History Main / Scatting

Scatting is vocalization that isn't lyrics. It is, for the most part, improvisation with wordless vocables, nonsense syllables, whistling, [[CarefulWithThatAxe screaming]], or even humming without words at all. Scatting the gives singer a chance to improve his own melody and rhythm, basically creating the vocal equivalent to an instrumental solo.

* Installation from the soundtrack of {{Coraline}}.

** Seed, BBK, Twist, and Ball Tongue are a few examples.

* Some of the {{Coraline}} songs fit. Try [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxs2vS2gJ-c&feature=player_embedded Exploration]] and the [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnIUVHtLC08&feature=player_embedded end credits song]].
* CharlieChaplin's one and only speaking role as TheTramp in ''ModernTimes'' featured him singing a gibberish song that was vaguely French/Italian sounding.
* Most of the musical score of WingedMigration is Scat... sometimes it's even hard to distinguish from percussions. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc_qpk2d-ao&feature=PlayList&p=36636ACDD5863876&playnext=1&index=17 The trailer]].

* Many of the musical cues in HannahMontana are of Miley scat-singing whoa-ohs and yeah-yeahs for a line or two.

* Many CirqueDuSoleil songs.

* The Grox Empire's anthem in Spore.

* LocoRoco used this for all its music in order to have a universally accepted soundtrack that wouldn't need translating. The nonsense sung by the Rocos sounds uncannily like real language due to the way it's structured, but it's just cute-sounding gibberish.
* The sound "Giant Egg" from BillyHatcherAndTheGiantEgg is mostly composed of children going "La la la la la la la lalala..." They do spell "G-I-A-N-T E-G-G" at one point, but that's it.
* A number of the playable songs in Magicians Quest Mysterious Times feature random vocals. "Cerulean" has a guy yelling "Yeaaah, behbeh!" at several points, and "Corusican Betrayal" has a wordless soprano wail in it, for example.

*** Then 5 years later, [[TalesOfPhantasia Team Wolf]] shows that [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome it can be done]]. You just need to think out of the box and wait for the price of ROM chips to fall low enough...

* The Grand Fonic Hymn from {{Tales of the Abyss}}, made up of seven short verses, uses single-syllable words that don't come from any particular language, used to explain why only the first verse works like a magic spell. Each verse apparently has a "deeper meaning" that must be learned before its magic can manifest.
* The Nu-Metal station of TheSims2 contains a Simlish version of the song ''Like Light to the Flies'' by Trivium. Odd, considering the song is metalcore, not nu-metal.
** There are other other songs as well. TheSims3 has some too.
** For example, the ''Apartment Life'' expansion pack for TheSims2 has Katy Perry's ''Hot N Cold'' while TheSims3 has a whole handful, like Kerli's ''Tea Party'' as Pop station.

* [[{{ptitleu4x4sd6e}} Yoshi's Story]] has the eponymous dinosaurs singing in an incomprehensible chatter that would become the establishing voice of Yoshi forever on.

* TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime and TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask uses this for the singing of Malon and Lulu respectively. Actually use of this trope goes back to TheLegendOfZeldaLinksAwakening where Marin (of which who Malon is an {{Expy}}) sings [[CrowningMusicOfAwesome "The Ballad Of The Windfish"]].

* In some entries in the ''MySims'' series, some songs have Simlish vocals. There's a lovely example in ''My Sims Kingdom'', which plays on The Royal Academy island. Also, in ''MySims'', a Sim can activate a karaoke machine, and sing the song in his or her particular voice.

* In ''{{Machinarium}}'' the song Clockwise Operetta has a part where a robot sings glibberish.
* How come Halo is not mentioned anywhere? From the moment you hit the main menu in Halo/Halo:CE you are treated to wordless chanting.

* In {{Warcraft}} 3, some parts of the Frozen Throne Human and Night Elf songs do this.

* John Zorn's famous Jazz {{deconstruction}} band Naked City featured Yamatsuka Eye of The Boredoms doing everything ''except'' singing: screaming, crying, babbling, gurgling, screeching, howling, gargling, barking, snarling, croaking, growling and generally sounding like a man possessed by demons.

* The [[{{Discworld}} Ankh-Morpork]] national anthem, [[http://wiki.lspace.org/wiki/We_Can_Rule_You_Wholesale We Can Rule You Wholesale]], has a second verse composed almost entirely of gibberish. It was written that way because the writer figured people would [[IndecipherableLyrics sing it that way]] anyway.

-->-- '''[[HomestarRunner Limozeen]]''', "Feed the Childrens"

* Chacarron Macarron, also known as the "Uelelelelele" song, is a dance-esque song that's comprised entirely of...''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ85cZS0_jY something]]''. The singer originally composed the song using the David Draiman method mentioned above -- he ''intended'' to write actual lyrics, but decided at some point that the mumbling sounded too funny to drop.

* This is a major component in jazz music.

* Installation from the soundtrack of Coraline.

* [=~Sigur Rós~=] have a name for their gibberish, ''Vonlenska'' (or ''Hopelandic'').

* Talking Heads' "I Zimbra", which is based on a dada poem full of nonsense words by Hugo Ball.

* Lamb of God's "Black Label". Even with the lyrics handy, you can hardly make out what Randy Blythe is singing there.

