# tones in a song, singing



## COF

Something that I've been wondering for a while, how could you sing in Chinese when the meanings of words are dictated by the tones, and one word can mean 4 different things depending on what tone you use. Music, of course, has a lot of tone variation, so how does it work? Or does it just end up sounding awful?

Moderator's Note: Several threads have been merged to create this one.


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## konungursvia

In singing, in fact you do disregard the tones; however, in composing the words to a song, they have to be careful to choose words that will be easily understood in a singing, linguistically toneless context. So it's a bit like homophones in English: The song "Touch her soft lips and part", meaning the verb to part, once provoked the question, in our string orchestra: "Which part do you touch on her?" So it must be done carefully.


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## Outsider

How are tone languages sung?


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## unefemme1

I suppose you just know. I'm Asian and speak mandarin at home. When you grow up speaking mandarin you just get used to hearing it and in songs you basically have to use common sense. Also, the pronunciation of words is also important so that's another give away. As a learner, I guess it must be very hard at first. And as konungursvia said, the choice of words must be chosen, well, carefully.


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## Username314

There's a joke about this. A mom got angry at her son because she thought he was singing "wo shi yige xiao nao1zhong3" (I am a moron) while the kid was singing "nao4zhong1" (I am an alarm)...

Pitch in music sometimes bends the tones in such ways that a word can be misinterpretated. Actually, they say that language is very much connected with music. The tones in Chinese can be considered dips and drops in pitch (c to e, etc.). So if that gets alter in songs you get some comical effects.


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## prettyflora

sigh...
well we native chinese sometimes misinterpretated the tones in music.
often it is because the singers do not get it right.
the tones may be the  most difficult thing while learning chinese.


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## journeymanjim

Hello. this isn't really a linguistic question per se, but it's something I'm very curious about, and I guess this is a good place to ask. I know that Chinese uses tones, but I was wondering how these work in songs? If someone is singing in Chinese how do the tones sound? Are the tones just disregarded and you have to judge the words by context, or do the tones come through in the melody?
It's something i've been curious about for a long time, so any replies are greatly appreciated.
Thank you 

Jim


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## avlee

Tones come through in the melody. 
For Chinese characters, tones are actually inherent attributes of characters. It's an efficent way to enlarge the vocabulary of this language. Like some English words, the grave accent determines whether it is used as a noun or verb to avoid creating redundant words. 
So your question is equivalent to one of how grave accent works in songs or if someone is singing in English how does the grave accent sound?
Hope this helps some.


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## xiaolijie

I think journeymanjim wants to know if the rise & fall of tones is in conflict/ harmony with the rise & fall of the melody. 

In my experience, the answer is yes and no: some song writers would choose the words with appropriate tones to accommodate the rise & fall of the melody (as a result, the words in the lyrics can be sung in the correct tones) while other writers would disregard the potential tone-vs-melody conflict to make it easier to write (and as a result, the words in the lyrics can be sung out of tone.)


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## journeymanjim

Thanks for your replies everyone. That's very interesting, xiaolijie, and precisely what I wanted to know.
Xiexie!

Jim


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## e.ma

I think Chinese music is first inspired in language's tones. Sorry if it feels redundant, but I believe some singing by Zhou Xuan may help:  [link removed]


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## palomnik

I think the subject has been worked over elsewhere in the forum, if not for Chinese then for other tonal languages. While in Mandarin the situation is potentially ambiguous, there usually isn't much confusion in real life, or at least not any more than in most other languages. After all, how many times do you misunderstand the lyrics to a song in English?

As an interesting aside, different languages have different problems with this phenomenon. Languages like Thai and, as far as I know, all Chinese dialects, have "contour" tones, i.e., the tonal differences are caused by the contrasts between the different tones. In other languages, like Vietnamese, the actual pitch of a given tone can be important.


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## CapnPrep

journeyman, when singing in Chinese, the melody of the song overrides the tones of the words. So one of your guesses was correct: the tones are disregarded and you have to figure out the lyrics without this information. Thank goodness for subtitles! Of course there are lots of more subtle interactions that make some words fit better to some music, but it would be impossible to write any songs if the melody always had to be compatible with the tone.

