Originating in vocal jazz, scat singing or scatting is vocal improvisation with wordless vocables, https://scat69.com/ nonsense syllables or without phrases at all.[2][3] In scat singing, the singer improvises melodies and rhythms utilizing the voice solely as an instrument quite than a talking medium. This is completely different from vocalese, which makes use of recognizable lyrics which are sung to pre-present instrumental solos.

Characteristics[edit]

Structure and syllable selection[edit]

Though scat singing is improvised, the melodic strains are often variations on scale and arpeggio fragments, inventory patterns and riffs, as is the case with instrumental improvisers. As effectively, scatting often incorporates musical construction. All of Ella Fitzgerald's scat performances of "How High the Moon", for instance, use the identical tempo, start with a chorus of a straight studying of the lyric, move to a "specialty chorus" introducing the scat chorus, and then the scat itself.[4] Will Friedwald has in contrast Ella Fitzgerald to Chuck Jones directing his Roadrunner cartoon-every makes use of predetermined formulation in progressive ways.[4]

The deliberate selection of scat syllables can also be a key element in vocal jazz improvisation. Syllable choice influences the pitch articulation, coloration, and resonance of the performance.[5] Syllable selection also differentiated jazz singers' personal kinds: Betty Carter was inclined to make use of sounds like "louie-ooie-la-la-la" (tender-tongued sounds or liquids) whereas Sarah Vaughan would prefer "shoo-doo-shoo-bee-ooo-bee" (fricatives, plosives, and open vowels).[6] The choice of scat syllables may also be used to mirror the sounds of various instruments. The comparison of the scatting types of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan reveals that Fitzgerald's improvisation mimics[a] the sounds of swing-period massive bands with which she performed, while Vaughan's mimics[b] that of her accompanying bop-period small combos.[10]

Humor and citation[edit]

Humor is another vital component of scat singing. Bandleader Cab Calloway exemplified the use of humorous scatting.[11] Other examples of humorous scatting include Slim Gaillard, Leo Watson, and Bam Brown's 1945 music "Avocado Seed Soup Symphony," wherein the singers scat variations on the phrase "avocado" for much of the recording.[12]

Along with such nonsensical makes use of of language, humor is communicated in scat singing by way of using musical citation. Leo Watson, who performed earlier than the canon of American widespread music, incessantly drew on nursery rhymes in his scatting. This is named using a compression.[13] Similarly, Ella Fitzgerald's scatting, for example, drew extensively on popular music. In her 1960 recording of "How High the Moon" dwell in Berlin, she quotes over a dozen songs, including "The Peanut Vendor," "Heat Wave," "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes."[14]

History[edit]

Origins[edit]

Improvisational singing of nonsense syllables occurs in many cultures, corresponding to diddling or lilting in Ireland, German yodeling, Sámi joik, and talking in tongues in numerous religious traditions.

Although Louis Armstrong's 1926 recording of "Heebie Jeebies" is usually cited as the first modern song to make use of scatting,[15][16] there are lots of earlier examples.[17] One early master of ragtime scat singing was Gene Greene who recorded scat choruses in his music "King of the Bungaloos" and several others between 1911 and 1917.[18] Entertainer Al Jolson scatted via just a few bars in the middle of his 1911 recording of "That Haunting Melody."[19] Gene Greene's 1917 "From Here to Shanghai," which featured faux-Chinese scatting,[18] and Gene Rodemich's 1924 "Scissor Grinder Joe" and "A few of These days" additionally pre-date Armstrong.[20] Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards scatted an interlude on his 1923 "Old fashioned Love" in lieu of using an instrumental soloist.[21][22] One of many early female singers to make use of scat was Aileen Stanley, who included it at the top of a duet with Billy Murray of their hit 1924 recording of "It Had to be You" (Victor 19373).

Jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton credited Joe Sims of Vicksburg, Mississippi, as the creator of scat around the turn of the twentieth century.[23] In a conversation between Alan Lomax and Jelly Roll Morton, Morton recounted the history of scat:[2]

Lomax: "Well, what about some more scat songs, that you just used to sing means again then?" Morton: "Oh, I'll sing you some scat songs. That was manner earlier than Louis Armstrong's time. By the way in which, scat is one thing that a lot of people don't understand, and they start to believe that the primary scat numbers was ever accomplished, was executed by one among my hometown boys, Louis Armstrong. But I have to take the credit score away, since I know better. The first man that ever did a scat quantity in historical past of this country was a man from Vicksburg, Mississippi, by the title of Joe Sims, an old comic. And from that, Tony Jackson and myself, and a number of other more grabbed it in New Orleans. And located it was pretty good for an introduction of a track." Lomax: "What does scat imply?" Morton: "Scat doesn't suggest anything but simply something to offer a music a taste."[2]

Morton also once boasted, "Tony Jackson and myself were using scat for novelty again in 1906 and 1907 when Louis Armstrong was nonetheless within the orphan's residence."[24] Don Redman and Fletcher Henderson also featured scat vocals in their 1925 recording of "My Papa Doesn't Two-Time No Time" five months previous to Armstrong's 1926 recording of "Heebie Jeebies."[25]

Heebie Jeebies[edit]

It was Armstrong's February 1926 performance of "Heebie Jeebies," nevertheless, that is considered the turning point for the medium.[15] From the 1926 recording of "Heebie Jeebies" arose the strategies that would type the inspiration of fashionable scat.[15] In a possibly apocryphal story,[26] Armstrong claimed that, when he was recording "Heebie Jeebies" with his band The new Five, his sheet music fell off the stand and onto the ground.[17] Not figuring out the lyrics to the track, he invented a gibberish melody to fill time, anticipating the minimize to be thrown out in the long run, however that take of the song was the one launched:[17]

"I dropped the paper with the lyrics-proper in the midst of the tune. . . And I didn't wish to cease and spoil the file which was moving alongside so wonderfully . . . So after i dropped the paper, I instantly turned back into the horn and started to scatting . . . Just as nothing had happened . . . When i completed the record I just knew the recording people would throw it out . . . And to my surprise all of them came running out of the controlling sales space and said-'Leave That In.'"[17]

Armstrong's "Heebie Jeebies" grew to become a national bestseller and, consequently, the follow of scatting "grew to become closely related to Armstrong."[19] The song would function a model for Cab Calloway, whose nineteen thirties scat solos impressed George Gershwin's use of the medium in his 1935 opera Porgy and Bess.[27]

Widespread adoption[edit]

Following the success of Armstrong's "Heebie Jeebies," quite a lot of well-liked songs featured scat singing. In June 1927, Harry Barris and Bing Crosby of bandleader Paul Whiteman's "The Rhythm Boys" scatted on several songs together with "Mississippi Mud," which Barris had composed.[28]

On October 26, 1927, Duke Ellington's Orchestra recorded "Creole Love Call" featuring Adelaide Hall singing wordlessly.[29] Hall's wordless vocals and "evocative growls" have been hailed as serving as "another instrument."[30] Although creativity must be shared between Ellington and Hall as he knew the model of efficiency he wanted, Hall was the one who was ready to supply the sound.[29] A year later, in October 1928, Ellington repeated the experiment in one in all his variations of "The Mooche," with Getrude "Baby" Cox singing scat after a muted related trombone solo by Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton.[31]

During the good Depression, acts such as the Boswell Sisters commonly employed scatting on their data, together with the high complexity of scatting at the same time, in harmony.[32] An instance is their version of "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)."[32] The Boswell Sisters' "inventive use of scat singing was a supply for Ella Fitzgerald."[32] As a young woman, Fitzgerald typically practiced imitating Connee Boswell's scatting for hours.[33]

Fitzgerald herself would develop into a gifted scat singer and later claimed to be the "best vocal improviser jazz has ever had," and critics since then have been in almost common settlement with her.[1] During this 1930s period, other well-known scat singers included Scatman Crothers[34]-who would go on to movie and tv fame[34]-and British dance band trumpeter and vocalist Nat Gonella[35] whose scat-singing recordings have been banned[c] in Nazi Germany.[35]

Later development[edit]

