Scat singing
Encyclopedia
Vocal jazz
Jazz singing can be defined by the instrumental approach to the voice, where the singer can match the instruments in their stylistic approach to the lyrics, improvised or otherwise, or through scat singing; that is, the use of nonsensical meaningless non-morphemic syllables to imitate the sound of...
, scat singing is vocal improvisation
Musical improvisation
Musical improvisation is the creative activity of immediate musical composition, which combines performance with communication of emotions and instrumental technique as well as spontaneous response to other musicians...
with wordless vocables, nonsense syllable
Nonsense syllable
In cognitive psychology, a nonsense syllable is a word-like string of letters that is not intended to have any established meaning; it is a special case of a non-lexical vocable...
s or without words at all. Scat singing gives singers the ability to sing improvised melodies and rhythms, to create the equivalent of an instrumental solo using their voice.
Structure and syllable choice
Though scat singing is improvised, the melodic lines are often variations on scaleMusical scale
In music, a scale is a sequence of musical notes in ascending and descending order. Most commonly, especially in the context of the common practice period, the notes of a scale will belong to a single key, thus providing material for or being used to conveniently represent part or all of a musical...
and arpeggio
Arpeggio
An arpeggio is a musical technique where notes in a chord are played or sung in sequence, one after the other, rather than ringing out simultaneously...
fragments, stock patterns
Lick (music)
In popular music genres such as rock or jazz music, a lick is "a stock pattern or phrase" consisting of a short series of notes that is used in solos and melodic lines...
and riff
RIFF
The Resource Interchange File Format is a generic file container format for storing data in tagged chunks. It is primarily used to store multimedia such as sound and video, though it may also be used to store any arbitrary data....
s, as is the case with instrumental improvisers. As well, scatting usually incorporates musical structure
Musical form
The term musical form refers to the overall structure or plan of a piece of music, and it describes the layout of a composition as divided into sections...
. All of Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...
's scat performances of "How High the Moon
How High the Moon
"How High the Moon" is a jazz standard with lyrics by Nancy Hamilton and music by Morgan Lewis. It was first featured in the 1940 Broadway revue Two for the Show, where it was sung by Alfred Drake and Frances Comstock....
", for instance, use the same tempo
Tempo
In musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece. Tempo is a crucial element of any musical composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece.-Measuring tempo:...
, begin with a chorus of a straight reading of the lyric, move to a "specialty chorus" introducing the scat chorus, and then the scat itself. Will Friedwald
Will Friedwald
Will Friedwald is an American author and music critic. He has written for such newspapers as The New York Times, The Village Voice, Newsday, The New York Observer, and The New York Sun, and for such magazines as Entertainment Weekly, Oxford American, New York, Mojo, BBC Music Magazine, Stereo...
has compared Ella Fitzgerald to Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...
directing his Roadrunner cartoon—each uses predetermined formulas in innovative ways. Among the greatest exponents of the scat style was Mel Tormé
Mel Tormé
Melvin Howard Tormé , nicknamed The Velvet Fog, was an American musician, known for his jazz singing. He was also a jazz composer and arranger, a drummer, an actor in radio, film, and television, and the author of five books...
, a child prodigy drummer who went on to become one of the most influential jazz performers of the 20th century. Tormé's effortless scatting was built on his outstanding big-band arrangement and multi-instrumentalist skills.
The deliberate choice of scat syllables also is a key element in vocal jazz improvisation. Syllable choice influences the pitch articulation
Articulation (music)
In music, articulation refers to the musical direction performance technique which affects the transition or continuity on a single note or between multiple notes or sounds.- Types of articulations :...
, coloration, and resonance
Sonorant
In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; fricatives and plosives are not sonorants. Vowels are sonorants, as are consonants like and . Other consonants, like or , restrict the airflow enough to cause turbulence, and...
of the performance. Syllable choice also differentiated jazz singers' personal styles: Betty Carter
Betty Carter
Betty Carter was an American jazz singer renowned for her improvisational technique and idiosyncratic vocal style...
was inclined to use sounds like "louie-ooie-la-la-la" (soft-tongued sounds or liquids) while Sarah Vaughan would prefer "shoo-doo-shoo-bee-ooo-bee" (fricatives, stop consonants, and open vowels). The choice of scat syllables can also be used to reflect the sounds of different instruments. The comparison of the scatting styles of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Lois Vaughan was an American jazz singer, described by Scott Yanow as having "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century."...
reveals that Fitzgerald’s improvisation mimics the sounds of swing-era big band
Big band
A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz and the Swing Era typically consisting of rhythm, brass, and woodwind instruments totaling approximately twelve to twenty-five musicians...
s with which she performed, while Vaughan’s mimics that of her accompanying bop
Bebop
Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...
