This skill answers one question: what has Cantonese, as a language, changed the rules of lyric writing into. ★★ The answer is not "swap in a different rhyme table." It is that three things changed at once: the constraint went from "risk" to "hard constraint"; the writing order went from "either lyrics or melody can come first" to "the melody is fixed first"; and checking went from "consult a table" to "first compute the quasi-scale, then sing it through to confirm."
Which sections to read by task
| Task | Read |
|---|---|
| Nine tones, tone values, tone solfège | ★ §1.1 |
| What the quasi-scale "〇二四三" is | ★★ §1.2 |
| Which tone categories can be filled in at this position | ★★ §1.3 truth table → §3.1 |
| How it differs from Mandarin tone inversion | ★ §1.5 |
| What order to follow when writing Cantonese lyrics | ★★ §2 |
| If the computation says it does not match, can it still be saved | ★★ §3.2 flexibility |
| The word that carries the point just will not fit | ★ §3.6、§2.3 |
| Stuck / rhyming entering tones / register and era | §3.7–§3.8 / §4 / §5 |
Boundaries
| Not covered here | Where it belongs |
|---|---|
| Mandarin tone-inversion judgment and the five ways to fix it | lw-tone-check |
| The thirteen rhyme categories, level and oblique tones, the four Mandarin tones, Chinese rhyme tables | lw-mandarin（★ That whole set is void in Cantonese） |
| General principles of rhyming: rhyme schemes, surprise factor, deliberate non-rhyming | lw-rhyme |
| Theme / imagery / section function / person | lw-song-intent、lw-imagery、lw-structure、lw-narrative |
| How the melody is written and changed (including the ornaments in §3.9) / how those words should be sung | Composition and arrangement(melody);Voice(recording and vocal coaching) |
1. Tone matching: why it is a hard constraint
1.1 ★★ Nine tones, tone values, and tone solfège
Tone valueis a phonetic notation system:5 is the highest pitch and 1 is the lowest pitch, using 1–5 to represent the pitch change of a tone from start to end; when written as two digits, the former is called thetone headand the latter is called thetone tail(Wong Chi-wah, Word Prosody and Cantonese Songwriting, p0010).
| Tone | Tone value | Solfège | Tone | Tone value | Solfège | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yin Ping (first tone) | 55 | three | Yang Qu (sixth tone) | 22 | two | |
| Yin Shang (second tone) | 35 | nine | Yin Ru (seventh tone) | 5 | one | |
| Yin Qu (third tone) | 33 | four | Zhong Ru (eighth tone) | 3 | eight | |
| Yang Ping (fourth tone) | 11 | 〇 | Yang Ru (ninth tone) | 2 | six | |
| Yang Shang (fifth tone) | 23 | five |
Tone values are from Wong Chi-wah p0010; the solfège is the "三九四〇五二一八六" from p0015, arranged from the first tone to the ninth tone. ★ These nine characters themselves are read in those tones, so you can verify it yourself by reading them once.
⚠ Tone values are not musical notes: "Tone values should absolutely never be linked, matched, or bound to musical notes, because character pronunciations drift and are unstable,there is only relative pitch, not absolute pitch"; These 5 numbersmust not be confused with the 1(do)…5(so) on the staff(Wong Chi-wah p0010).
Three accompanying facts (Wong Chi-wah p0010–p0016):① Among the nine tone valuesthere is no 4; 55, 33, 22, 11 and the like are calledlevel tones, Cantonese has four, "already approaching the limit,it is impossible to split off a fifth one」。② **The tenth tone, 'upper entering tone'** comes from a changed tone of the lower entering tone, with tone value 35(the '碟' in '飛碟', the '局' in '警局'). ③ Rising tone characters are 'polyphonic' characters：starting from a slightly lower point and then climbing to the end of the tone, and only because the climb is too fast does it sound like a single note.
1.2 ★★ Four tone-class scales: '〇二四三'
"Whether a Cantonese song is harmonious or not depends mainly onthe pitch of the character pronunciation matching well with the pitch of the musical note, therefore the character pronunciations of Cantonese must be classified by height" (Wong Chi-wah p0014). Classification principle: "Whenever a musical note is repeated at the same pitch, if a certain tone can beinterchangeably filled in with another tone and sung very harmoniously, they can be classified as the same category" (p0014). ★ An equivalent and easier-to-remember one: look only at the tone ending—"the tone ending determines the final height of the character pronunciation" (p0014).
| Tone-class scale | Tone ending | Name | Included tones | Can be verified by singing once |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Three | 5 | Highest-pitch characters | Upper even, upper rising, upper entering (+ tenth tone upper entering) | "想當天披荊斬棘" |
| Four | 3 | Second-highest-pitch characters | Upper departing, lower rising, middle entering | "發覺已有興趣" |
| Two | 2 | Second-lowest-pitch characters | Lower departing, lower entering | "寂寞地望着樹上" |
| 〇 | 1 | Lowest-pitch characters | Lower even | — |
For the names see p0015; for the tones contained in each category, the tone endings, and the example sentences in the right column see p0014—characters of the same category can be interchangeably filled into the same repeated pitch, and the whole sentence sung on one note is harmonious. ★ '〇二四三' is arranged from low to high; the four symbols are taken from the solfège names in §1.1, and each category is named after the solfège name of one tone within it.