Over time, as jazz music developed and grew in complexity, scat singing did as nicely. In the course of the bop period of the 1940s, extra highly developed vocal improvisation surged in popularity.[27] Annie Ross, a bop singer, expressed a common sentiment among vocalists at the time: "The [scat] music was so thrilling, everybody wanted to do it."[36] And lots of did: Eddie Jefferson, Betty Carter, Anita O'Day, Joe Carroll, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, Jon Hendricks, Babs Gonzales, Mel Torme and Dizzy Gillespie were all singers in the idiom.[27]

Free jazz and the affect of world musicians on the medium pushed jazz singing nearer to avant-garde art music.[27] Within the 1960s Ward Swingle was the product of an unusually liberal musical schooling. He took the scat singing concept and utilized it to the works of Bach, creating The Swingle Singers. Scat singing was additionally utilized by Louis Prima and others in the tune "I Wan'na Be Like you" in Disney's The Jungle Book (1967).

The bop revival of the 1970s renewed interest in bop scat singing, and younger scat singers seen themselves as a continuation of the classic bop tradition. The medium continues to evolve, and vocal improvisation now typically develops independently of modifications in instrumental jazz.[27]

Throughout the mid-nineties, jazz artist John Paul Larkin (better known as Scatman John) renewed curiosity within the style briefly when he started fusing jazz singing with pop music and electronica, scoring a world-broad hit with the track "Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop)" in 1994. Vocal improviser Bobby McFerrin's performances have shown that "wordless singing has traveled far from the ideas demonstrated by Louis Armstrong, Gladys Bentley, Cab Calloway, Anita O'Day, and Leo Watson."[37]

Vocal bass[edit]

Vocal bass is a type of scat singing that is meant to vocally simulate instrumental basslines which can be sometimes carried out by bass players. A technique most commonly used by bass singers in a cappella groups is to simulate an instrumental rhythm section, often alongside a vocal percussionist or beatboxer. Some notable vocal bass artists are Tim Foust, Adam Chance, Bobby McFerrin, Al Jarreau, Reggie Watts, Alvin Chea, Joe Santoni, Avi Kaplan, Matt Sallee, and Geoff Castellucci.

Use in hip hop[edit]

Many hip hop artists and rappers use scat singing to come up with the rhythms of their raps.[38] Tajai of the group Souls of Mischief states the next within the book How one can Rap: "Sometimes my rhythms come from scatting. I normally make a scat form of skeleton after which fill within the phrases. I make a skeleton of the stream first, after which I put words into it."[38] The group Lifesavas describe an analogous process.[38] Rapper Tech N9ne has been recorded demonstrating precisely how this methodology works,[39] and gangsta rapper Eazy-E used it extensively in his song "Eazy Street."

Historical theories[edit]

Some writers have proposed that scat has its roots in African musical traditions.[27] In much African music, "human voice and instruments assume a type of musical parity" and are "at occasions so close in timbre and so inextricably interwoven inside the music's fabric as to be practically indistinguishable."[41] Dick Higgins likewise attributes scat singing to traditions of sound poetry in African-American music.[42] In West African music, it's typical to transform drum rhythms into vocal melodies; widespread rhythmic patterns are assigned particular syllabic translations.[27] However, this principle fails to account for the existence-even within the earliest recorded examples of scatting-of free improvisation by the vocalist.[27] It is therefore extra likely that scat singing advanced independently within the United States.[27]

Others have proposed that scat singing arose from jazz musicians' follow of formulating riffs vocally earlier than performing them instrumentally.[40] (The adage "If you can't sing it, you cannot play it" was common in the early New Orleans jazz scene.[40]) On this method, soloists like Louis Armstrong turned capable of double as vocalists, switching effortlessly between instrumental solos and scatting.[40]

Scat singing additionally resembles the Irish/Scottish observe of lilting or diddling, a kind of vocal music that includes using nonsensical syllables to sing non-vocal dance tunes.[43]

Critical evaluation[edit]

Scat singing can enable jazz singers to have the identical improvisational alternatives as jazz instrumentalists: scatting might be rhythmically and harmonically improvisational without concern about the lyric.[44] Especially when bebop was developing, singers discovered scat to be one of the best strategy to adequately have interaction within the efficiency of jazz.[36]

