The Chinese five tones and the Five Phases

Author: Raymond Hackland · Last reviewed: 18 October 2026 · Reading time: about 9 minutes

In short

• What this is: Classical Chinese music theory names five tones: gong, shang, jue, zhi and yu. Early texts tie them to the seasons, and medical classics link them to the Five Phases (wood, fire, earth, metal, water) and to the organs. This article looks at what those texts actually say, how the tones form a pentatonic scale, and how the six sounds of Liu Zi Jue fit a five-part system.
• What the evidence says: The correspondences are well documented as traditional theory in texts from the 3rd century BCE onwards. They are a system of thought, not measured effects. Modern “five-element music therapy” has been tested in many small trials, mostly in China; systematic reviews report improvements in mood and sleep, but rate much of the evidence as low quality and do not show that the tone-organ matching is what matters.
• What it means for your practice: The five tones are a beautiful part of the heritage behind the practice and worth knowing. Treat the pairing of a tone with an organ as traditional meaning, not as a mechanism.

What tradition says

This section separates documented history (what surviving texts say) from traditional theory (how those texts explain the world).

Documented: five tones, built from numbers. Label: Tradition only (documented history) · Well studied (the physics of string length). The five tones are a pentatonic scale, a scale of five different notes. The most widely known form of pentatonic scale has no semitones [1]. An early description of how to construct the Chinese tones is in the “Diyuan” chapter of the Guanzi, a large collection of anonymous essays dating from the 5th to the 1st century BCE and compiled in its present form around 26 BCE by the Han scholar Liu Xiang [2, 3]. The text starts from one, multiplies by three four times to reach 81, and calls this gong. Adding a third gives 108, zhi; taking a third away gives 72, shang; adding a third again gives 96, yu; and taking a third away gives 64, jue [2]. The text states 81 and 108 explicitly; the other three numbers follow from its instructions. If you read these numbers as lengths of a string under the same tension, a shorter string sounds higher, because the fundamental frequency of a string is inversely proportional to its length [4]. Worked out that way, the five tones from low to high are zhi, yu, gong, shang, jue. With gong as “do”, that is the familiar pattern do, re, mi, sol, la, a pentatonic scale without semitones. (That last step is our own arithmetic from the text’s numbers.)

Documented: five tones and the seasons. Label: Tradition only (documented history). The Lüshi chunqiu (“Master Lü’s Spring and Autumn Annals”), compiled in 239 BCE under the patronage of the Qin statesman Lü Buwei [5], has an almanac for each month of the year. Each one names the tone of its season: jue in spring, zhi in summer, gong for the centre (placed with late summer), shang in autumn and yu in winter [6]. The almanacs also name an organ for each season’s sacrifice, but in a different pattern from the later medical classics: spleen in spring, lungs in summer, heart for the centre, liver in autumn and kidneys in winter [6].

Documented: tones, phases and organs in the medical classics. Label: Tradition only (documented history). The Huangdi neijing (“Inner Classic of the Yellow Emperor”) is not a single book but a group of texts. Historians date its primary texts to roughly the 1st century BCE, though individual parts may be earlier or later; the Suwen was later extensively re-edited by Wang Bing, whose preface is dated 762 [7]. Chapter 5 of the Suwen lists, for each phase, an organ, a colour, a tone, a vocal sound and an emotion, among other things [8]. Chapter 44 of the Lingshu lists the organs with their colour, season and tone [9]. Both agree on the tones. Listed as phase, tone, organ, season (Lingshu 44) and vocal sound (Suwen 5):

• Wood: jue, liver, spring, shouting
• Fire: zhi, heart, summer, laughing
• Earth: gong, spleen, late summer, singing
• Metal: shang, lungs, autumn, weeping
• Water: yu, kidneys, winter, groaning

Note the last item in each line. The Suwen has two different “fives” for sound: the musical tones (yin) and five kinds of vocal sound (sheng): shouting, laughing, singing, weeping and groaning [8]. Neither is the same as the six breathing sounds of Liu Zi Jue.

Traditional theory: what the correspondences mean. Label: Tradition only. In this way of thinking, a tone belongs to a phase in the same way that a colour, a season or a flavour does. These lists sort the world into matching groups; they do not describe an experiment. In the Lingshu passage, the correspondences are used to guide acupuncture: each of five kinds of change is matched to one of five kinds of acupuncture point [9].

How the six sounds fit the five phases

Label for this section: Tradition only (with documented history).

Five phases, six sounds: how do they fit? Our article on the history of Liu Zi Jue explains that the pairings of sounds and organs changed over the centuries [10]. In the 2003 standard form, they are xu (liver), he (heart), hu (spleen), si (lungs), chui (kidneys) and xi (the “triple burner”), practised in that order [10, 11].