⚠⚠ Two restrictions that must be remembered together(Wong Chi-wah p0015, p0016): ① "The correspondence between the 'character-tone melody' formed by the four musical tone categories and the musical melodyis not unique"—the author says this is a "very important fact, worth restating once more in large type」； ★ Therefore there is no lookup table of 'a certain tone-class scale = a certain note', what can be compared is onlytwo adjacent characters and the interval。 ② 「A single note has no harmony"—a single musical note alone has no pitch comparison, and when combined with character pronunciation, "actually almost any character works」; the smallest unit of harmonic coordination istwo musical tones paired with two syllable tones，not one character.
1.3 ★★ Truth Table: The Natural Tonal Distance Between Two Adjacent Characters and the Interval
Tonal distance = the distance between two syllable tones, measured insemitonesas the unit;natural tonal distance = when these two syllable tones are combined with musical tones,the distance that feels most natural and harmonious(Wong Chi-wah p0017).
| Scale-class arrangement | Natural tonal distance (semitones) | Interval | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| 〇〇, 二二, 四四, 三三 | 0 | Unison | Stationary |
| 二四／四二 | Inner 1, outer 3 | Minor second／minor third | Stepwise |
| 〇二／二〇, 四三／三四 | Inner 2, outer 4 | Major second／major third | Stepwise |
| 〇四／四〇, 二三／三二 | 5 | Perfect fourth | Leap |
| 〇三／三〇 | 7 and above | Perfect fifth and above | Leap |
The table is found in Wong Chi-wah p0017 ("Table of the Most Natural Combinations of Two Adjacent Characters and Intervals"／"Natural Tonal Distance Table"), and the three-way classification is in p0023. ★ Reading method: arrangementmoving from a lower class to a higher class(such as "〇二") =ascending; moving from high to low (such as "二〇") =descending。 When a cell gives two numbers, the larger is called thenatural outer tonal distanceand the smaller is called thenatural inner tonal distance。 The origin of this table: "summarized from observing a large number of ready-made Cantopop works, then personally verified by the individual" (p0017).
Truth values and approximate values(Wong Chi-wah p0018):
- Natural tonal distanceexactly equalsthe interval of these two musical tones → this pair of scale classes is itstruth value; therefore this table is also called thetruth table。Slightly off → approximate value
- ★ Truth value theorem: when one character is set to one tone, a certain scale-class arrangement is the truth value of a certain melodic lineif and only ifthe natural tonal distance of every two adjacent scale classes and the interval of the corresponding musical tonesare completely equal; as long as one pair is unequal, it is only an approximate value
- One interval can havemore than one truth value: the truth values of a perfect fourth are "〇四" and "二三"
- ⚠ An interval containing six semitones has no truth value, and can only be approximated by the 5-semitone "二三" "〇四" or the 7-semitone "〇三"
★★ The most important sentence: "In the case of writing lyrics with one character per tone,there exist many target melodic lines... whose truth values cannot be constituted by arrangements of scale classes, and only their approximate values can be constructed", therefore the author judges that "slight awkwardness in lyrics is the norm!However... there will also be some melodies,that can be entirely filled with true values" (Wong Chi-wah p0019). ★ Consequence: The goal is not "zero approximations in the whole song," it isto put the approximations where they do the least harm（§3.1）。
1.4 ★★ Violating tonal harmony is not "sounding awkward," it isbecoming a different character
Three sourced examples (James Wong): the last line of an advertising song "Fresh from America」，The high-level tone "fresh" is set to a low note and becomes low-level, sounding like "Immortals from America" (p0070); "Hong Kong University" set side by side to music, "Hong」if set improperly becomes "lower"(p0102); in "How Could I Not Think of Him," "how" and "I" are set incompatibly and sung as **"how could a foot hollow not think of him"** (p0101).
What the listener hears is not "sung strangely," it is **"immortals," "lower," "foot hollow". There is no such thing as "a long note can save it," "a stressed note can save it," "context can save it"—— context saves the meaning, it cannot savethe syllable that has already been sung, which itself is another character**. ★ But "awkwardness" has degrees: the true values/approximations of §1.3 give exactly this scale. Approximation = slightly awkward, still usable；An arrangement that does not even count as an approximation = tonal inversion, and that is the three examples above.
