:''For the linguistic declension case, see
Instrumental case.''
:''For the
Mouse on Mars album, see
Instrumentals (album).''
:''For the
Lil Rob Album, see
Instrumentals.''
An 'instrumental' is, in contrast to a
song, a
musical composition or recording without
lyrics or any other sort of
vocal music; all of the
music is produced by
musical instruments. Specifically, this term is used when referring to
popular music; some
musical genres make little use of the
human voice, such as
jazz,
electronic music, and large amounts of
European classical music (although in electronic music the voice can be
sampled just like anything else). In commercial music, some tracks or songs on a
compact disc include instrumental tracks. These tracks are exact copies of the corresponding song, but do not have vocals.
Instrumentals that have reached #1 on the
Billboard Hot 100 include:
★ "
Theme from A Summer Place" -
Percy Faith (
1960)
★ "
Grazing in the Grass" -
Hugh Masekela (
1968)
★ "
Frankenstein" -
Edgar Winter Group (
1972)
★ "
Love's Theme" -
Love Unlimited Orchestra (
1974)
★ "
The Hustle" -
Van McCoy (
1975)
★ "
Rise" -
Herb Alpert (
1979)
★ "
Chariots of Fire" -
Vangelis (
1982)
★ "
Miami Vice Theme" -
Jan Hammer (
1984)
Borderline cases
Recordings which include
brief verbal interjections, repetitive
nonsense words, or wordless vocal effects (such as
drones,
vocal percussion,
Vonlenska,
yodeling, or
whistling), or in which sung vocals appear in only a short part of an extended piece (e.g. "
TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)") are sometimes classed as instrumentals rather than songs.
See also
★
Instrumental hip hop
★
Instrumental rock
★
List of rock instrumentals
★
Easy listening
★
Beautiful music
★
Smooth jazz