-era small combos.
Humor
Humor is another important element of many scat performances. Cab CallowayCab Calloway
Cabell "Cab" Calloway III was an American jazz singer and bandleader. He was strongly associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City where he was a regular performer....
exemplified the use of humorous scatting. Another classic example of humorous scatting is Slim Gaillard
Slim Gaillard
Bulee "Slim" Gaillard was an American jazz singer, songwriter, pianist, and guitarist, noted for his vocalese singing and word play in a language he called "Vout"...
, Leo Watson
Leo Watson
Leo Watson was an American jazz vocalese singer, drummer, trombonist and tiple player born in Kansas City, Missouri, perhaps best known as a band member of The Spirits of Rhythm which included guitarist Teddy Bunn...
, and Bam Brown's 1945 "Avocado Seed Soup Symphony", in which they scat variations on the word "avocado" for much of the recording. In addition to such nonsensical uses of language, humor is communicated in scat singing through the use of musical quotation
Musical quotation
Musical quotation is the practice of directly quoting another work in a new composition. The quotation may be from the same composer's work , or from a different composer's work ....
. Leo Watson, who performed before the canon of American popular music, frequently drew on nursery rhyme
Nursery rhyme
The term nursery rhyme is used for "traditional" poems for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the 19th century and in North America the older ‘Mother Goose Rhymes’ is still often used.-Lullabies:...
s in his scatting. This is called using a compression. Ella Fitzgerald, who performed later, was able to draw extensively on popular music in her singing. For example, in her classic 1960 recording of "How High the Moon
How High the Moon
"How High the Moon" is a jazz standard with lyrics by Nancy Hamilton and music by Morgan Lewis. It was first featured in the 1940 Broadway revue Two for the Show, where it was sung by Alfred Drake and Frances Comstock....
" live in Berlin, she quotes over a dozen songs, including "The Peanut Vendor
The Peanut Vendor
The Peanut Vendor is a Cuban song based on a street-seller's cry, and known as a pregón. It is possibly the most famous piece of music created by a Cuban musician...
", "Heat Wave
Heat Wave (song)
"Heat Wave" is a popular song. It was written by Irving Berlin for the 1933 musical As Thousands Cheer, and introduced in the show by Ethel Waters....
", "A-Tisket, A-Tasket
A-Tisket, A-Tasket
A Tisket A Tasket is a nursery rhyme first recorded in America in the late nineteenth century. It was used as the basis for a very successful and highly regarded 1938 recording by Ella Fitzgerald...
", and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" is a show tune written by American composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Otto Harbach for their 1933 operetta Roberta. It was originally recorded by Gertrude Niesen, on 13 October 1933 on the Victor label 24454. It was performed by Irene Dunne for the 1935 film adaptation,...
".
Technical difficulty
In the opinion of Jeff Pressing, a psychologist who has studied improvisation extensively, vocal improvisers lack the benefit of "feedback redundancy" that instrumental improvisers have. All improvisers use feedback from their playing in order to judge what to play next; the more feedback that exists, the easier the improviser's task is. For the instrumentalist, aural, visual, proprioceptive (i.e. body awareness), and touch feedback work in tandem. For the vocalist, however, only aural and proprioceptive feedback are available. Pressing uses this discrepancy to account for violin improvisation being more difficult than sax improvisation, and vocal improvisation more difficult still: "For every first-rate scat-singer in the world", he writes, "there must be 500 talented jazz saxophonists".Origins
Though Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
's 1926 recording of Heebie Jeebies
Heebie Jeebies (composition)
"Heebie Jeebies" is a composition written by Boyd Atkins which achieved fame when it was recorded by Louis Armstrong in 1926. The recording on Okeh Records by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five includes a famous chorus in which Louis does scat singing....