⚠ A contrary estimate that must be remembered side by side(James Wong p0103): the vocal range of popular songs is usuallywithin a tenth or an eleventh, without using semitonesequals only a dozen or so notes available, whilethere are already over three thousand commonly used characters, "taking them to fill lyricsactually will not be too difficult」。 ★ Tonal harmony is a hard constraint, but not a dead end: what is difficult is not "finding a character that harmonizes tonally," it is **"finding a character that both harmonizes tonally and happens to be exactly the meaning you want to say"** (§2.3). The same page gives the worst case: "Sometimes the melody is already fixed,and no suitable character can be found to match it, so the lyrics must be completely sacrificed to accommodate the melody。」
1.5 ★ The boundary with Mandarin tonal inversion
| Mandarin tonal inversion | Cantonese tonal harmony | |
|---|---|---|
| Number of tones | 4 (+ neutral tone) | 9 (+ tenth tone), grouped intofour tonal scales(Wong Chi-wah p0010, p0014, p0015) |
| Consequence of violation | Risk——long notes, stressed notes, and context can all save it | ★ Wrong character——what is sung is another character (James Wong p0070, p0102) |
| Writing order | Lyrics first or melody first both work | ★ Melody fixed first（§2） |
| Method of judgment | Check the tone-pattern table + check only three types of high-risk positions | ★ Calculate first: truth table, eighth-note triplets/sixteenth-note triplets, six-tone method (§3.1, §3.3);singing is the final confirmation（§3.5） |
| LYR-LINT Article 7 | Tonal inversion ratereport the number | ★ Tonal harmony violations = 0, this is the gatekeeping requirement |
⚠ lw-tone-check 's detector and its five revisions do not apply to a single one in Cantonese—it assumes the four tones of Mandarin, and also assumes that "inverted tones are a risk, not a verdict".
★ The flaw of dissonant tones will not disappear just because you are skilled: James Wong p0134 says this flawafter decades of effort by two generations of lyricists is still hard to avoid,
Wong Chi-wah p0019 says **"lyrics having slight dissonance is the norm"**.It is a check that every song must go through once.
2. ★★ Reversal of writing order
2.1 Music first, lyrics later is the default; lyrics first, music later comes at a cost
Poon Yuen-leung: "The division of labor in Cantonese songs determines that lyrics are written only after the melody,the lyricist is in a passive position" (The Way of Lyricists p0094); Chow Lai-mo: lyric writing is "fitting words to the melody, the melody comes first」（p0145）。
★ This directly rewrites
lw-workflowthe fork in the road in §1: on the Mandarin side, "music first, lyrics later / lyrics first, music later" is a question that must be answered; on the Cantonese side the default answer is already given, and instead one must find reasons for "lyrics first, music later".
The cost of lyrics first, music later：The characters of the lyrics lock the melodic progression in place, and as soon as there is a change, "inverted tones" immediately appear(James Wong p0102). ★ Wong Chi-wah gave a quantified version: lyrics written first naturally have a frequency of large leaps in character tones close tothree eighths, while those filled to a melody have onlythree sixteenths(§3.1 criterion three), the two have very different scale-like spectral shapes, and this is very likely to make composers compose very different melodic shapes(Wong Chi-wah p0087); so one must, like Jimmy Lo, when writing lyrics "strive to makethe combination of character sounds have a sense of rhythm」，「so as not to make the melody sound like chanting sutras" (The Way of Lyricists p0046). ★ Lyrics first, music later also has one bit of leeway: at that time one candistinguish more between "nine" (second tone) and "three", borrowing the rising tone and polyphonic characteristics of the second tone; when filling lyrics to a melody there is no need to distinguish everywhere, for that "would greatly reduce the choice and freedom of wording" (Wong Chi-wah p0038).
→ How the cost becomes smaller: the nine-character formula "fewer leaps, more interlocking, have form" and three countable indicators, see reference.md §14。
2.2 ★ Operable steps: first set the skeleton of character tones, then choose characters
| Step | What to do | Criterion |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Listen to the demo repeatedly, first get the feel and direction, and do not start writing yet | Poon Yuen-leung p0104, p0109:the time spent listening to the song is even more than the time spent writing lyrics |
| 2 | Count the number of characters in each line, as the premise for what subject matter this song can write about | reference.md §6.1 |
| 3 | ★ Fold the melody line by line into semitone counts, use the §1.3 truth table to write out this line'sscale-like skeleton(there may be more than one set) | §3.1 criteria one and two |
| 4 | ★ Determine "the few characters that must appear"(song title, hook), and see whether their scale-like tonesmatch the skeleton | §2.3、§3.6 |
| 5 | Find characters according to the skeleton, choosethe meaning is rightthat one,rather thanstarting from the meaning you want to express and looking for characters | Zhou Limao p0146: "Often it isthe melody can accommodate certain words, and those words can express an emotion or feeling, and that is enough." |
| 6 | Sing through the whole passage onceto confirm; where it feels uncomfortable to sing, go back to step 3 and recalculate | §3.5 |
★★ Step 5 is the core of the entire reversal: writing lyrics in Mandarin is "decide what you want to say → find characters → check for tone inversion"; In Cantonese it is "first know which scale-degree classes can go in this position → find the meaning within them." Qiao Jingfu puts it most bluntly: when he writes lyrics,his greatest troubleis "I have the idea, butI cannot think of characters suited to the pitchto put into the song" (p0243).