* It picked up real words by the time it appeared on an album, but the lyrics to Weezer's "Burndt Jamb" were originally just "do" and "ah". The ''Maladroit'' version did still retain some scatting in the backing vocals ("doot do doo doo").
* Projects related to musician Mike Patton almost always feature at least a little bit of this. As the title might suggest, Mr Bungle's "Ma Meeshka Mow Skwoz". "Chemical Marriage" off of the same album is just scat singing. At one point in time you could have sent two dollars to a P.O. box listed in the Disco Volante liner notes to get some stickers and the "lyrics" to "Ma Meeshka Mow Skwoz" and "Chemical Marriage."

* The instrumental version of Cake's ''Arco Arena''.

* The band Relient K has a song titled "Gibberish" that is comprised of mostly gibberish, outside of the chorus which basically says "don't talk to people in gibberish".

* Simon and Garfunkel's "[[TheGraduate Mrs. Robinson]]" starts with "doo doo doo-doo doo doo doo... dee dee dee dee de dee" (with some more "doos" and "dees" in there).

* Cocteau Twins.

* Anything by Scatman John.

* "Centerfold" by the J. Geils Band has a Scatting part right after the second chorus and one near the end.

* {{Nirvana}}'s "Tourette's" has no lyrics, just lots of screaming that sounds vauguely like it might be lyrics. Of course, given that some people think all Nirvana lyrics sound like "[[IndecipherableLyrics vaguely wordlike gibberish]]", many are convinced that is also true of this song, and that there are real lyrics there if you listen hard enough. There aren't. It's just gibberish.

* Most Death Metal vocals are either this or IndecipherableLyrics.

* [[{{Loituma}} Yak tsup tsop parvi karidola, tik parivila titz tandoola...]]

* [[IevanPolkkaa Yak tsup tsop parvi karidola, tik parivila titz tandoola...]]

* John Zorn's famous Jazz {{deconstruction}} band Naked City featured Yamatsuka Eye of The Boredoms screaming, crying, babbling, gurgling, screeching, howling, and generally making a beautifully [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel nightmarish]] and nonsensical racket.

In music, Scatting is vocalization that isn't lyrics. It is, for the most part, improvisation with wordless vocables, nonsense syllables, whistling, [[CarefulWithThatAxe screaming]], or even humming without words at all. Scatting the gives singer a chance to improve his own melody and rhythm, basically creating the vocal equivalent to an instrumental solo.

* As the title might suggest, Mr Bungle's "Ma Meeshka Mow Skwoz". Mike Patton is known for throwing at least a little of this in with everything else he's done - see also most Fantomas songs, as well as his first solo album ''Adult Themes For Voice'' (which is nothing ''but'' him making HighOctaneNightmareFuel noises with his voice unaccompanied).
** Another Mr. Bungle song, Chemical Marriage, is just scat singing. At one point in time you could have sent two dollars to a P.O. box listed in the Disco Volante liner notes to get some stickers and the "lyrics" to Ma Meeshka Mow Skwoz and Chemical Marriage.

This is musical vocalization that isn't lyrics, where the singer's humming, [[OminousLatinChanting chanting]], whistling, [[CarefulWithThatAxe screaming]], or just singing 'Do do do do do do.'

** There's a good reason for this: Simlish is an important factor in lead singer David Draiman's melodic style. It involves listening to the band's completed track till he can imagine a tune to follow, scat-singing until his voice satisfactorily gels to the song, applying lyrics as late as possible. Basically every Disturbed song was Simlish at one point; in the case of some, he found that any lyrics he wrote wouldn't have quite as much punch as a simple nonsense phrase.

* It picked up real words by the time it appeared on an album, but the lyrics to Weezer's "Burndt Jamb" were originally just "do" and "ah". The ''Maladroit'' version did still retain some simlish in the backing vocals ("doot do doo doo").

* The Ting Tings, "Impacilla Carpisung" is the closest to actual Simlish ever heard.

** Bonus points for the Simlish being constructed for appropriate influences. All albums have a certain 'world' component, but the first has quite a Latin feel to mirror the more classical nature of the music. The second plays around with scales: do lah mi so fah etc, because it's an album playing with structure. The fourth is influenced by Celtic sounds (especially from Jenkin's native Wales) and has a lot that sounds rather like Welsh.

* "Centerfold" by the J. Geils Band has a SingingSimlish part right after the second chorus and one near the end.

* Rise Against actually performed a [[TheSims Simlish]] version of [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAf5XTOrPM4 Savior (youtube link)]] written for a Sims 3 advertising campaign. It is remarkably similar to the actual version ("it kills me not to know this" becomes "ta kil me naka no dis", for example), suggesting that either Simlish is closer to English than thought or that Rise Against is unimaginative.
** There are other Simlish song versions too, including Katy Perry's "Hot n Cold."

* Soul Coughing songs contain a little bit of scatting on occasion in general, but the most simlish-heavy song is "Paint", which ended up that way as sort of a ThrowItIn moment: Mike Doughty had written chorus lyrics, but not any verses, so he just started spouting rhythmic nonsense over the verse section, then decided it sounded cooler that way.

* Most of the musical score of WingedMigration is "simlish"... sometimes it's even hard to distinguish from percussions. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc_qpk2d-ao&feature=PlayList&p=36636ACDD5863876&playnext=1&index=17 The trailer]].

* Rouge's levels in ''SonicAdventure 2'' all have this. Her theme is about half Simlish, half English.

* Wasn't the entire point of The Urbz to build a game around [[BlackEyedPeas The Black Eyed Peas]] [[SingingSimlish Singing Simlish]]?

This is musical vocalaization that isn't lyrics, where the singer's humming, [[OminousLatinChanting chanting]], whistling, [[CarefulWithThatAxe screaming]], or just singing 'Do do do do do do.'

[[redirect:SingingSimlish]]