is often cited as the first song to employ scatting, there are many earlier examples. One early master of ragtime scat singing was Gene Greene
Gene Greene
Eugene Delbert Greene , better known as Gene Greene was an American entertainer, singer and composer, nicknamed The Ragtime King. He was a vaudeville star and made some of the earliest sound recordings of scat singing in 1911 for Columbia Records and Victor Records and was a popular Ragtime performer...
who recorded scat choruses in his song "King of the Bungaloos" and several others between 1911 and 1917. Entertainer Al Jolson
Al Jolson
Al Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....
even scatted through a few bars in the middle of his 1911 recording of "That Haunting Melody". Gene Green’s 1917 "From Here to Shanghai", which featured faux-Chinese scatting, and Gene Rodemich
Gene Rodemich
Eugene Frederick Rodemich was a pianist and orchestra leader, who composed the music for Frank Buck’s first movie, Bring 'Em Back Alive .-Early life:...
's 1924 "Scissor Grinder Joe" and "Some of These Days" also pre-date Armstrong. Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards scatted an interlude on his 1923 "Old Fashioned Love" in lieu of using an instrumental soloist. Harry Barris
Harry Barris
Harry Barris was an American popular singer and songwriter.Born in New York City, he was a member of the Rhythm Boys, a late 1920s singing trio which included Al Rinker and Bing Crosby, and was Crosby's entry into show business...
, one of Paul Whiteman
Paul Whiteman
Paul Samuel Whiteman was an American bandleader and orchestral director.Leader of the most popular dance bands in the United States during the 1920s, Whiteman's recordings were immensely successful, and press notices often referred to him as the "King of Jazz"...
's "The Rhythm Boys
The Rhythm Boys
The Rhythm Boys were a male singing trio consisting of Bing Crosby, Harry Barris and Al Rinker. Crosby and Rinker began performing together in 1925 and were recruited by Paul Whiteman in late 1926. Pianist/singer/songwriter Barris joined the team in 1927. They made a number of recordings with the...
," along with Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
, scatted on several songs, including "Mississippi Mud
Mississippi Mud
Mississippi Mud is a 1927 song written by Harry Barris and James Cavanaugh , first made popular by Bing Crosby when he was still a member of The Rhythm Boys. Bing Crosby recorded the song with The Rhythm Boys on June 20, 1927 for Victor...
," which Barris wrote in 1927. One of the early female singers to use scat was Aileen Stanley
Aileen Stanley
Aileen Stanley, born Maude Elsie Aileen Muggeridge , was a popular American singer.-Early life:...
who included it at the end of a duet with Billy Murray
Billy Murray (singer)
William Thomas "Billy" Murray was one of the most popular singers in the United States in the early decades of the 20th century...
in their hit 1924 recording of "It Had To Be You
It Had to Be You (song)
"It Had to Be You" is a popular song written by Isham Jones, with lyrics by Gus Kahn, and was first published in 1924.The song was performed by Priscilla Lane in the 1939 film The Roaring Twenties and by Danny Thomas in the 1951 film I'll See You in My Dreams. The latter film was based loosely upon...
"(Victor 19373).
Jelly Roll Morton
Jelly Roll Morton
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe , known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and early jazz pianist, bandleader and composer....
credited Joe Sims of Vicksburg, Mississippi
Vicksburg, Mississippi
Vicksburg is a city in Warren County, Mississippi, United States. It is the only city in Warren County. It is located northwest of New Orleans on the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, and due west of Jackson, the state capital. In 1900, 14,834 people lived in Vicksburg; in 1910, 20,814; in 1920,...
as the creator of scat around the turn of the 20th century. Here is a transcription of a conversation between Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain.In his later career, Lomax advanced his theories of...
and Jelly Roll Morton where Morton explains the history of scat:
Lomax: Well, what about some more scat songs, that you used to sing way back then?
Morton: Oh, I'll sing you some scat songs. That was way before Louie Armstrong's time. By the way, scat is something that a lot of people don't understand, and they begin to believe that the first scat numbers was ever done, was done by one of my hometown boys, Louie Armstrong. But I must take the credit away, since I know better. The first man that ever did a scat number in history of this country was a man from Vicksburg, Mississippi, by the name of Joe Sims, an old comedian. And from that, Tony Jackson and myself, and several more grabbed it in New OrleansNew Orleans, LouisianaNew Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The New Orleans metropolitan area has a population of 1,235,650 as of 2009, the 46th largest in the USA. The New Orleans – Metairie – Bogalusa combined statistical area has a population...
