Instrumental or Vocal?
 

Hmm, I wonder what is the general favoritism of GFF member toward music. Which do you prefer? Instrumental or vocal one? to be honest I enjoy and instrumental much more than vocal ones.

90% of my music collections are instrumental, and I barely listen to vocal tracks except it's really good.

I too very much prefer instrumental music over vocal music.
The exceptions to this rule is when the voice is being used as a musical instrument (artistic and classical songs) rather than a tonal medium in which to say stuff, which seems to me to be the case with most modern music.

I perfer instrumental music, though most of the music I do have have vocals to them, I rarely pay attention to them and would love a good instrumental song instead sometimes.

I listen to some Acapella stuff and love it - Eric Whitacre's "Complete A Capella Works" is one of the best CDs I own. But my heart truly lies with Instrumental Music - Wind Ensemble, Brass Ensemble, and Orchestra. I'm the kind of guy who listens to a rock song and can't remember a single word of it but has the tune running through his head all day.

I tend to like music best for the lyrics and the vocals. A pure intrumental can rarely capture the raw haunting beauty and emotion that a properly used human voice can. It's a rare instrumental that doesn't bore the living shit out of me.

Given the initial purpose of this site I'd imagine the instrumental crowd is going to be pretty overwhelming. I haven't heard much video game music that uses vocals heavily.

I don't prefer either. Some instrumental music is good, some instrumental music is bad. Same goes for music with vocals. I don't discriminate based on what makes the sound. That being said, most of the music I listen to does have vocals.

My favorite songs are all instrumental songs. The songs that I generally enjoy the most are songs that are instrumental with powerful choirs.

Final Fantasy songs generally feels good on both vocal and instrumental (piano).

Onegai Teacher (anime) had a piano piece that is very good too.

I like both equaly really. I've got a good mix of instrumental and vocal music on the computer. Instrumental used to bore the hell out of me but not so much anymore because of the games i play that have some pretty good OST's and such.

I have about a 70/30 split towards vocal. I'm just a massive sucker for bands and guitars etc and they tend to go hand in hand with vocals.

I'm more leaned towards the instrumental side of music, although some vocal can be nice. But I find it hard(though not impossible) for vocal to stand without instrumental backing, and yet instruments don't necessarily need vocals.

So, instruments it is.

Is this in the right forum? (calling for mod-airstrike)

Well seeing as I listen to more video game music than mainstream music, then I'll have to say instrumental. I'm not sure why I like/listen to VGM more, it may be because many a time I have thought, when I listen to vocal songs, that the vocalist or the lyrics just don't fit with the tune, therefore making it hard to memorise the song. Meh, that's the best excuse I could come up with =P

Instrumental 80%, Vocal 20%. I have far more VGM on my HD than I do vocal music, and most of that vocal music is Japanese/English anime/mainstream songs.

Therefore, Instrumental for me.

Why isn't there a bloody 'both' option? I have a lot of vocal and instrumental music, and like lots of other things, there's both good and bad music of each. There's lots of outstanding instrumentals and vocals, so I don't have a preference.

Instrumental is by far my favorite since there is so much room for creativity in instrumental VGM that vocal songs really don't leave much room for creativity. "Agnus Dei", "Deliverance", "and "Blue Stream" are the best exceptions though since the first one has the best symphonic choir vocal, the next is just strange, and the last is hilarious.

i just like vocal if they are used like an entire instrument and not only to say stupid lyrics....

Following the major trend as it seems, I too usually enjoy instrumentals over vocal. The ocassional song will come along that will change my mind--it also depends on the mood.

70/30, shall we say?

I'm split between the two. I really like music with vocals because I like to hear lyrics. It's what I'm most used to. I don't care if the lyrics are stupid anymore because I like a song because of its music too.

I like instrumental because it doesn't need vocals to complete it. One example I really like is The Gravel Road from the movie, The Village.
I like the quiet instrumental music. That and just piano music.

Because you can't 'prefer' 'both' if there are only two options, obv.

Virtually all my favourite bands are vocal, though I guess it's not that surprising to see many people liking instrumental music on a game music board. That said, I've been trying to listen to more electronic/instrumental music lately; there is some pretty good stuff to be found, but generally it is still too boring for me. Maybe it's acquired taste.

I was tempted to put "instrumental" thanks to bands like GY!BE and Yndi Halda, but there are just so many great rock bands that perform vocally. And when you bring into that the fact my favorite all-time band, Love, performs almost exclusively non-instrumentals, it's the clear choice.

i voted instrumental, but that's probably just because i happen to be listening to an OST at the moment ^^; otherwise it's almost 50/50

i tend to pay more attention to the actual music though, rather than the vocals/lyrics except when it comes to certain singers (Hajime Chitose especially *_*)

I love instrumental music, of varying genres. Sure a few classical tunes will always be sweet, but a good old metal instrumental with a facemelting guitar solo can be peppered throughout my "reptoire" as well. Gotta mix it up.

I prefer instrumental, but I don't completely rule out vocal music. Granted, a large portion of my music collection is instrumental, but I'm willing to listen to vocal music as well.

I really don't have a preference, because it just depends on the songs. I probably have more instrumentals in my music collection, but that doesn't mean I neceesarily like them better.