2.3 ★ Lockout risk: a word you absolutely must write may simply not fit
This is a failure mode unique to Cantonese; on the Mandarin side it only becomes "awkward," while on this side it becomes "unwritable": Qiao Jingfu wanted to write "I turn intoa dolphin," thetones of "dolphin" cannot be filled in，compromised by writing "turn into a fish"("Deep Blue," p0243); Pan Yuanliang wrote a draft for "Queen's Road East"and discarded it, because he felt "queen」the sound and rhyme did not quite match（p0108）。
★ Self-check action (the earlier you do it, the less trouble): the
intent.anchor_objectand song title decided at the conception stage, calculate their scale-degree classes before starting to write, and see whether the intervals match those few notes that should appear. If they do not match → first see whether §3.6 makes it worth forcing; if not worth it → change the anchor at this very moment, not the melody.
⚠ "Dolphin" → "fish" is not laziness; it is the standard cost of this language: accepting a smaller word is better than writing a line that, when sung, sounds like other characters.
3. Practice: calculate first, sing later
★★ The order is the order of the criteria：§3.1 consult the table and calculate → §3.2 use elasticity to judge whether it can be saved → §3.3 use the six-tone method to try out which tone should be matched → §3.5 sing through once to confirm. Singing is the final confirmation, no longer the only method.
3.1 ★★ Three criteria that can be calculated
Criterion one: consult the truth table (§1.3), calculating each pair of adjacent characters once.
Break the whole sentence intogroups of two adjacent characters, and for each group compare "the natural pitch distance between these two characters" with "the number of semitones between these two musical notes": equal → true value; slightly off → approximate value; far off → tone inversion.
Example (Huang Zhihua p0018): melodic line d r r l——dr an ascending major second can take "four three,"rr a unison can take "three three,"rl a descending perfect fourth can take "three two,"
so filling in "four three three two,"is the true value; take the same "four three three two" and fill it into d r t t, at the end rt a descending minor third has no choice beginning with "three" in the table,
★ The criterion's table, examples, and full text are in reference-calc.md。
3.2 ★★ The elasticity of natural pitch distance: how far the same character tone can go
Natural pitch distance is not a fixed number; it can stretch and shrink, but the stretching capacity of the four scale classes is not the same (Wong Chi-wah p0029): 〇(lowest in the low register group) andthree(highest in the high register group) areoutward-stretching elements— "〇" can sink arbitrarily low, and "three" can drift arbitrarily high; two、four are sandwiched in the middle and areinward-gathering elements— increasing the natural pitch interval to match a somewhat larger interval "seems not quite possible",relatively lacking in elasticity。
An experiment you can do yourself(Wong Chi-wah p0030): the natural pitch interval of "two-three" is 5 semitones (example characters "未通"), and that of "two-four" is 3 semitones (example characters "未痛").
★ The criteria's table, examples, and full text are in reference-calc.md。
3.3 ★ Six-tone test-singing method for same initial and same final
A tool that can be done without looking at a score(Wong Chi-wah p0038): ① Selecta set of same-initial same-final character groups that have sounds and characters from the first tone through the sixth tone, for example "大虎富特妇负」「渊怨怒表远愿」「分粉训焚奋份」「威委畏维伟胃"; ② Use this set of charactersto test-sing the target melody; ③ Whichever tone can be sung through is the tone that should be matched at this position.
★ Why it is more useful than random humming: this set of charactershas exactly the same initial and final, with only the tone differing, so the difference in what is sungcan only come from the tone, and will not be disturbed by character meaning or by whether the final is open or closed.
Example: target melody m f' f' s, s. l t. d, using "威委畏维伟胃" (all read wai) to test-sing, one may sing out "胃伟委威，维伟畏"—
then transcribe it back into tones, and you will know which tone-number character should be filled in here（p0038）。
⚠ It only covers the first through sixth tones(level tones),the entering tones are not included; those three entering tones must be handled by the scale-class classification in §1.2.
