Woahs, Oohs, Ahhs, Mmms - done or not on an instrumental?

[chriswattsuk]

Hi guys,

I'm interested to get some opinions on this...

If a listing is instrumental, clearly there should be no spoken lyrics, but what about woahs, oohs, ahhs, mmms etc? Are these 'allowed'? Especially if not up front in the mix..?

Does anybody have any experience of getting forwards where this was the case for example? Often these types of sounds can really add to the atmosphere of a song if done in the right way.

Look forward to hearing everybody's views!

Chris

[MattCurious]

It depends very much on the listing; for example, in trailer music it's not uncommon to have non-lyrical choirs (example forward: https://soundcloud.com/matt_curious/whe ... r-to-tread - choir kicks in around 1:37)

Sometimes the listing will explicitly say that non-lyrical vocalisations are fine. If it doesn't, it's a question of whether it's right for the genre.

[Telefunkin]

All I can say is I've had a couple of tracks kicked back because the screener thought they shouldn't be there in an instrumental. Maybe the screener was right, although I don't know whether it was specifically for that listing or in general (or they were just having a bad day - we all do sometimes ) but it was the only comment they offered as a reason for not forwarding those tracks. Consequently, I decided not to risk it again, unless (as Matt says) the listing specifically mentions that such things are OK.

[eeoo]

Very much listing and genre dependent. You could always spend and extra $5 and submit one with and one without.