A different “five sounds”. To ground the five-phase link, the Chinese Health Qigong Association cites the Qing-dynasty scholar Jiang Shenxiu’s Heluo jingyun. That text sorts speech sounds by where they are formed and links each place to a phase: throat sounds to earth, tongue sounds to fire, molar sounds to wood, front-teeth sounds to metal and lip sounds to water [10]. The Association then classes hu as a throat sound (earth, spleen), he as a tongue sound (fire, heart), xu and xi as molar sounds (wood, liver and gallbladder), chui as a lip sound (water, kidneys) and si, read with an s, as a front-teeth sound (metal, lungs) [10]. These “five sounds” come from the Chinese tradition of phonology. They are not the musical tones gong to yu, even though Chinese can use the same word, wuyin, for both.

The sixth sound and the triple burner. That leaves xi. The Association [10] and Zhang Mingliang and Ma Ling [11] explain that xi opens the shaoyang channels, which include both the gallbladder and the triple burner, and assign it to the triple burner [10, 11]. They describe the triple burner as a division of the body by function rather than an organ: the upper burner corresponds to the functions of heart and lungs, the middle to spleen and stomach, the lower to liver and kidneys [11]. Practised last, after the five organ sounds, xi is meant as a sound for the whole body [11]. History shows the same tension: a Sui-dynasty Buddhist verse quoted by the Association already gives xi to the triple burner (in the text attributed to the Buddhist master Zhiyi it is given as the view of one teacher, and his longer works on meditation pair xi differently [20, 21]), the Tang author Hu Yin gave it to the gallbladder, and later texts mostly changed this back to the triple burner [10]. So the six sounds do not map one-to-one onto five phases: five sounds follow the phases through their organs, and the sixth, whose organ is the triple burner, keeps a link to wood through its molar sound and the gallbladder while tying the system together [10, 11].

Burners and dantians: two different maps. In Chinese medicine the triple burner (sanjiao, 三焦) is counted among the six fu (hollow organs), yet the Nanjing says that it “has a name but no form” (有名而無形, difficulties 25 and 38) [17]. Classically, the three burners correspond to the chest, the upper abdomen and the lower abdomen, and they concern the movement of qi and fluids: the upper burner spreads through the chest “like a mist”, the middle works in the stomach region “like a soaking vat”, and the lower drains fluids towards the bladder “like a ditch” [11, 16, 17]. The three dantians (“cinnabar fields”) belong to a different tradition, Daoist meditation and internal alchemy (neidan): the lower one below the navel, the middle one in the chest (some authors place it at the centre of the chest, others between the heart and the navel [19]; the Baopuzi says “below the heart” [18]), and the upper one in the head, behind the point between the eyebrows [18, 19]. In the classical texts these are separate concepts. Some teachers connect the triple burner with the three dantians.

The order. The standard order follows the “generating” cycle of the phases, starting with wood and spring: wood, fire, earth, metal, water, then the triple burner [10, 11].

Where the musical tones come back in. The Association also reports that Ma Litang’s 20th-century version of Liu Zi Jue voiced the sounds, holding that only voicing can distinguish gong, shang, jue, zhi and yu and so match the five organs [10]. That is one school’s view. Even Ma Litang’s version expected beginners to voice the sounds and the sound to fade by itself once the breathing was mastered [10]; the standard form likewise lets beginners voice the sounds, but makes silent exhalation the overall aim [10, 11].

What research says about five-element music

Label for this section: Early evidence (for what trials of five-element music report) · Speculative (for organ-specific effects).

“Five-element music therapy” is a modern practice rooted in Chinese medicine. It aims to restore emotional balance through the traditional links between musical tones, organs and emotions [12]. Several systematic reviews and meta-analyses have pooled the trials:

• A 2021 review of 22 studies with 2,053 people with cancer reported improvements in depression, quality of life and sleep, but not in anxiety. The authors called for higher-quality, larger trials and asked future researchers to explain how the therapy might apply in Western settings [13].
• A 2024 review of 20 studies with 1,561 people with depression after a stroke reported improvements in depression scores and daily activities [14].
• A 2025 review of 18 randomised trials in older adults with depression and anxiety found improvements compared with conventional care. It rated study quality as moderate, noted that blinding was often unclear, and called for better trials [12].
• A 2026 review of 20 randomised trials with 1,588 people having chemotherapy reported improvements in anxiety, depression, sleep and quality of life, but graded most outcomes as low or very low certainty. It concluded that it remains unclear whether the results apply outside China [15].

Three things matter here. First, these are study-reported results with many methodological weaknesses, not promises. Second, in the 2025 review the comparison was conventional care [12]. A comparison like that cannot show whether matching a tone to an organ adds anything to the general effects of listening to music. Third, none of them tested the Six Healing Sounds.

Where popular claims go beyond the evidence

Label for this section: Speculative.

