never audibly "squish".

TC Spark Mini — FX Loop Solo boost

Clean post-gain lift for the solo and the intro melody — the tone stays identical, you just step forward in the mix.

Flashback Mini — FX Loop Bypassed

Off — May's live rig has delays, but in a one-guitar band it muddies the riff. The GE-7 + boost carry the solo.

Hall of Fame Mini — FX Loop On — light

A touch of hall opens up the solo and the intro melody — Brian May's tone always has air around it. Keep it subtle.

Boss GE-7 — FX Loop On — AC30 mid hump

Pushes the Marshall toward the AC30's vocal midrange; the 6.4 kHz cut tames Marshall fizz that May's tone never has. In the loop it reshapes the finished distorted tone — ideal for this kind of amp-voicing trick.

Squier P Bass PJ pickups

Pure neck pickup, tone rolled down — Deacon's warm round thump. Bridge pickup off.

Bass — Ashdown Perfect Ten Squier P Bass

John Deacon: fingers, warm and round. P Bass tone rolled to ~40%. He walks more than you remember — learn the fills, they make the song. (Mix stays at min — it's the line-in blend, not part of your tone.)

The Guitar Before The Riff

On the album, the sound before the main riff is Brian May's multitracked "endless rise" — guitars sliding upward in octaves and crossfading into each other (a Shepard-tone illusion that opens and closes A Day at the Races). It's a studio construction, not a single playable part, but you can fake the character solo with volume-swelled octaves climbing the A major scale:

  Octave shapes (mute the A & G strings), swell each pair in with the volume knob,
  slide between positions, let them bleed together. Slow and free-time.
e|------------------------------------------------------|
B|------------------------------------------------------|
G|------------------------------------------------------|
D|--7/--9/--11/--12/--14/--16/--18/--19~~---------------|
A|------------------------------------------------------|
E|--5/--7/--9/---10/--12/--14/--16/--17~~---------------|
   A    B   C#   D    E    F#   G#   A  ... start over an octave down and repeat

Two lessons that teach exactly this part, with Brian May's harmonies and tabs:

Frank Campese — full performance + tutorial with on-screen tabs, all harmony parts (3:20)

James Rundle — breakdown of the Shepard-tone intro, note by note (6:42)

The live arrangement replaces that with a slow, vocal intro melody over D5/C5 chords — Songsterr has a dedicated tab of it ("Tie Your Mother Down intro", first 26 bars at ~100 bpm, Lead Guitar track). Opening phrases:

  Slow, ~100 bpm, heavy vibrato — over D5 / C5 power chords
e|--------------------------|----------------------------------|
B|--------------------------|--10--8--10---10--10--8--10~~-8---|
G|--7--7--7--5--7~~--7--7---|----------------------------------|
D|--------------------------|----------------------------------|

e|------------------------------|-------------------------------------|
B|--8~~--8--8--8--6--8~~--8--6--|-------------------------------------|
G|------------------------------|--10--12--12--12--10-------12h14~~---|
D|------------------------------|----------------------12~~-----------|
                                   ...builds, then the main A riff crashes in

Open the intro tab on Songsterr ↗

Tab Screenshots

Lesson-video tab captures, in playing order:

Songsterr Tab

Open "Tie Your Mother Down" tab on Songsterr ↗

Opens in a new window — Songsterr blocks embedding in other sites (X-Frame-Options), so it can't be shown inline. "Rhythm" is the main track; switch to "Lead" for the solo. Note: this tab starts at the main riff — the pre-riff intro is covered in the section above.