Eric Whitacre <3


Still . . . I don't really have a preference. I just happen to be a singer, so I hear a lot more vocal music. Most of my VGM is instrumental, but that doesn't stop me from listening to Sanctuary/Passion over and over :milk:

It was 90% instrumental since video game OSTs were the only thing I really liked, with the other 10% being anime OPs/EDs. (No mainstream repetitiveness for me!)
Now it has evened out significantly with a slight leaning still towards instruments, due to my relatively recent Go! Go! 7188 obsession, and my inclination to reasearch more about and listen to the Jpop scene.

love both. but prefer vocal over instrumental. :-)

Vocal. I used to listen almost exclusively to game music many years ago. But vocals can make music so much more versatile. Usually a horn/violin/whatever sound more or less the same across genres. A person's unique voice however, gives music a bit of extra spice to keep me interested in looking for new bands. There are times however, when I need to totally relax and zone out; at those times I invariably choose instrumental.

There are quite a few bands that I enjoy on a daily basis. Something of which I can't say to most instrumental songs unless I'm in the right mood, like classical. So vocal for me.

I'm not surprised a lot of people here love instrumental over vocal. VGM lovers mostly listening to BGM, which don't have much vocal tracks.;)

Moby is hot for his instrumentals. Go listen to tracks like Natural Blues.

I'm trendy. There will be months where I'll be sick of just instrumental stuff, and I'll be listening to tracks with vocals. Then there will be months where I'm just litening to non-vocal stuff: soundtracks, electronic music, etc. Often, though, I'll just have playlists with pretty much every genre mixed in. This is where I am right now.

I voted vocal because most of my favorite artists are all vocals-based; in many cases it's the vocals themselves that draw me to the artists. However, I don't really have a preference between the two, and I'd say my music library is split between the two about 50/50. I mean, as long as it sound good, who cares?

I prefer instrumental over vocal songs simply because, out of my exposure to music, I've found that the instrumental pieces were more varied and interesting to listen to. I usually pick up new things about instrumenta pieces each time I hear them, while I usually don't find much in a lot of vocal songs. However, I do enjoy listening to vocal pieces as well, so I can't say that I hate it. One of my biggest complaints about vocal songs is the fact that the lyrics to certain songs can totally ruin my listening experience or just distract me from listening to anything else in the piece.

I guess I listen to songs because of tunes, color, etc. rather than words.

It depends on what I'm doing actually.

When I was writing papers or doing work for school, I'd always listen to instrumental music. The genres differed, but it was almost always vocal-less. However, when in my friends' cars, we'd always listen to music with vocals. Driving down a busy road with three guys in a car trying to hit high notes and all failing miserably = good times.

Thus I vote vocal.

I listen to classical about 90% of the time, and only about half of the remaining percent is vocal music, which consists of whatever mainstream stuff I liked back in the day--Paul Simon, Bjork, um...

I'm a fan of both. The way I see it, if something sounds good I listen to it. I'm not the type who will sit and listen to music and go "Hmm, this song would sound alot better with/without vocals". You can't change a song, so if you like it the way it is, listen to it. If not, listen to something else.

I prefer instrumental unless the lyrics are very meaningful and strong.
For foreign songs I'd prefer vocal because I don't understand the meaning so I blend the lyrics with the music to make it a more powerful and deep song.

Absolutely instrumental.

I can't stand the voice of most humans in music. It just doesn't sound good or it spoils the melody. Obviously I don't care about words either. It would be OK to me to switch human voices to violins in most music.

Some FF tracks have successful human voices though, like FF8 fithos lusec wecos vinosec. Though human voice can be bad in FF tracks too, like in the FF3 Eternal legend of the wind arrangement, and by that i mean the start talk which feels useless.. the song track in that arrangement is not very good either because of the focus on singing.

Instruments are very important to me. Flutes, violins and acoustic guitar plzlz.

Well, when it comes to videogames, i sure like instrumental more (haha, there is not much vocal vgm :P but i didn't like the MGS2 ending >.<) but when it comes to "normal" music, i prefer vocal trance ...

well, but i love psychedelic trance too, there are sometimes vocals but not much =P

/me is listening to: infected mushroom - i wish (rmx by skazi)

:biggrin:

There's a time and a place for both, but it seems as though instrumental dominates, as it takes the majority of what I usually listen to...theres an instrumental song for just about every mood i'm in...

I'm not biased towards either, although I do seem to have more vocal music in my collection. Sometimes it's really great to be able to enjoy the music and (try to) scream/sing along to the vocals. I can't sing, but hey -- I like it all the same.

I even sometimes treat the vocals as an instrument, another "colour" that adds to the sonic pallette of the song.

Instrumental music isn't bad, but usually the only reason I don't listen to much instrumental music is because I'm no big fan of the genres that are usually assosciated with non-vocal music. Well, except noise and some experimental/avant-garde stuff.

One of my main draws towards game music is the lack of vocals (particularly for rock pieces...Loud, screechy vocals are the perfect way to ruin an otherwise fine song). So not surprisingly, much of what I listen to is instrumental.

Still enjoy some vocals, mostly JPOP (anime/game-related or Ryoko Shintani)and the occasional Offspring/Motorhead (think HHH) track. They're just far from the majority.

I love instumental stuff, mostly things that you can listen to over and over and not get bored by it, especially the calm stuff. Most of the vocals I listen to, as short of a list as they are, mostly go with great instrumental stuff.

I have more vocal music in my collection, but I don't necessarily prefer one type to the other. Instrumental music may be easier to listen to if I just want something playing in the background while studying for example, but vocal music is what I typically listen to.

I love instrumental music every now and then. I love "wanking" and I love being impressed by the pure chops some musicians have.

When it comes to it though, I have a hard time getting through my all instrumental albums, and I love songs with well-written lyrics, versatile and interesting vocal lines, and sometimes catchy hooks too. I consider the voice an instrument in itself when it comes to it, and listening to instrumental after instrumental feels just as wrong to me as listening to song after song without drums would.