This is the first line of the song that e.ma just linked to:
春季到來綠滿窗 chun1 ji4 dao4 lai2 lu4 man3 chuang1
When spring comes, the window is filled with greenery​These are the tone contours:
55-41-41-35-41-11-55​The melody she sings is A-G-A-C-FD-CA-G (relative pitches), which we could represent numerically as
6 - 5 - 6 - 8-42-86- 5​Later, she sings the following line:
夏季到來柳絲長 xia4 ji4 dao4 lai2 liu3 si1 chang2
When summer comes, the willow's leaves are long
41-41-41-35-11-55-35​Three of the words in the middle are the same as the first line, but all the other words have different tones. The melody of the song is exactly the same for both lines. There are two seasons left; unfortunately "autumn" and "winter" have the same (high level) tone as "spring". But the last three words in each line are different: 
秋季到來荷花香 qiu1ji4dao4lai2he2hua1xiang1 "autumn ~ the lotus flowers are fragrant
冬季到來雪茫茫 dong1ji4dao4lai2xue3mang2mang2 "winter ~ snow everywhere"​Let me summarize all 4 lines under the single melody:
melody: 6 - 5 - 6 - 8-*42-86- 5*
spring: 55-41-41-35-*41-11-55*
summer: 41-41-41-35-*11-55-35*
autumn: 55-41-41-35-*35-55-55*
winter: 55-41-41-35-*11-35-35*​Anyone who believes that the tones come through the melody will have to explain how this works, and I would be very interested to hear it.


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## On Retrouve a Paris

what a delicated explication it is...bravo CP


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## e.ma

I do also like CapnPrep's explanation, which, being a music profane, is way too high for me to answer, but which I understand is true.
Nevertheless, I keep hearing the tones inside the notes.
Couldn't it be possible that different tones go inside each note the same way that there are different hues inside each color?

About subtitles, they are also used in non-musical speech, say normal conversation, to make some words clearly understandable: the speaker may write some on his own hand.


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## DavidCornell

CapnPrep said:


> journeyman, when singing in Chinese, the melody  of the song overrides the tones of the words. [...]


What you said is true but not the whole story. Like someone here has already said, the answer is both yes and no. My answer is this:

Nowadays, tones are disregarded in songs, especially the western type of music in pop music and classical music.

But if you consider traditional Chinese music and folk songs, many times notes are arranged to conform to the tonal contours of the lyrics.

Thirdly, for any type of songs, there is always the possibility of using embellishing notes to bring out the contour of the tones. Even if you have just one main note, e.g. D, it is possible to add an embellishing note to make it C-D, which corresponds to the second tone. You can also add two notes to make it D-C-D, etc.

I have an article on this issue, and there is detailed illustration of how the arrangements of notes correspond to the tonal contours. I will find it and post it here to give you more concrete examples as you have requested.

Here is the article on the relation between singing and tones. But it is written in Chinese. If needed, I can translate the article. If you need more info, please let me know. The copyright is mine.


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## CapnPrep

DavidCornell said:


> I have an article on this issue, and there is detailed illustration of how the arrangements of notes correspond to the tonal contours. I will find it and post it here to give you more concrete examples as you have requested.


Cool! I look forward to reading your article. I would especially be interested to know if singers produce these embellishing notes spontaneously, and if listeners are sensitive to them. For that I guess you would have to write some tonally ambiguous lyrics  and test them on people (see if singers embellish the melody differently depending on which words you give them, and see if listeners understand the lyrics differently with and without different embellishments).

Also, if the melody itself calls for a contour on a certain word (e.g. the 42-86 in the "Four Seasons" song) is there any way to embellish it to indicate that the word actually has a level tone? Or a contour tone with the opposite contour? (e.g., fitting 荷花 he35hua55 to 42-86)



DavidCornell said:


> Here is the article on the relation between singing and tones. But it is written in Chinese. If needed, I can translate the article. If you need more info, please let me know. The copyright is mine.


