Mandarin Chinese songs for high beginner chinese student?

[Ferno]

what are "higher standard" songs?

[LiYuanXi]

Some songs are properly written to match the tones and the notes but quite alot of songs nowadays are written without giving much thoughts to the tones. With the high number of new singers appearing now and then, there isn't much time to consider such issues I guess.

[Ferno]

ah.. well with American standard of pop music being such a huge influence in the past half century, the whole concept of having to limit the melody to work with the tonal aspect of the language would look pretty ridiculous in comparison, and having the tune dialate a lot would sound bad...

and it would limit the genres of songs that could be designed this way.

perhaps it already did limit the genre? Most Chinese songs seem to be largely slow ballad songs. Japanese and Korean popular music seem to have developed dance, rock, rap and r&b a lot more (especially Japanese) - perhaps due to the non-tonal nature of the languages? Although their longer histories of Americanization (again, especially Japan) probably play a larger role..

[lady_dilandau]

I'll say go for any slow ballads, and there's a lot of them in chinese.

[LiYuanXi]

Yes, I think that's why there are very few raps or other genre of music for the chinese because of the tonal restrictions. Slow ballads are easier for composing the lyrics.

Jay Chow made a lot of fast tracks and raps but if you listen carefully, he actually threw all the tonal rules away. That's why few people can understand what he is singing.