Can it be a song if there is no singing?

[F.U.Shakespeare]

I once heard an obviously over-educated DJ on an oldies station back-announce Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe”,

“I’ve been playing songs all morning, but that’s the first ode”

[Shakester]

I play in an instrumental band: no singer, just players.

I don’t call our pieces “songs” because there isn’t anyone singing on them. I don’t recall hearing anyone else referring to our music as “songs” either.

I don’t have a particular term for our pieces other than “pieces”, or “bits” or “things” if I’m feeling less formal. I’m sure I’ve called them “tunes” too.

I don’t think of myself as a songwriter, either, since I write music but not words. I call myself a composer without feeling particularly self-conscious. “Composer” (in this context) literally means “someone who writes music” and it doesn’t imply that one is composing classical music in particular. I play with classically-trained people, so I use classical-music vocabulary because it’s a handy way to communicate.

[Polycarp]

@Shakester

I play in an instrumental band: no singer, just players.

I don’t call our pieces “songs” because there isn’t anyone singing on them. I don’t recall hearing anyone else referring to our music as “songs” either.

I don’t have a particular term for our pieces other than “pieces”, or “bits” or “things” if I’m feeling less formal. I’m sure I’ve called them “tunes” too.

I don’t think of myself as a songwriter, either, since I write music but not words. I call myself a composer without feeling particularly self-conscious. “Composer” (in this context) literally means “someone who writes music” and it doesn’t imply that one is composing classical music in particular. I play with classically-trained people, so I use classical-music vocabulary because it’s a handy way to communicate.

“Take me to your lieder!”

– which may actually be the answer we’re looking for. A lied does not necessarily have words, just a melody suitable to be played solo or vocalized, as opposed to symphonic or multipart pieces.

[Fiddle_Peghead]

@XXAILEANXX

Birds have ‘songs’, but I’ve yet to hear any words.

Yes, because birds sing "birdsongs".

[Omar_Little]

But, can you make a guitar sing?

If one can, Eddie VanHalen surely can.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

Yeah, regardless of its original meaning, “song” in common parlance long ago came to mean any musical arrangement, I think. And I can live with that.

[BigT]

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

“Eruption” is really a solo, not a song, but instrumentals can be songs (or pass in the vernacular as “songs”) if they follow the basic structure of of conventional vocal song - that is with a repeating melodic motif, especially if it has a verse/chorus structure.

“Eruption” doesn’t really have any of that. It’s just a guitar solo. “Classical Gas” is a “song.”

ETA in my experience playing in bands, I never really heard other musicians arguing that instrumentals weren’t “songs.” or using different words for them.

I agree 100% with all of this. And I find it ironic that you are the only one accepting a non black-and-white position for once.