3.4 ★ Filling nine tones into an octave: do not think that a certain tone can only match a certain note
The nine Cantonese tones can be filled into the notes of an octave without omission(Wong Chi-wah p0038, p0039). In doing this, the authoris not trying to establish a "tone-note" correspondence table,
but on the contrary, is trying to knock down that idea: the common correspondence in circulation is to use m r d s. d l. m d l. to match the sol-fa names "三九四〇五二一八六" (range of a major sixth),
but the same string of sol-fa names matched to d' t l d f m s f r can also be sung harmoniously(range of an octave)—"the 'implied pitch'is not unique」（p0035、p0039）。
★★ Use：A melodic line definitely has more than one scale-class filling method with a good degree of approximation（p0039）。 so "this position can only be filled by a certain character" is mostly an illusion—first list all candidate arrangements (§3.1 criterion two), then choose.
⚠ Three misunderstandings to dismantle(Wong Chi-wah p0036): ① "four-three" matched to d m is considered perfect harmony, while matched to d r it is not—both belong to the true value;
② within one musical phrase, the note matched by "nine" cannot be higher than that matched by "three"—there is no such taboo(in "Gong Xi Fa Cai", "恭喜你" is matched to l d' s., the "喜" in the second tone is at the highest position);
③ "九叁" is only perfect when paired with a major second—wrong, there is a fine-tuning range of three semitones when shifted down.
3.5 ★★ Humming: the final confirmation
After calculating, you still have to sing—but singing at this point isconfirmation, notsubstitution.
⚠ "Sometimes when the same person sings it, the result may not be the same every time; sometimes you may also feel that several options exist, and it is hard to judge which is best" (Wong Chi-wah p0038).
Singing can only rule out options that are obviously untenable; it cannot determine "which is best"—that depends on §3.1.
Look side by side at lyricists' experiential statements: Chow Lai-mo "after filling it in I will sing it myself first; if even I cannot sing it comfortably, it is impossible to hand out this set of lyrics" (The Way of Lyricists p0145);
Chow Yiu-fai's first criterion is "after I have filled in the lyrics, will I involuntarily sing it out」（p0182）。For the four lyricists' original words and the division of labor between the two ways of singing, see reference.md §6.4。
⚠ Which way of singing to use for verification is itself a matter of care(James Wong p0071): Cantonese opera and Cantonese music require every character's "initial rhyme", "medial rhyme", and "final rhyme" to be sung clearly in full, while pop songs' enunciation isthe initial, medial, and final rhymes spat out one after another all at once。★ To verify tonal fit, sing according to the pop way of singing (spat out in one mouthful), verifying according to the Cantonese opera way of splitting them apart will verify a pile of problems that do not exist. Self-check: every time you finish writing a line,leave the screen and sing it out. If what you hear is other characters → return to §3.1 and recalculate this line.
3.6 ★ The theme-pointing characters can be forced: this is a trade-off with precedent
The most counterintuitive and also most memorable point in the whole book：「Even for important theme-pointing words and phrases about the song's theme, lyricists sometimes prefer the character tone to be forced or to produce serious tone inversion" (Wong Chi-wah p0028).
The melody of "Under the Lion Rock" has only re' do' ti la those few notes, and "Under the Lion Rock"can barely be fitted in, easily forced into "Lion 'pulling' down",
but "if it is a bit forced, then let it be forced,the most important thing is to be able to point to the theme smoothly in terms of lyrical meaning」（p0028）。For several other examples of the same kind, see reference.md §6.5。
The criterion Cheng Kwok-kong gave(Wong Chi-wah p0027): whether a character must be changed is judged by "as long as this character will not lead to a wrong association"— "The moving quality of a song lies in the expression of the singer's emotion and its coordination with the music itself;whether the pronunciation of an individual character is correct is instead secondary」。
★★ Therefore the hard constraint in §1.4 must be tightened like this：inverting into "another meaning that also makes sense" = a real accident (originally intending to write "the sleeping person will win", sung as "the bad-luck person will win", the new meaning also holds, and listeners will no longer associate but "directly resist this lyric"); inverting into a sound that is obviously not a word = listeners will automatically correct it according to the theme, so it can be forced. The criterion in one sentence: will the thing forced out be understood as another matter?
★ Side by side with a contrary experiential statement: Qiao Jingfu could not fit in "dolphin" and rewrote it as "fish" (The Way of Lyricists p0243, §2.3)— Changing the word and forcing it through are both viable choices; what Wong Chi-wah gives is "when you can force it through," while the lyricist interview gives "when you should concede and change the word." The author's closing is: "It is best, on the contrary, to add some flexibility in the appropriate places」（p0028）。
3.7 When stuck, first distinguish which kind of stuck it is
Chow Pok-yin p0309 divides "can't keep writing" into three causes,the solutions are completely different：Textually incompatible(meaning does not match the tone/style → return to lw-song-intent, §5 semantic domain);
★ Phonologically inappropriate(sound-matching problem → first return to §3.1 and recalculate, then go to §3.8);Not enough words（→ reference.md §6.1, change the wording or change the subject).
