In the Greek and Roman period, there were simple symbols that roughly represented the tone level, and many poems had rhythm marks, such as iambic and iambic.
In the Middle Ages, music notation gradually developed from early pneumatic notation to modern staff notation. The score gradually increased from single voice to multi-voice spectrum, and began to have different rhythm marks.
Starting from baroque music, the cause of music score publishing flourished, which greatly promoted the spread of music, and added more symbols because of the development of bands and the emergence of various novel instruments and techniques. The composer will carefully mark the changes of volume, speed and timbre.
With the development of jazz and pop music, many music scores are marked with melody, chord marks and guitar fingering. But a lot of music is played directly or recorded, and the score is only a general framework, and not every detail is recorded in detail. The earliest music score circulated in China is the ancient piano score "Jieshi Tiaolan" in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. Early music scores were written music scores, and fingering was described in detail in words. Later, in order to simplify the recording method, subtraction spectrum appeared at the end of Tang Dynasty to record fingering movements, string order and emblem position. Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes have collected many music scores since the Tang and Song Dynasties, including many pipa music scores. Jiang Baishi, a Taoist priest in the Song Dynasty, had a high-recorded folk character spectrum, which proved that Song Ci could be sung at that time. Gongchi notation was used in the operas of Ming and Qing dynasties, including Kunqu opera, Beijing opera, Cantonese opera and many instrumental music at that time. Chaozhou music has its own unique 24 points.
During the Republic of China, influenced by the West and Japan, China's school songs began to use notation and staff. Up to now, both traditional music and pop music are dominated by simple notation and staff notation, but the MINUS notation of guqin and the Miyachi notation of opera are still in use.