. And found it was pretty good for an introduction of a song.
Lomax: What does scat mean?
Morton: Scat doesn't mean anything but just something to give a song a flavor. For an instance we'll say: [launches into an example scat song, accompanying himself on the piano]
Morton also once boasted, "Tony Jackson and myself were using scat for novelty back in 1906 and 1907 when Louis Armstrong was still in the orphan’s home". Don Redman
Don Redman
Donald Matthew Redman was an American jazz musician, arranger, bandleader and composer.Redman was announced as a member of the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame on May 6, 2009....
and Fletcher Henderson
Fletcher Henderson
James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson, Jr. was an American pianist, bandleader, arranger and composer, important in the development of big band jazz and swing music. His was one of the most prolific black orchestras and his influence was vast...
also featured scat vocals in their recording of "My Papa Doesn’t Two-Time No Time" five months prior to Armstrong’s 1926 recording of "Heebie Jeebies".
It was Armstrong's 1926 performance, however, that was the turning point for the medium. According to Armstrong, when he was recording the song "Heebie Jeebies", soon to be a national bestseller, with his band The Hot Five, his music fell to the ground. Not knowing the lyrics to the song, he invented a gibberish melody to fill time, expecting the cut to be thrown out in the end, but that take of the song was the one released. The story is widely believed to be apocryphal, but the influence of the recording was nonetheless enormous.
Louis Armstrong served as a model for Cab Calloway
Cab Calloway
Cabell "Cab" Calloway III was an American jazz singer and bandleader. He was strongly associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City where he was a regular performer....
, whose 1930s scat solos inspired Gershwin's use of the medium in his Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess is an opera, first performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. It was based on DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy and subsequent play of the same title, which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy Heyward...
; it was from the 1926 recording of "Heebie Jeebies" arose the techniques that would form the foundation of modern scat.
Later development
On October 26, 1927 Duke EllingtonDuke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
's Orchestra recorded "Creole Love Call" featuring Adelaide Hall
Adelaide Hall
Adelaide Hall was an American-born U.K.-based jazz singer and entertainer.Hall was born in Brooklyn, New York and was taught to sing by her father...
singing wordlessly. "She sounds like a particularly sensitive growl trumpeter", according to Nat Hentoff
Nat Hentoff
Nathan Irving "Nat" Hentoff is an American historian, novelist, jazz and country music critic, and syndicated columnist for United Media and writes regularly on jazz and country music for The Wall Street Journal....
. The creativity must be shared between Ellington and Hall as he knew the style of performance he wanted, but she was the one who was able to produce the sound. In 1932, Ellington repeated the experiment in one of his versions of "The Mooche", with Baby Cox singing scat after a muted similar trombone solo by Tricky Sam Nanton
Tricky Sam Nanton
Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton was a famous trombonist with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.-Early life:Nanton was born in New York City and began playing professionally in Washington with bands led by Cliff Jackson and Elmer Snowden. He joined Ellington in 1926.From 1923 to 1924, he worked with Frazier's...
. Bands such as The Boswell Sisters regularly employed scatting on their records, including the high complexity of scatting at the same time, in harmony. An excellent example would be their version of "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)
It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)
"It Don't Mean a Thing " is a 1931 composition by Duke Ellington, with lyrics by Irving Mills, now accepted as a jazz standard. The music was written and arranged by Ellington in August 1931 during intermissions at Chicago's Lincoln Tavern and was first recorded by Ellington and his orchestra for...
". Another famous scat singer is Scatman Crothers
Scatman Crothers
Benjamin Sherman "Scatman" Crothers was an American actor, singer, dancer and musician known for his work as Louie the Garbage Man on the TV show Chico and the Man, and as Dick Hallorann in The Shining in 1980...
who would go on to movie and television fame. Scat singing could be considered by some authorities as not respectable. It was for example not allowed on BBC radio in the late thirties.
Over the years, as jazz music developed and grew in complexity, scat singing did as well. During the bop era, more highly-developed vocal improvisation surged in popularity. Annie Ross
Annie Ross
Annie Ross is an English jazz singer, and actress, best known as a member of the trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.-Early years:...
