# Choral music in movies/TV **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 9, 2005, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choral-music-in-movies-tv/293599 "2005-03-09T00:19:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2005, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choral-music-in-movies-tv/293599/1 "2005-03-09T00:19:37Z")
Often part of the soundtrack of a movie, television show, or the like, is choral music, human voices. Sometimes what is being sung is a well known piece. But just as often the voices provide melodius strings of nonsense syllables, chanting in fictional languages, and so on. How do the studios get the singers/choirs for such work? Do they employ a group, and say “Hey, show up for work on movie X for the next two weeks. You’ll be singing the part of the alien choir as the priests greet their new initiates” Or is there recorded stock footage on hand? Or are voice musicians hired from temp agencies? ---
**Author:** ![Scott\_Plaid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Scott\_Plaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scott_Plaid)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2005, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choral-music-in-movies-tv/293599/2 "2005-03-09T00:28:01Z")
If it is that song about tuna-fish sandwhiches, “oh, for tuna”, then it is probabley a recording. (I’m kidding, the name is “Oh, fortuna”) ---
**Author:** ![Cunctator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/43a26b/32.png) [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2005, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choral-music-in-movies-tv/293599/3 "2005-03-09T00:36:01Z")
I sing in a choir in Sydney and we’ve often been hired to record soundtracks for advertisements. Obviously if the promoters want to use a well known piece of choral music then it’s probably cheaper and easier for them to pay the appropriate licence fee and use an existing recording. But if they want a specially composed choral effect, they’ll usually hire some singers. Our choir pockets the fee, gets a small sub-group of singers together and then we spend a couple of hours in the recording studio laying down the track. I’ve done recordings for television and radio advertisements, as well as television programmes and movies. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2005, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choral-music-in-movies-tv/293599/4 "2005-03-09T00:52:24Z")
That sounds really interesting. It’s just the kind of response I am looking for. Is it difficult to sing something that doesn’t have real words, just (if you’ll pardon the expression), nonsense words that provide a vocal effect? ---
**Author:** ![Cunctator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/43a26b/32.png) [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2005, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choral-music-in-movies-tv/293599/5 "2005-03-09T01:02:33Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > Is it difficult to sing something that doesn’t have real words, just (if you’ll pardon the expression), nonsense words that provide a vocal effect? Not really. Quite often all we do is hum, or sing on vowel sounds (Aah or Ooh). If there are nonsense words it’s just a matter of making sure that we all have a consistent understanding of how they are to be pronounced, and then practising the piece a bit. Last year we had to do four performances of the \*Lord of the Rings \* Symphony. While they were live performances, rather than recordings, they presented the same problem of singing in a language that we all found completely nonsensical (elvish). We just decided on a “standard” pronunciation and got on with it. ---
**Author:** ![I\_can\_t\_believe\_that\_s\_butter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/8edcca/32.png) [@I\_can\_t\_believe\_that\_s\_butter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_can_t_believe_that_s_butter)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2005, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choral-music-in-movies-tv/293599/6 "2005-03-09T01:48:24Z")
Maybe this is on-topic… Is the style of music in radio jingles (_seventy-seven, double-you ay-bee-see!_), generally sung by five to seven voices, considered “choral music”? How big is a choir; is it akin to asking “how long is a piece of string”? ---
**Author:** ![pinkfreud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pinkfreud/32/17603_2.png) [@pinkfreud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinkfreud)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2005, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choral-music-in-movies-tv/293599/7 "2005-03-09T01:56:15Z")
> [@Scott\_plaid](#): > > If it is that song about tuna-fish sandwhiches, “oh, for tuna”, then it is probabley a recording. Groan. That was Orfful. ---
**Author:** ![James\_Westphal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b9bd4f/32.png) [@James\_Westphal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/James_Westphal)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2005, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choral-music-in-movies-tv/293599/8 "2005-03-09T02:04:21Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > That sounds really interesting. It’s just the kind of response I am looking for. > > Is it difficult to sing something that doesn’t have real words, just (if you’ll pardon the expression), nonsense words that provide a vocal effect? Listen to any a cappella group, any doo wop group, the Beatles, or Queen. Half of the time the back up vocals consist of ooh, ahh, or shoop shoop. Sometimes it’s less difficult to remember the next word when it’s ‘boop’ or ‘ahh.’ ---
**Author:** ![Eureka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/74df32/32.png) [@Eureka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eureka)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2005, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choral-music-in-movies-tv/293599/9 "2005-03-09T21:29:22Z")
For that matter, I’ve sung stuff in Latin, French and possibly other languages. First day of rehearsal, and again as needed, the director explains the correct pronunciation of “Propter magnum gloria” and the choir repeats until they say it correctly. Then you learn the melody and rhythm. Side note: when singing something like Vivaldi’s _Gloria_ (in Latin) or certain movements from Handel’s _Messiah_ (especially “Worthy is the Lamb” and the “Amen” section that follow it) even words that do have meaning can be sung so often as to become meaningless. How difficult it is to sing depends on the rhythm, the melody (or harmony), as much or more as it does the qualities of the words. ---
**Author:** ![Meeko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e495f1/32.png) [@Meeko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meeko)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2005, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choral-music-in-movies-tv/293599/10 "2005-03-10T04:40:25Z")
The Matrices and Star Wars The Phantom mennance both use Sanskrit as the language of choice. For the English speaker it is non-sense, but the words are words, and I assume they do make sense.