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Project Kino (3/23/26)

From Alex Baumans:

Around the 6:00 (out of 18:10) mark there starts a discussion about how the tonal structure of Chinese influences songwriting and how that makes really catchy tunes difficult. One of the workarounds is of course switch to English.

This presentation is full of excellent insights and analysis, comparing Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, and other languages / music.  Far too much gratuitous flinging around of the "f" word for my taste.

Selected readings

• "The conundrum of singing with tones" (5/30/25) — with lengthy bibliography
• "Tones and intonation in Sinitic languages" (5/30/25)
• "When intonation overrides tone, part 6" (5/9/21) — and take a look at the previous 5 iterations of this series

April 25, 2026 @ 5:36 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Language and music, Tones

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