, a bop singer, expressed a common sentiment among vocalists at the time: "The [scat] music was so exciting, everyone wanted to do it." And just about everyone did: Ella Fitzgerald, Eddie Jefferson
Eddie Jefferson
Eddie Jefferson was a celebrated jazz vocalist and lyricist. He is credited as an innovator of vocalese, a musical style in which lyrics are set to an instrumental composition or solo. Perhaps his best-known song is "Moody's Mood for Love", though it was first recorded by King Pleasure, who cited...
, Betty Carter
Betty Carter
Betty Carter was an American jazz singer renowned for her improvisational technique and idiosyncratic vocal style...
, Anita O’Day, Joe Carroll, Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Lois Vaughan was an American jazz singer, described by Scott Yanow as having "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century."...
, Carmen McRae
Carmen McRae
Carmen Mercedes McRae was an American jazz singer, composer, pianist, and actress. Considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th century, it was her behind-the-beat phrasing and her ironic interpretations of song lyrics that made her memorable...
, Jon Hendricks
Jon Hendricks
Jon Hendricks is an American jazz lyricist and singer. He is considered one of the originators of vocalese, which adds lyrics to existing instrumental songs and replaces many instruments with vocalists...
, Babs Gonzales
Babs Gonzales
Babs Gonzales , born Lee Brown, was an American jazz vocalist of the bebop era most notable for penning the song "Oop-Pop-A-Da", which was originally recorded and performed by his own band and was later made famous by Dizzy Gillespie . Babs was also once the chauffeur for Errol Flynn...
, and Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...
all were important singers in the idiom. Fitzgerald once hailed herself as the “best vocal improviser jazz has ever had”, and critics since then have been in almost universal agreement with her. In the 1960s, traditional scatting gave way to the free-jazz movement, which allowed scat singers to include sounds in their repertoire that had before been considered non-musical, such as screams, cries, and laughter. Free jazz and the influence of world musicians on the medium pushed jazz singing nearer to avant-garde art music. In the 60s Ward Swingle
Ward Swingle
Ward Swingle is an American vocalist and jazz musician.Swingle was born in Mobile, Alabama. He studied music, particularly jazz, from a very young age. He was playing in Mobile-area Big Bands before finishing high school. After high school, Swingle graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Cincinnati...
was the product of an unusually liberal musical education. He took the scat singing idea and applied it to the works of Bach, creating The Swingle Singers. The bop revival of the 1970s renewed interest in bop scat singing, and young scat singers viewed themselves as a continuation of the classic bop tradition. The medium continues to evolve, and vocal improvisation now often develops independently of changes in instrumental jazz.
Jazz artist John Paul Larkin (better known as Scatman John
Scatman John
John Paul Larkin , better known by his stage name Scatman John, was an American musician who created a fusion of scat singing and dance music, best known for his 1995 hit "Scatman "....
) renewed interest in the genre briefly during the mid-1990s when he began fusing Jazz singing with pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
and electronica
Electronica
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...
, scoring a world-wide hit with the song Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop) in 1994. This has continued to a degree in recent years, due to the continued popularity of Scatman John, and segments in the British television comedy series The Mighty Boosh
The Mighty Boosh
The Mighty Boosh is a British comedy troupe featuring comedians Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding. Developed from three stage shows and a six episode radio series, it has since spawned a total of twenty television episodes for BBC Three and two live tours of the UK, as well as two live shows in the...
which featured scat singing (referred to by its performers as "crimping
Crimp (song)
A crimp is one of the humorous a cappella nonsense songs sung by Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt in the comedy television series The Mighty Boosh. A crimp is sung in a scat style featuring lyrics characterized by non-sequiturs that are rhythmically similar to beatboxing...
").
Dave Matthews
Dave Matthews
David John "Dave" Matthews is a South African–born American musician and occasional actor, best known as the lead vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist for the Dave Matthews Band...
, of Dave Matthews Band
Dave Matthews Band
Dave Matthews Band, sometimes shortened to DMB, is a U.S. rock band formed in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1991. The founding members were singer-songwriter and guitarist Dave Matthews, bassist Stefan Lessard, drummer/backing vocalist Carter Beauford and saxophonist LeRoi Moore. Boyd Tinsley was...
