words words word

February 10, 2022 8:10 AM

Is there a word or phrase that describes the phenomenon of a person singing the lyrics to the song, and also adding the musical phrase after the lyrics ended? See the italics: "Sweet Caroline.... bum bum bum" or "here comes the sun, do-do do-do"
posted by snerson to Writing & Language (16 answers total)

Those are vocables
posted by SamanthaK at 8:14 AM on February 10, 2022 [8 favorites]

Or more specifically, non-lexical vocables.
posted by zamboni at 8:18 AM on February 10, 2022 [4 favorites]

Wouldn't non-lexical vocables be more related to lyrics like the 'fa-la-la-la-la' part of 'Deck the Halls'? This seems to be describing the specific phenomenon of transliterating musical motifs created by instruments *into* an NLV format.
posted by FatherDagon at 8:28 AM on February 10, 2022 [3 favorites]

We should probably distinguish between Here Comes The Sun, where doo da doo doo is part of the original lyrics, and Sweet Caroline, where "ba ba ba" is a folk tradition. (I blame the Red Sox.)

Both are non-lexical vocables that echo an instrumental part, but one was added after the fact.
posted by zamboni at 8:38 AM on February 10, 2022 [8 favorites]

Response by poster: Aces. Thanks y'all!
posted by snerson at 8:45 AM on February 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

FatherDagon is right, a non-lexical vocable is part of a song, like in yodeling or scat etc. what people do with Sweet Caroline is vocalizing the horn riff, which is fundamentally a different thing. I don't think there's a word for adapting a song for performance by turning an instrumental phrase into a non-lexical vocalization, but maybe there should be.
posted by SaltySalticid at 9:19 AM on February 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

what people do with Sweet Caroline is vocalizing the horn riff

Which they do… with non-lexical vocables.

which is fundamentally a different thing

Can you explain why it's different? It's a "a syllable or sound without lexical or referential meaning, vocalized as part of a song or sung melody." The fact that people added it after the fact to sing along with Charles Calello's horn doesn't make it not a vocable.
posted by zamboni at 9:32 AM on February 10, 2022

Right, it's not not a non-lexical vocable, it's just that 'non-lexical vocable' doesn't mean 'choosing to perform a song by singing an instrumental part', which is what (I thought) was being asked.
posted by SaltySalticid at 9:40 AM on February 10, 2022

I think of it as “scatting 101”.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 9:55 AM on February 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: SaltySalticid, that is what I was asking! And the answer of "non-lexible vocable" is not not an answer, it's just... ballpark. It may be that the phenomenon is not that common of an occurrence, so there isn't a truly specific word/phrase for it yet. Sweet Caroline / Here Comes the Sun are the only examples I could think of, and with Here Comes the Sun, it's actually written in.

It's just a really interesting thing, because it seems to be cultural, like zamboni says, a folk tradition, to really stomp on the ba ba ba / bum bum bum of Sweet Caroline.
posted by snerson at 10:13 AM on February 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

Yup, vocables are the general category of "singing noises that don't mean anything". If the question is actually "does the practice of backing an instrumental riff with vocables have a name?", then we've got a little more work to do. Really, it's just singing along with music, so it may not have a specific name. Conflating audience participation with something that is part of the song muddies the water even further.

Here's an article by Chas Newkey-Burden complaining about audience riff participation back in 2008:

But the aspect of gigs that most gets my goat is this growing trend of people singing along to guitar riffs. Singing along with the words is fine. It's a great part of the gig experience and one that lends hugely to the atmosphere of live music. But why do it with guitar riffs? It never used to happen.

I first noticed it at a Franz Ferdinand gig a few years ago when the audience drunkenly hollered along to the guitar line of Take Me Out. True, it's a catchy old lick but surely that's all the more reason to shut the hell up and listen to it in its full glory? For passion, a live audience can complement a vocalist's delivery. But the subtlety of guitar lines is utterly destroyed by 2,000 people screaming "da-dada-da-da-da" over them. What next, an entire audience singing along to a drumbeat? Karaoke bars where pissed-up punters turn up to groan away over guitar lines?

Tangentially, something that feels vaguely adjacent is Vocalese, where lexical lyrics are added to an existing famous jazz solo.
posted by zamboni at 10:34 AM on February 10, 2022 [3 favorites]

I don't know the answer to this, but I wonder if there's some term that a cappella groups use to describe this sort of thing, because they probably do it all the time.
posted by number9dream at 11:29 AM on February 10, 2022

Just call it beatboxing - I think that's both much closer to being specifically correct and significantly further from *feeling* correct, hehe
posted by FatherDagon at 11:46 AM on February 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

Here's another way to think about this, at least for the Here Comes The Sun version. Vocables are often used as temporary filler while a song is being written- e.g. Paul Simon is on record as being mildly embarrassed that lie-la-lie is in the released version of The Boxer.

Pretend we're in a mildly cursed alternate universe where George Harrison wrote

Here comes the sun, doo da doo doo it's a new day
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right

Would we still be asking this question about that new phrase?
posted by zamboni at 11:47 AM on February 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

A few words that are pretty close, though not quite right on the nose:

* Vocalise is a composition for voice that uses the voice like an instrument rather than to sing words or lyrics. Many times the sound will be given vowel or sometimes a repeated meaningless syllable. Many vocalises are written as exercises or warm-ups for singers and you will hear many choirs singing vocalises as they warm up. A famous example of Rachmaninoff's Vocalise (Leontyne Price). Most examples are from classical and choir music.

* Vocalese is a style in Jazz where the singer takes a solo improvised by an instrument, and sings it with words - not nonsense syllables or simple vowels in this case, but actual lyrics. A famous example of this it Manhattan Transfer's version of Birdland. Birdland was first performed by Weather Report, who is backing up Manhattan Transfer there.

* In contrast with vocalese is scat, which is (generally) improvised and uses the voice like an instrument, but with nonsense syllables rather than words or lyrics. An early example by Louis Armstrong. Note that some performers combine vocalese and scat.

* Do-wop is a rhythm and blues style which is generally all vocal, and the name comes from the nonsense syllables used when they sing through what would usually be instrumental breaks or parts. Here is the 1945 Delta Rhythm Boys recording that is the origin of the term "do-wop".

What all of those have in common is that the voice is used as a stand-in for, or in the manner more typical of, instruments.

Of all those terms, probably the closest is do-wop, where the vocalists are clearly using various syllables to stand in for instrumental parts - a direct vocal imitation of instrumental accompaniment and fills, which is very close to your examples.

However, no one would call your examples do-wop just because, beyond that one characteristic, do-wop is identified with a very specific musical style.

I would probably call your examples "vocalization". This is a somewhat generic term, but covers any situation where you are turning X into speech, song, or other things done with the human voice. "X" can be literally anything. You could vocalize the sound of a rocket launching, a car engine, a waterfall, a flock of birds, etc. - anything that makes a sound, or can be imagined as making a sound.

In your examples, people are vocalizing a portion of the instrumental line.
posted by flug at 12:47 PM on February 10, 2022 [11 favorites]

I don't have an answer, but the idea comes up in retrospective on the Muppet Movie at 40. That author dodn't have a word for it, either
posted by DebetEsse at 2:28 PM on February 10, 2022 [1 favorite]