★ Classify first, then act, otherwise you will use the method of changing the meaning to solve a sound-matching problem.
3.8 Three kinds of revision, from lowest to highest cost
⓪ ★ First try one pause, one universe: without changing a single character, only redraw the punctuation; the direction of the character sounds and the direction of the musical notes can temporarily reverse before and after the pause; the deadlock of the introverted element can also be solved (reference.md §13). All three items below require changing the lyrics, and this one is placed first.
① Replace with a synonym—the lowest cost, always try it first (Qiao Jingfu "dolphin" → "fish," Lyricists Have a Way p0243); ② ★ Swap the two characters of a two-character word—Chow Yiu-fai p0172: in Cantonese songs, "you can always avoid using the character '的', orswap the two characters of a certain term back and forth, and listeners accept it highly"; ③ Break common grammar—Chow Yiu-fai p0172: Cantonese lyricsbecause they must fit the sound, often have no choice but to break common grammar,allowing greater textual experimentation。
⚠⚠ Item 2 has a side-by-side opposing opinion: James Wong p0119 cites "Twin Stars Love Song" "ye yiugong dui qing zhou piu"— "ye yiu" isreversing "yiu ye" to match the melodic pitch, which he judges as "a common flaw of Cantonese opera composers rushing their work」。 ★ The two are not contradictory：What Chow Yiu-fai says is "this language gives you this freedom"; what James Wong scolds is "you are just rushing for time." Criterion: after reversing it,it still reads as a phrase that can stand → legitimate; if it is only to make the sound fit → then it is the kind James Wong means. Self-check: take that reversed wordand say it aloud on its ownask yourself—is this a phrase, or just a pile of sounds?
3.9 ★ The fourth path: do not change the word, change how that sound is sung
In the advertising song for "Novel Washing Powder," the character "powder" was handled by composer Leung Lok-yamusing an ornament (Ornament) to avoid the rising-tone character "powder" being sung as the departing-tone "feces"——
first raise the initial rhyme by one degree, then drag down to the ending note, and between "raising" and "dragging"it must leave no trace(James Wong p0071, example 4).
Wong Chi-wah p0015, p0036 states it as a general rule: a strict requirement in Cantonese singing is "Treat a rising tone as adding a lower-second or lower-third grace note before the corresponding (i.e., ending on the same pitch) non-rising tone」，This kind of treatment is generally not shown in the score, yet the singer is strictly required to apply it spontaneously。
★ So rising-tone characters (the second and fifth tones) are sung this way to begin with, it is the norm, not a special trick (the second tone has a tone value of 35,short tone head, long tone tail，p0036）。
★ What it changes is the singing, not the word, execution falls undervocal direction(sound); whether to write it out in the score falls undercomposition and arrangement；
The lyric side does only one thing: mark this characteroutnoting "this needs grace-note treatment here", and write it into checks.self_audit。
3.10 Changing the melody, and the three hard checks before submission
Changing the melody for one character: by default, no（§1.4）。Exceptions with precedent: "3650 Nights" originally could only be filled with "three thousand five hundred fifty nights", but laterthe composer changed the melody, yet Chow Lap-mou's assessment was "cases of changing the tune for the lyrics are not many」（p0145）。Only when that character is the thematic crux of the whole song, and after the hard forcing of §3.6 and all three items of §3.8 have been triedshould it be raised.
★ The three hard checks before submission, all are faults named by James Wong and caused by rushing (the reason being "borrowed space, borrowed time」，p0144）： ① Filling a function word on a strong beat by mistake（p0145）→ Mark out the strong beat of each line, and see whether what falls on the strong beat is a content word; ② Clutter, one extra character that could be deleted (p0144, the biggest fault in lyrics from 1974–1983) → cross out and read each line character by character,if it reads more smoothly after crossing it out, delete it； ③ Using the wrong verb(p0144: "hot blood拼throw" — blood can be spilled, can flow, can spurt, can stain,but it cannot be "thrown") → take the verb and the object out separately and ask:can these two words really go together。 ★ These three items do not require talent, only one more pass. After writing, it still needs to be "raised": Cheng Kwok-kong advocates that after completionyou first let it sit for a while before polishing(《词家有道》p0008, p0017); On the Cantonese side, "raising" has one more use —after letting it sit for a while, sing it through once more, only with time in between can you hear which character has actually been sung as another character.
4. Cantonese rhyme and rhyming (see reference.md §2–§4）
★
lw-mandarin's thirteen rhyme categories are entirely void here— the categories are classified by Mandarin finals,rhymes produced according to the thirteen categories do not necessarily rhyme in Cantonese. For general principles go tolw-rhyme; this section gives only the four most important points on the Cantonese side.