, is also a noted enthusiast of vocal scatting, often employing it into songs during live performances. During periods of improvisation, Matthews will begin to insert broken phrasings and words as well as more traditional forms of scat in combination. Styles similar to Matthews' are used by other associated acts such as O.A.R.
O.A.R.
O.A.R. is an American rock band composed of Marc Roberge , Chris Culos , Richard On , Benj Gershman , and Jerry DePizzo...
and moe.
Moe.
moe. is an American jam band, formed at the University at Buffalo in 1989. The band members are: Rob Derhak , Al Schnier , Chuck Garvey , Vinnie Amico , and Jim Loughlin ....
Vocal improviser Bobby McFerrin
Bobby McFerrin
Robert "Bobby" McFerrin, Jr. is an American vocalist and conductor. He is best known for his 1988 hit song "Don't Worry, Be Happy". He is a ten-time Grammy Award winner.-Life:...
’s recent performances have shown that “wordless singing has traveled far from the concepts demonstrated by Louis Armstrong, Gladys Bentley, Cab Calloway, Anita O’Day, and Leo Watson.”
Experimental rock singer Mike Patton
Mike Patton
Michael Allan "Mike" Patton is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and actor, best known as the lead singer of the metal/experimental rock band Faith No More. He has also sung for Mr...
uses a variation of scat singing in many projects, including the avant-garde metal band Fantomas
Fantômas (band)
Fantômas is an avant-garde metal supergroup formed in 1998 in California, United States. The band is named after Fantômas, a supervillain featured in a series of crime novels popular in France before World War I and in film, most notably in the 60s French movie series.-History:Fantômas began just...
and Mr. Bungle
Mr. Bungle
Mr. Bungle was an experimental band from Northern California. The band was formed in 1985 while the members were still in high school and was named after a children's educational film. Mr. Bungle released four demo tapes in the mid to late 1980s before being signed to Warner Bros. Records and...
. Aerosmith
Aerosmith
Aerosmith is an American rock band, sometimes referred to as "The Bad Boys from Boston" and "America's Greatest Rock and Roll Band". Their style, which is rooted in blues-based hard rock, has come to also incorporate elements of pop, heavy metal, and rhythm and blues, and has inspired many...
's Steven Tyler
Steven Tyler
Steven Tyler is an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, best known as the frontman and lead singer of the Boston-based rock band Aerosmith, in which he also plays the harmonica, and occasional piano and percussion. He is known as the "Demon of Screamin'", due to his high screams...
has made scatting a part of many of the band's recordings and live shows, sometimes performing extended scat solos which work to complement extend guitar solos, act as solos themselves, even to replace forgotten lyrics. Some alternative metal
Alternative metal
Alternative metal is a genre of alternative rock and heavy metal that gained popularity in the early 1990s. Most notably, alternative metal bands are characterized by heavy guitar riffs and experimental approaches to heavy music.-Origins:...
bands such as Korn
Korn
Korn is an American nu metal band from Bakersfield, California, formed in 1993. The current band line up includes four members: Jonathan Davis, James "Munky" Shaffer, Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu, and Ray Luzier. The band was formed as an expansion of L.A.P.D.The band released their first demo album,...
and Disturbed use the style in some of their songs, such as "Twist
Life Is Peachy
Life Is Peachy is the second studio album by the American nu metal band Korn, released on October 15, 1996 through Immortal/Epic Records. Following the success of their 1994 self-titled debut, Korn earned a second double platinum album in the United States, certified by the Recording Industry...
" and "Down with the Sickness
Down with the Sickness
"Down with the Sickness" is a song by American heavy metal band Disturbed. The song was recorded in 1999 and was released as the second single from their debut studio album, The Sickness. The song is one of Disturbed's best-known songs and is a concert staple, usually played as the last song...
" Many fans would refer to the scat singing of these vocalists as "gibberish
Gibberish
Gibberish is a generic term in English for talking that sounds like speech, but carries no actual meaning. This meaning has also been extended to meaningless text or gobbledygook. The common theme in gibberish statements is a lack of literal sense, which can be described as a presence of nonsense...
."