• “Each tone resonates with its organ.” The correspondences were built as a classification system, alongside colours, seasons and flavours [8, 9]. We know of no measurements showing that a tone drives a particular organ into resonance; see What resonance really is.
• “Five-element music is an established therapy.” Reviews report encouraging results from trials conducted mostly in China, with evidence of low to moderate quality [12, 15]. That is a reason for better research, not a basis for treatment claims.
• “The five tones are fixed frequencies.” The Guanzi describes relationships between numbers, not frequencies in hertz [2]. Like do-re-mi, the tones can start on any pitch. Assigning modern hertz values to the tones, or to the six sounds, is a modern choice; see our articles on 432 Hz versus 440 Hz and Solfeggio frequencies.

How this relates to the Six Healing Sounds, Qigong and neigong

Label for this section: Tradition only (correspondences, qi) · Early evidence (music research).

The five tones and the six sounds grew from the same habit of thought: sorting the world into five interacting phases. In Liu Zi Jue, the five-phase link runs mainly through where each sound is formed in the mouth, not through musical pitch [10]. The triple burner sound, xi, sits partly outside the five-part scheme: its organ is the triple burner and it is practised as a sound for the whole body, though by its place in the mouth it is still grouped with xu as a wood sound [10, 11]. I share xi as the whole-body sound of the triple burner, as in the 2003 standard form. The classical texts give it no emotion. I work with it as a movement “from fragmented to harmony”, which is my own reading from practice (🔵 Tradition only · 🟣 Lived experience). All six sounds are breathed out through the mouth, voiced through the breath rather than sung, and over time the exhalation becomes silent. That is how I share them, not a claim about what the classical texts prescribe. In Qigong and neigong, these correspondences are used as a map for attention and intention. That is traditional language for inner practice, and it deserves to be understood on its own terms, not dressed up as physics.

One of the people who brought five-tone music into the present is Wu Shen (吴深, born 1958 in Shangqiu, Henan), a composer and multi-instrumentalist who worked for many years in the United States and set out his approach in a 2014 book [22]. I came across his work through Silent Clarity, a Daoist school that describes him as the music teacher of Li Shifu, abbot of the Five Immortals Temple (五仙庙) in the Wudang region, and that holds shared listening sessions with his five-tone works as a practice of presence [23].

Our music sessions draw on this heritage as inspiration. The hertz values our main site pairs with each sound are the modern “Solfeggio” numbers discussed in our Solfeggio article, not part of the classical system of five tones. Resonance Heritage Qi is a personal, music-assisted practice inspired by Liu Zi Jue: connected to it, not a replacement for the traditional form or for study with a teacher of that tradition. The research on five-element music does not apply to our sessions, and we make no health claims for them.

Sources

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12. Li J, Chen K, Wang IT, Beh WF, 2025. The effectiveness of the Chinese Five-Element Music intervention on older adults with depression and anxiety disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Medicine (Baltimore) 104(40):e44764. https://doi.org/10.1097/MD.0000000000044764
13. Yang T, Wang S, Wang R, Wei Y, Kang Y, Liu Y, Zhang C, 2021. Effectiveness of five-element music therapy in cancer patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice 44:101416. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctcp.2021.101416
14. Zhong K, An X, Kong Y, 2024. The effectiveness of five-element music therapy for post-stroke depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Heliyon 10(5):e26603. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e26603
15. Sun T, Zhao R, Shan X, Zhu Y, Zhang Y, Zheng Y, 2026. Effects of five-element music therapy on chemotherapy patients with cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Complementary Therapies in Medicine 101:103411. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctim.2026.103411
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22. Wu Shen 吴深, 2014. 黄帝内经五音疗疾：中国传统音乐疗法理论与实践. People’s Medical Publishing House, Beijing. ISBN 978-7-117-19233-0. Publisher’s description accessed 22 October 2026. http://books.ipmph.com/books/detail/5760.shtml
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Source quality note: [2], [6], [8] and [9] are classical primary texts, read in a public Chinese edition; the translations and summaries here are ours. [3], [5] and [7] are scholarly works used for dating; for [3] and [5] we relied on the publishers’ descriptions. [1] is a general encyclopedia and [4] an open university textbook. [10] and [11] are published by the Health Qigong Management Center; [10] is written by the Chinese Health Qigong Association and [11] by Zhang Mingliang and Ma Ling. They describe the standard form from inside the tradition. [16]–[18], [20] and [21] are further classical primary texts (read in Chinese; translations ours) and [19] is a scholar’s reference article on Daoist internal alchemy. [12]–[15] are systematic reviews of mostly small trials conducted in China, rated by their own authors as low to moderate quality; none studied the Six Healing Sounds. [22] is Wu Shen’s own book, for which we relied on the publisher’s description, and [23] is the course page of the school that holds the listening sessions.