- ★★ The rhyming scheme matters more than "whether it rhymes"(Chow Pok-yin p0306): it is not necessarily the same rhyme throughout the whole song; there may be one rhyme in the first section and another in the middle section, or it may rhyme every other line,
but you mustset a scheme, then follow it as much as possible in repeated sections——What listeners remember is this pattern, not any particular rhyme。
Self-check: mark out the rhyme of each section line by line (e.g., A-B-A-B), and seeWhether the pattern of the repeated section is consistent.
(The two schools of thought on sticking to one rhyme throughout versus changing rhymes; "Ti Xiao Yin Yuan" changes rhyme almost every two lines; "changing rhyme is always better than not rhyming" (Huang Zhan p0103), see
reference.md§4。） - ★★ Entering tone：① cannot be prolonged, it is "a short, clipped tone" (Wang Li p0021, p0022); for Cantonese entering-tone characters, "one of the most important characteristics is that the pronunciation is very short and clipped" (Huang Zhihua p0012);
② forms its own category, and does not rhyme together with level, rising, and departing tones——「entering-tone characters are even less able to rhyme with the other tones」，「the independence of entering-tone rhymes is very strong" (Wang Li p0071, p0122);
③ Reverse lookup method: "Allcharacters whose rhyme ending is -n or -ng ,will not be entering-tone characters" (Wang Li p0025);
④ Entering-tone characters do not easily produce distorted characters—being short and clipped makes them easy to bite firmly, andthe yang entering tone is already the lowest pitch among entering-tone characters; no matter how far downward one sings, the pronunciation remains unchanged(Huang Zhihua p0012);
⑤ ⚠ but entering-tone rhymes have a shortage of characters: among the seventeen entering-tone rhyme groups,only "测刑贼" has relatively many usable characters across high, middle, and low pitches(Huang Zhihua p0012).
★ Usage：a rhyme that closes urgently and cannot be dragged out is naturally suited to short sentences, urgent closings, and sections that leave no room at the end of a sentence。 Failure conditions / self-check：If the last character of a section must be prolonged and sung powerfully → do not use an entering-tone character; take the final character of each sectionand prolong it for three beats, and whatever cannot be held is an entering tone. ★ Entering tones also belong to three pitch-scale categories: yin entering belongs to "three," middle entering belongs to "four," and yang entering belongs to "two" (Huang Zhihua p0014), so it is simultaneouslythree categories in tonal matching。
- ★ Rare rhymes can be used: when Zhang Meixian wrote "Bing Dim Feeling,"they used rare rhyme feet such as "哭" and "足," giving a fresh feeling(p0194);
when Liu Zhuohui wrote "Wei Shing," "they also deliberately used the rhyme feet of "Xi Tie Street"」（p0162）。This corresponds to
lw-rhymeinsurprise_notesand Article 9 of LYR-LINT. - The open/closed quality of the final follows the singer: Qiao Jingfu p0235, when writing lyrics forlow, deep vocal timbressinger,deliberately uses open-mouth sounds in the rhyming, making the vocal timbre "more open and more high-pitched"; ⚠ The opposite direction—closed-mouth sounds (finals ending in m or p) have a dim, risky, restrained auditory feel(Huang Zhihua p0013); use it only when that is exactly the tone you want.
5. Register and period flavor (see reference.md §5、§7–§11）
The basic register is "mixed"—written language sung in Cantonese, that is, what Huang Zhan called "saam kap dai」：there is classical Chinese, and also vernacular close to Mandarin colloquial, and also Cantonese dialect(Huang Zhan p0133; Zhou Yaohui p0172); the effect is "While remaining accessible, it avoids being overly vulgar" (Wong Jim p0134).
- Mixing with rules— "佢" is rarely seen,"他" is mostly used; "冇"is mostly replaced by "没"(Wong Jim p0134)
- ⚠ Pure colloquialism risks falling into "grassroots" territory: Lau Cheuk-fai sayswriting entirely in Cantonese easily becomes street-level and vulgar(p0163); Cheng Kwok-kong's standard is "it should be appreciated by both refined and popular tastes」（p0012）
- ★ Register must follow the music, not your preferences(Chow Pok-yin p0298 "let the music determine the lyrics"): filling the ditty-form "Zhu Ying Tai" with modern written Chinese would be "out of place", "like wearing a Tang suit with sneakers」。Self-check: before putting pen to paper, ask—if this arrangement were given a passage, what register would it speak in?
Era flavor: Wong Jim divides it into six periods (Cantonese opera period → advertising jingle period → modern-feel period 1975–1979 → the meeting of foundation and new blood → transition period 1984–1997 → decline period). The most important point(Wong Jim p0133):The "modern feel" of 1975–1979 was three things happening at once——Philosophical songs became a prevailing trend、 Outdated appellations (qing, ge, mei, lang, jun) were replaced by "you" and "I"、Greater attention was paid to matching lyrics with the melodic atmosphere。 ★ Karaoke compressed the vocal range from an eleventh to twelfth down to within a tenth(Wong Jim p0155)—the narrower the range, the more crowded the available scale-like tones at each pitch position, and the harder consonance becomes。 ⚠ Today the biggest trap in writing Cantonese lyrics is not consonance, but "writing like Lin Xi"—four lyricists said the same thing from four positions. Self-check: ask the finished lyrics one question—"If this lyric were swapped with Lin Xi's name, would anyone doubt it?"