Australian musician Harry Angus of The Cat Empire
The Cat Empire
The Cat Empire are an Australian ska and jazz band formed in 1999. Core members are Harry James Angus , Will Hull-Brown , Jamshid "Jumps" Khadiwhala , Ollie McGill , Ryan Monro and Felix Riebl...
uses scat in some recordings and is known to do extended scat "solos" in concert. Actor Ed Helms
Ed Helms
Edward Paul "Ed" Helms is an American actor and comedian known for his work as a correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, as Andy Bernard on the US version of the sitcom/mockumentary The Office and for his role as Dr. Stu Price in The Hangover films.- Early life :Helms was born and raised...
has a knack for scat singing. Scat singing is also featured by Louis Prima
Louis Prima
Louis Prima was a Sicilian American singer, actor, songwriter, and trumpeter. Prima rode the musical trends of his time, starting with his seven-piece New Orleans style jazz band in the 1920s, then successively leading a swing combo in the 1930s, a big band in the 1940s, a Vegas lounge act in the...
and others in the song "I Wan'na Be Like You
I Wan'na Be Like You (The Monkey Song)
"I Wan'na Be Like You " is a song from Walt Disney's 1967 film, The Jungle Book. The song was sung by Louis Prima and written by songwriters Robert and Richard Sherman....
" in Disney's The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book (1967 film)
The Jungle Book is a 1967 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. Released on October 18, 1967, it is the 19th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. It was inspired by the stories about the feral child Mowgli from the book of the same name by...
(1967).
Use in hip-hop
Many hip-hop music artists and rappers use scat singing to come up with the rhythms of their raps. TajaiTajai
Tajai Massey, known by the stage name, Tajai , is an American rapper and producer. He is one of the four founding members of Oakland, California-based underground hip hop group Souls of Mischief, and, with the Souls of Mischief, a part of the eight-person, alternative hip hop collective, the...
of the group Souls of Mischief
Souls of Mischief
-Studio albums:-Singles:-External links:* [ Allmusic Biography]* *...
states the following in the book How to Rap
How to Rap
How to Rap: The Art & Science of the Hip-Hop MC is a book on hip-hop music and rapping by Paul Edwards. It is compiled from interviews with 104 notable rappers who provide insights into how they write and perform their lyrics.- Publication :...
: “Sometimes my rhythms come from scatting. I usually make a scat kind of skeleton and then fill in the words. I make a skeleton of the flow first, and then I put words into it.”. The group Lifesavas
Lifesavas
Lifesavas are a hip-hop group from Portland, Oregon. Jumbo the Garbageman is an MC/producer and Vursatyl is an MC. DJ Shines has also been involved in much of the production and DJing on their albums.- Discography :* Spirit in Stone...
describe a similar process. Rapper Tech N9ne
Tech N9ne
Aaron Dontez Yates , better known by his stage name Tech N9ne , is an American rapper from Kansas City, Missouri. In 1999, Yates and Travis O'Guin founded the record label Strange Music. Throughout his career, Yates has sold over one million albums and has had his music featured in film,...
has been recorded demonstrating exactly how this method works, in an audio segment covered by The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
.
Music historical explanations
Dick Higgins
Dick Higgins was a composer, poet, printer, and early Fluxus artist. Higgins was born in Cambridge, England, but raised in the United States in various parts of New England, including Worcester, Massachusetts, Putney, Vermont, and Concord, New Hampshire.Like other Fluxus artists, Higgins studied...
likewise attributes scat singing to traditions of sound poetry
Sound poetry
Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging between literary and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words"...
in African-American music. In West African music, it is typical to convert drum rhythms into vocal melodies; common rhythmic patterns are assigned specific syllabic translations. However, this theory fails to account for the existence—even in the earliest recorded examples of scatting—of free improvisation by the vocalist. It is therefore more likely that scat singing evolved independently in the United States.
Others have proposed that scat singing arose from jazz musicians' practice of formulating riffs vocally before performing them instrumentally. (The adage "If you can’t sing it, you can’t play it" was common in the early New Orleans jazz scene.) In this manner, soloists like Louis Armstrong became able to double as vocalists, switching effortlessly between instrumental solos and scatting.
