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A song is a relatively short musical composition.
Songs contain vocal parts that are performed with the human voice
and generally feature words (lyrics), commonly accompanied by other
musical instruments (exceptions would be a cappella and scat songs).
The words of songs are typically of a poetic, rhyming nature,
although they may be religious verses or free prose.
Songs are typically for a solo singer, though there may also be a
duet, trio, or more voices (works with more than one voice to a
part, however, are considered choral). Songs can be broadly divided
into many different forms, depending on the criteria used. One
division is between "art songs", "popular music songs", and "folk
songs". Other common methods of classification are by purpose
(sacred vs secular), by style (dance, ballad, Lieder, etc), or by
time of origin (Renaissance, Contemporary, etc).
Colloquially, song is often used to refer to any music composition,
even those without vocals (though in music styles that are
predominantly vocal-based, a composition without vocals is often
called an instrumental). In European classical music, however, this
usage is considered incorrect and "song" should only be used to
describe a composition for the human vocals.
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