6. Correspondence with LYR-SPEC fields
| Field | Which section of this skill |
|---|---|
meta.language |
★ Once Cantonese is filled in,lw-mandarin 's rhyme categories and four tonesthe entire set is voided（§4） |
prosody.sections[].melody_contour |
★★ §1.3＋§3.1——Convert it into semitone counts; this is the input for calculating the scale-like skeleton |
prosody.sections[].peak_syllable |
§4 Finals' open/closed ＋ entering tone (that character should not be in entering tone; it cannot be held） |
intent.anchor_object |
★ §2.3——calculate its scale-like tones before putting pen to paper |
rhyme.che / rhyme.surprise_notes |
§4's scheme (for Cantonese, write the rhyme pattern here, not the rhyme category name)／rare rhymes |
checks.computed 's consonance violations |
★ must be 0（§1.5）；leap frequencyreported separately (§3.1 criterion three) |
checks.self_audit |
§3.9 ornamentation marks, §3.6 the intentionally forced point-making characters and reasons, §3.8 the reason for the second inverted word order, §3.10 the results of the three checks |
7. Must pass after use
- ★★ Every line has had its scale-like skeleton calculated: each pair of adjacent characters has been compared against the truth table, marking true values and approximate values;the long note at the end of a line is filled with a true value（§1.3、§3.1）
- ★ The leap frequency of the whole lyric has been calculated, falling below 0.21875 (§3.1 criterion three)
- where it crosses the lineChecked the ring cycle: only retained when it crosses one cell and contains an outward-extending element; any crossing of the boundary by the third ring (second and fourth) is always replaced;In "〇〇" the connected melodic use is the same pitch repeated（§3.2）
- ★ Every line of the whole lyric has been sung through(not read through, not looked over), usingpop singing technique(spat out in one breath) (§3.5)
- ★ Song title and
anchor_objecthad the quasi-scale calculated before writing began（§2.3） - Deliberately forced thematic words, asked: if forced out, would it be understood as something else (§3.6)
- stuck pointsclassified(§3.7); when fixing harmonyfirst tried substituting words, every place with inverted word orderread aloud individually（§3.8）
- characters that need ornaments to be savedmarked out, written into
checks.self_auditand handed over (§3.9);did not change the melody for the sake of one character（§3.10） - ★ on strong beats there are no function words; no characters can be deleted; verbs and objects match; after finishinglet it sit for a while and sing it through again（§3.10）
- rhyming scheme was fixed and carried through in repeated sections；places where the final character is to be prolonged are not entering-tone characters（§4）
- register ismixedandfollows the arrangement; asked "if it were changed to Lin Xi's name, would anyone suspect?" (§5)
- ★
checks.computedharmony violations = 0; this item does not report a number, it is a gatekeeper (§1.5) - ★ did not use
lw-tone-checkor the thirteen rhymes to replace this skill
Appendix: Sources
- ★★ Wong Chi-wah, Word Tone and Cantonese Songwriting, the base text of this skill's harmony system, page numbers noted in the text
- Wong Chi-wah, Zhu Yaowei, Leung Wai-sze, Lyricists Have Their Way: Interviews with 16 Hong Kong Lyricists(Guangxi Normal University Press, 2010)— self-accounts of sixteen lyricists, page numbers noted in the text
- James J. S. Wong, The Development and Decline of Cantonese Popular Songs: A Study of Hong Kong Popular Music 1949–1997—examples of harmony failures, the tradition of writing lyrics to a score, estimates of vocal range and common characters, saving tunes with ornaments and enunciation, criticism of inverted word order, the three ailments of rushed work, periodization and lyric style, page numbers noted in the text
- Wang Li, Rules and Forms of Classical Poetry—the nature of entering tone p0021–p0023, p0025; the independence of entering-tone rhymes and prohibition of cross-rhyming p0071, p0122
- ⚠ Two things this skill does not provide：one-to-one correspondence table between quasi-scale and musical notes(the author explicitly opposes this, for reasons see §1.2, §3.4), andobjective criteria for approximate-value scoring(the author states "there is no standard to support it", §3.1).
- The half not belonging to this repository: the rescue method in §3.9 (ornaments, enunciation and singing technique) is executed by the vocal coach; vocal range and melody belong to composition and arrangement; what this repository hands over is
checks.self_auditthe characters marked in (for the external interface seelw-workflow§6）。