Oooh, thank you. It will take me a long time to read it! And in the meantime many people would probably appreciate a short summary in English here.


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## DavidCornell

CapnPrep said:


> [...]Also,  if the melody itself calls for a contour on a certain word (e.g. the  42-86 in the "Four Seasons" song) is there any way to embellish it to  indicate that the word actually has a level tone? Or a contour tone with  the opposite contour? (e.g., fitting 荷花 he35hua55 to 42-86)[...]


I think the general principle is that if possible, preserve the contour by using different arrangement or embellising notes. But it is not obligatory. So in the cases you mentioned, it is ok to ignore the contour.

When we listen to folk music from different regions in China, we feel that the music has distinguished regional flavors. The folk songs from Shaanxi are different from those from Jiangsu. I think one of the reasons is that local people try to preserve the tonal features in their own dialects, along with other linguistic features.



avlee said:


> [...]So your question is equivalent to one of how grave accent works in songs  or if someone is singing in English how does the grave accent sound?[...]


In English, it is called stress, but not l'accent grave. That would be French. For most European languages with stress, composers try to preserve the stress patterns in music and peotry. 

In music, one of the important elements in western music is rhythm. So for example for a 2/4 bar, you have "stressed unstressed", for a 4/4 bar, you have "stressed unstessed secondary-stress unstressed", etc. So the stress pattern in English should be noted here, although it is probably not obligatory everywhere.

Since Chinese is not a language with stress, actually in Chinese music, the rhythmic patterns as those mentioned above were not as important as the melody. Many amateur Chinese singers probably find it hard to heed the stress patterns in an English song, since it is not part of our language.

so my generalization is this:

Originally in every language, music/peotry/speech share the same sound features. You have to preserve the linguistic features in your music and peotry.

But nowadays, the definition of music and peotry has changed greatly, and it it not necessary to keep to the patterns in traditional music and poetic theories. Thus you might have atonal music and free verses.


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## e.ma

Thank you, DavidCornell, for explaining it so well.


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## Rallino

Hello everyone,

Soon I'll start to frequent the Chinese classes. But I have already started learning a few things.

I'm trying to grasp the tones. I'm wondering something, though. Is it possible to produce the correct tones when singing in Chinese? Because in the music sheet if it says D-flat, you have to produce a D-flat, therefore my guess is that especially the chinese syllables that have the "3rd tone" will change, right? Because the 3rd tone is actually to go down and up again, so there is a change in the musical note.

So my question is, do some tones vanish in the songs? And if so, how understandable are the Chinese songs?

Thanks in advance


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## cyberpedant

It may be that tones are relative.


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## Rallino

Can you explain a little bit?

Thanks.


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## Lamb67

The fact is that the received sound of a song is quite different to standard tones of Chinese words.

Two people may give you two versions of lyric for the same song.


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## cyberpedant

This is just a guess. My knowledge of any of the Chinese languages is minuscule. But anyway, a tone can be the same as, higher than, or lower than those in its environment. If the tones of a syllable are up-down-up, for example, I would think that you could start anywhere on the scale, just as you can transpose a melody into any key to suit the voice of the singer.
But we'll certainly need the corroboration of a native speaker here.


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## Lamb67

I am not musical specialist at all but agree with Cyber in this case.


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## Rallino

Thanks guys. I'll think about it a little more.


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## Ghabi

Hi Rallino. In Mandarin pop, the tradition is that the words' tones don't need to fit the melody; actually the words' tones simply change according to the melody. Therefore, it's not really recommendable to learn Mandarin by merely listening to songs.

On the other hand, the Cantonese pop tradition requires that the words' tones match the melody ("poetic license" is allowed, but that's the exception rather than the norm), although things are changing and I've a difficult time to understand many a contemporary Cantonese song ...


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## Rallino

That's what I wanted to find out! Thanks for the input Ghabi!


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## ouzhantekin

Personally speaking, in the songs which I have listened to so far I realized that they don't really care about the tones, so I believe the meaning is mostly left to the context and the speed of your neurons when they process the information.


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