"The human voice is really the foundation of all music; and whatever the development of the musical art, however bold the composer's combinations, however brilliant the virtuoso's execution, in the end they must always return to the standard set by vocal music" - Richard Wagner

The human voice is a very important part of music. We use words to carry a message, to convey feelings and to tell stories. What we say can be important or just for fun. We can also control the way we say things to reach certain groups or capture a certain kind of energy. So, we can think of the "singing" in music as being the combination of two different things:

What we say & How we say it

We can identify each of these with its own name:

Lyrics - (What we say)        Vocals - (How we say it)

Let's take a look at each. Lyrics are the words in a song. Some tell a story or have meaning, some do not tell a story or are just for fun. Without music, lyrics are just poems. Songs without lyrics are said to be ‘instrumentals’. If a song has a specific message it is usually in the lyrics. While the sound of the music can make us happy or sad, it is the actual words that tell us what a song is about.

Vocals are sounds made with the voice in a piece of music. Lyrics can be sung, rapped, whispered, shouted, etc. Sometimes vocals use sounds instead or words. A vocalist might decide to use more than one singing style in a song, for example, lots of rap songs have singing in the chorus and rapping in the verses. The invention and use of the microphone allowed people to experiment with more techniques, especially those that allowed for softer, quieter voices. If a person is using their voice to make music, we can call it singing, no matter what the style.

Lets hear some examples. See if you can figure out what they're singing about...

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