instrumentals
- 1The recorded backing music of a song, with the vocal track removed.
Like a karaoke track: the full song minus the singer.
The rapper bought a batch of instrumentals from an online beatmaker.
Many streaming services now offer instrumentals alongside the original mixes.
Similarbeats
Note
A producer's word, and one that keeps its plural even for a single song: the instrumentals of a track are everything left once the vocals come out. It takes a plural verb (the instrumentals are ready) and turns up wherever a song is reused without its singer, as in remixing, karaoke, licensing and sampling. Rappers buy them from beatmakers, and labels release them beside the original mix.
- 2Plural of instrumental.
The album closes with two instrumentals and no lyrics at all.
Jazz clubs often feature long instrumentals late into the night.
Note
Two quite different nouns share this plural. In music, instrumentals are pieces written or performed without singing, with a lead instrument carrying the line a voice would take. In grammar, they are forms in the instrumental case. The adjective (instrumental meaning 'essential') takes no plural, so instrumentals is always a noun. Keep it apart from the stripped backing track, which is a song with its vocals removed, not a piece composed without them.
instrumentals is a form of instrumental
instrumental, noun: A musical composition written or performed without lyrics, in which a lead instrument typically carries the melody in place of vocals. Full entry
- Forms
- instrumentalinstrumentals plural
- Spelling
- instrumental → instrumentals: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /z/.
Use it in a sentence
Write your own sentence with instrumentals, and AI will tell you whether it fits and which meaning you used.