A word for non-language sound

I am looking for a word that describes audio that does not contain words.

For instance:

  • John William's piece Duel of the Fates would be this, since they are just vocables for their musical effect, similar to the way any other instrument is used in that context.

  • A recording of machine gun fire would be this, since there is no linguistic meaning.

  • A song where someone is singing would not be this, because there are words with actual meaning.

  • A book recording would not be this.

Speaking in Tongues by the Talking Heads, and the main theme of Close Encounters of the Third Kind are sort of borderline, I'm really not sure which side they would fall on.

Does anyone know of a word or phrase that would describe this category of sound?


If you are talking about music, I suggest instrumental. Compositions with non-lexical inclusions (such as "la la la") or occasional words are considered instrumental too, according to Wikipedia.

If you want to include non-musical sound as well, such as the machine gun recording that you mention, then I suggest non-lexical.


Would the word noise work? It's a versatile word that might be appropriate in this context.


You could make a distinction between speech sounds and non-speech sounds, and between linguistic and non-linguistic speech sound.