Critical assessment
Scat singing can allow jazz singers to have the same improvisational opportunities as jazz instrumentalists: scatting can be rhythmically and harmonically improvisational without concern about destroying the lyric. Especially when bebop was developing, singers found scat to be the best way to adequately engage in the performance of jazz.Scatting may be desirable because it does not "taint the music with the impurity of denotation". Instead of conveying linguistic content and pointing to something outside itself, scat music—like instrumental music—is self-referential and "d[oes] what it mean[s]". Through this wordlessness, commentators have written, scat singing can describe matters beyond words. Music critic Will Friedwald
Will Friedwald
Will Friedwald is an American author and music critic. He has written for such newspapers as The New York Times, The Village Voice, Newsday, The New York Observer, and The New York Sun, and for such magazines as Entertainment Weekly, Oxford American, New York, Mojo, BBC Music Magazine, Stereo...
has written that Louis Armstrong's scatting, for example, "has tapped into his own core of emotion", releasing emotions "so deep, so real" that they are unspeakable; his words "bypass our ears and our brains and go directly for our hearts and souls".
Various psychological and metaphysical theorists have instead proposed that vocal improvisation allows for revelations from the soul’s depths. Musician and lecturer Roberto Laneri has proposed a theory of improvisation based on "different states of consciousness" that draws on the Jung
Jung
Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of analytical psychology.Jung may also refer to:* Jung * JUNG, Java Universal Network/Graph Framework-See also:...
ian model of the collective unconscious
Collective unconscious
Collective unconscious is a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carl Jung. It is proposed to be a part of the unconscious mind, expressed in humanity and all life forms with nervous systems, and describes how the structure of the psyche autonomously organizes experience...
. The music stemming from Laneri’s improvisatory "consciousness expansion" tends to be vocal, as the voice is regarded as the "primal instrument".
Scat singing has never been universally accepted, even by jazz enthusiasts. Writer and critic Leonard Feather offers an extreme view: he once said that "scat singing—with only a couple exceptions—should be banned". Many of the finest jazz singers, including Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Jimmy Rushing, and Dinah Washington, have avoided scat entirely.
See also
- A cappellaA cappellaA cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
- BeatboxingBeatboxingBeatboxing is a form of vocal percussion primarily involving the art of producing drum beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using one's mouth, lips, tongue, and voice. It may also involve singing, vocal imitation of turntablism, and the simulation of horns, strings, and other musical instruments...
- Blues scaleBlues scaleThe term blues scale is used to describe a few scales with differing numbers of pitches and related characteristics. See: blues.The hexatonic, or six note, blues scale consists of the minor pentatonic scale plus the 4th or 5th degree...
- DadaDadaDada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
- Free improvisationFree improvisationFree improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician involved. The term can refer to both a technique and as a recognizable genre in its own right....
- Free jazzFree jazzFree jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...
- GlossolaliaGlossolaliaGlossolalia or speaking in tongues is the fluid vocalizing of speech-like syllables, often as part of religious practice. The significance of glossolalia has varied with time and place, with some considering it a part of a sacred language...
- Jam sessionJam sessionJam sessions are often used by musicians to develop new material, find suitable arrangements, or simply as a social gathering and communal practice session. Jam sessions may be based upon existing songs or forms, may be loosely based on an agreed chord progression or chart suggested by one...
- LiltingLiltingLilting is a form of traditional singing common in the Gaelic speaking areas of Ireland and Scotland. It goes under many names, and is sometimes referred to as "mouth music", diddling, jigging, chin music or cheek music), puirt a beul in Scottish Gaelic, Canterach, or portaireacht bhéil in Irish...
- List of scat singers
- Overtone singingOvertone singingOvertone singing, also known as overtone chanting, or harmonic singing, is a type of singing in which the singer manipulates the resonances created as air travels from the lungs, past the vocal folds, and out the lips to produce a melody.The partials of a sound wave made by the human voice can be...
- Pentatonic scalePentatonic scaleA pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave in contrast to a heptatonic scale such as the major scale and minor scale...
- Puirt a beulPuirt à beulPuirt a beul is a traditional form of song native to Scotland, Ireland, and Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.-Name:The Scottish Gaelic for such a tune is port à beul: "a tune from a mouth—specifically a cheerful tune—which in the plural becomes puirt à beul...
- Vocables in music
- VocaleseVocaleseVocalese is a style or genre of jazz singing wherein lyrics are written for melodies that were originally part of an all-instrumental composition or improvisation. Whereas scat singing uses improvised nonsense syllables, such as "bap ba dee dot bwee dee" in solos, vocalese uses lyrics, either...
(jazz vocal improvisation using lyrics instead of nonsense syllables)