Song no Type

MusicBrainz Style
, ,
1

Hi All

When songs are instrumental, should I also add song to type?

expample: This is an instrumental

Ty all

1 Like
2

howdy!

i remember a conversation like this, and i think the current consensus is leave the field blank, and set the language as “[no lyrics]”. at least for now :3

7 Likes
3

As @teethfairy says - in MB language a Work without words is not a “song”. It has a blank type and [no lyrics].

And when you have a Recording of that Work, do not tick “instrumental” as you can’t have an instrumental version of a Work that has always had no words.

6 Likes
4

Ty all have a nice weekend

1 Like
5

Is this really a wide consensus?
In my understanding, a “song” is not necessarily a piece of music with lyrics.
To name a popular example: I consider Axel F a song that has no lyrics and not a piece of music that is not a song.
Even that Wiki article linked above seems to agree: Instrumental - Wikipedia “One example of a genre in which both vocal/instrumental and solely instrumental songs are produced is blues.”

And just in case: If we decide to go with the “piece of music with lyrics” definition then how do we deal with grey area stuff like music with nothing but nonverbal vocals (“la la …”), distorted/sampled single words, …?

1 Like
6

on the flip side, Wikipedia also specifies that a song includes vocals on their song page:

I think the main issue is that the word “Song” can mean very different things, depending on context. for a musicologist, it specifically refers to music with vocals. to the general public, it can refer to most any piece of music, vocal or not. this is probably why Wikipedia uses Song in their Instrumental article.

my two cents, I don’t think it’d be an issue to use the Song work type for instrumentals, as long as [no lyrics] is also set. I may be one of the few editors with this opinion tho…

long term, it might be good to have “Vocal Song” and “Instrumental Song” as types for popular music. even though they might not be correct from a musicologist’s standpoint, most editors are not musicologists. this would also allow us to better handle instrumentals with a few lyrics, I e. Tequila or Wipe Out, and also vocal songs without lyrics, such as The Great Gig in the Sky.

(oddly enough, all three examples are in the database as Songs, soo…)

2 Likes
7

The official description of the work type is “A song is in its origin (and still in most cases) a composition for voice, with or without instruments, performed by singing. This is the most common form by far in folk and popular music, but also fairly common in a classical context (“art songs”).”

I think it’s fine to use our judgement for stuff like vocalises and tunes with a few words, but my personal view is that an instrumental is probably not really a song. Since not everything needs a type, that’s not a problem :slight_smile:

1 Like
8

It’s almost always a problem for me. I merge lots of duplicate works and Song overrides [no type]. I then have to do an extra dozen clicks per duplicate work to fix it (or I ignore it because there’s no point fighting editors who aren’t going to read the guidelines).

3 Likes
9

So now Im confused… what should it be?

Like IvanDobsky and Teethfairy say?

As @teethfairy says - in MB language a Work without words is not a “song”. It has a blank type and [no lyrics].

And when you have a Recording of that Work, do not tick “instrumental” as you can’t have an instrumental version of a Work that has always had no words.

10

There is no consensus.
So, it is accepted to set Song type on instrumental if you really want to.
Personally, I don’t:

11

Ty Jesus.

I think UltimateRiff has the best solution for this problem. I think its all very confusing.

12

So what would this fall under?

It has vocals, but there’s no lyrics either. It’s pleasant, wordless singing of a melody (“da da da, doo doo doo, doo doo doo…”).

13

from the sounds of it, you could follow the example of “The Great Gig in the Sky” (work linked above), and call it a “Song” with the lyric language set to [No lyrics]. the only difference with Great Gig, the vocals are “hooaao ooaho owo ooooohh oho oh” :wink:

1 Like