An instrumental is, in contrast to a song, a musical composition or piece without lyrics or any other sort of vocal music; all of the music is produced by musical instruments. Specifically, this term is used when referring to popular music; some musical genres make little use of the human voice, such as jazz, electronic music, and large amounts of Western classical music (although in electronic music, the voice can be sampled just like anything else).

A cappella singing may be considered the opposite of instrumental music: all sounds are produced by the human body without the use of additional instruments.

See also instrumental rock and instrumental case (linguistics).