Vocals

The use of the word "vocal" as a noun meaning "singing" has a long history, first appearing in print in 1582. But the origins of its curiously plural modern usage are tied to the label notations of the 78 rpm era. Restricted to the pop sphere (one never reads or hears of classical "vocals"), the term arose in a borderland between adjective and noun: records were marked as "vocal," "with vocals," with vocal refrain," "vocal with orchestra," or some similar description. Eventually the noun usage became fully current, and a vocal performance was termed a "vocal." When LP albums took off in the early 1950s, a group of such performances became known as "vocals," and their increasingly infrequent counterparts as "instrumentals." Other plural froms--the most frequent is "keyboards"--evolved by analogy.

Vocal Instruments