Scatting could also be desirable because it doesn't "taint the music with the impurity of denotation."[45] Instead of conveying linguistic content and pointing to something outside itself, scat music-like instrumental music-is self-referential and "d[oes] what it imply[s]."[46] Through this wordlessness, commentators have written, scat singing can describe issues past phrases.[45][47] Music critic Will Friedwald has written that Louis Armstrong's scatting, for instance, "has tapped into his own core of emotion," releasing emotions "so deep, so real" that they're unspeakable; his words "bypass our ears and our brains and go directly for our hearts and souls."[47]

Scat singing has never been universally accepted, even by jazz fanatics. Writer and critic Leonard Feather gives an extreme view; he as soon as mentioned that "scat singing-with solely a couple exceptions-needs to be banned."[36] He additionally wrote the lyrics to the jazz tune "Whisper Not," which Ella Fitzgerald then recorded on her 1966 Verve release of the identical identify. Many jazz singers, together with Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Jimmy Rushing, and Dinah Washington, have prevented scat fully.[48]

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References[edit]

Notes[edit]

^ In her 1949 efficiency of "Flyin' Home," Fitzgerald alternates the bilabial "b" and "p" plosives with the alveolar plosive "d".[7] The "b" and "p" sounds are formed equally to the sounds of jazz wind instruments, which sound by the release of constructed-up mouth air strain onto the reed, while the "d" sound is similar to the tonguing on jazz brass devices.[7] William Stewart, a Seattle researcher, has proposed that this alternation simulates the change of riffs between the wind and brass sections that is frequent in big bands.[8]^ Sarah Vaughan tends to use the fricative consonant "sh" together with the low, again of the mouth "ah" vowel. The "sh" intently resembles the sound of brushes, frequent in the bop era, on drum heads; the "ah" vowel resonates similarly to the bass drum.[9]^ Scott 2017, p. 302: In thirties "Nazi Germany, the data of British trumpeter and bandleader Nat Gonella have been banned there and scat singing was a criminal offence."[35]Citations[edit]

^ a b Friedwald 1990, p. 282^ a b c Hill 2014^ Edwards 2002, p. 622^ a b Friedwald 1990, p. 145^ Berliner 1994, p. 125^ Berliner 1994, pp. 125-126^ a b Stewart 1987, p. 65^ Stewart 1987, p. 66^ Stewart 1987, p. 69^ Stewart 1987, p. 74.^ Crowther & Pinfold 1997, p. 129^ Edwards 2002, p. 627^ Friedwald 1990, p. 140^ Edwards 2002, p. 623^ a b c Crowther & Pinfold 1997, p. 32^ Edwards 2002, p. 618^ a b c d Edwards 2002, pp. 618-619^ a b Edwards 2002, p. 619^ a b Gioia 2011, p. Fifty nine^ Edwards 2002, p. 619^ Edwards 2002, p. 620^ Friedwald 1990, p. Sixteen^ Nicholson 1993, p. 89^ Edwards 2002, p. 620^ Edwards 2002, p. 619^ Giddins 2000, p. 161^ a b c d e f g h i Robinson 2007^ Hendricks 2003, p. Sixty six^ a b Williams 2003, p. 113^ Hentoff 2001^ Lawrence 2001, p. 136^ a b c Wilson 1981, p. 4^ Nicholson 1993, pp. 10-12.^ a b New York Times 1986^ a b c Scott 2017, p. 302^ a b c Crowther & Pinfold 1997, p. 130^ Crowther & Pinfold 1997, p. 135^ a b c Edwards 2009, p. 114^ Godfrey 2010^ a b c d Berliner 1994, p. 181^ Berliner 1994, p. 68^ Higgins 1985^ Ó Nualláin 2002, pp. 306-307^ Crowther & Pinfold 1997, p. 132^ a b Grant 1995, p. 289^ Leonard 1986, p. 158^ a b Friedwald 1990, p. 37^ Giddins 2000, p. 162Bibliography[edit]

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