If Chinese Mandarin is a tonal language, then how can people understand modern Chinese songs?

Question

If Chinese Mandarin is a tonal language, then how can people understand modern Chinese songs?

In: Other

Answer 1

I had a Chinese friend say that the shape of the music is dictated by the sentence, and then defined later. So they start with the sentence, and that gets turned into notes.

Basically instead of drawing with a blank paper, a friend scribbled a few lines into it and you have to add to those lines to make something interesting. This may actually make composing easier, because you can focus on a few options instead of being overwhelmed with where to start.