Chinese music is an important part of the splendid Chinese culture. Before the middle of the 19th century, it experienced three periods: ancient, medieval and modern. For thousands of years, it is famous for its colorful varieties and rich systems. People used to call him the "ancient period" or "traditional period" of Chinese music, but every historical period has "ancient" and "present". When the classical music flows out, you can clearly see that what flows in the air is high mountains, flowing water, silk and bamboo, winter snow, and eternal life. Moving is the beauty of Chinese classical music.
"Eight-tone" is the earliest method of classifying musical instruments according to their manufacturing materials. It was first seen in "Zhou Li·Spring Palace". "Eight categories:
"Gold" categories include bells, bells, bo(bó), yong(yōng), nao(náo), sheng bells, euphonic bells, etc.;
The "stone" category includes jade chimes (qìng), sheng chimes, song chimes, singing balls, etc.;
The "earth" category includes xun (xūn), fou (fǒu), etc.;
The category of "leather" includes county drum (xiàn gǔ), tau (táo), ying drum, battle drum (bó fǔ), etc.;
"Silk" includes Qin, Se, Zhu, Zheng, etc.;
The "wood" category includes Yuan (yǔ), zhu (zhù), etc.;
The "pao" category includes yong, sheng, spring, etc.;
The "bamboo" category includes Xiao, Yan (yuè), flute, Chi (chí) and so on.
The musical instruments in this "eight-tone" are called "Huaxia Old Music" or "Huaxia Old Instruments" in later generations, which means pure Chinese musical instruments, mainly to distinguish them from foreign musical instruments.
After the opening of the Silk Road in the Western Han Dynasty, a large number of "Music of Hu Yi" appeared in mainland China, such as pipa, konghou, bili, Jiegu, Qiang flute, etc., because these musical instruments can also be classified according to the "eight tones" Classify without reinventing new taxonomies.

In the Tang Dynasty, the "Pyu Kingdom" (now Myanmar) paid tribute to a large number of "Pyu musical instruments". These musical instruments could not be classified by the "Ba Yin" of the Zhou system. Therefore, some changes were made under the name "Ba Yin" which was still used. According to the "New Book of Tang, Nanman, Pyu Biography", the "Ba Yin" in the Tang Dynasty changed the three categories of "stone", "earth" and "wood" in the Zhou system "Ba Yin" to "shell" and "tooth" , "horn", so the "eight sounds" in the Tang system are "gold, shellfish, silk, bamboo, squat, leather, teeth, and horns":
The "gold" category includes cymbals and iron plates;
The "shell" includes snails;
The "silk" category includes the big qin, the single-string qin, the small qin, the tuo zheng, the phoenix-headed Konghou, the dragon-headed pipa, and the cloud-headed Konghou;
"Bamboo" category includes horizontal flute and two-headed flute;
The "pao" category includes big and small flutes;
The "leather" category includes three drums and snare drums;
The category "tooth" includes yasheng;
The "horn" category includes triangular sheng and two-horned sheng.
Ancient musical instruments mainly include xun, fou, building, pan flute, konghou, zheng, guqin, se and so on. After the Han and Tang dynasties, a large number of foreign musical instruments such as the flute, the scorpion, the pipa, and the huqin were adopted by Chinese music, and were improved and developed by the Chinese, gradually replacing the original Chinese musical instruments. Except for the guqin, which has always been favored by literati and spread as a musical instrument, almost all the musical instruments officially performed in the "folk music" public are foreign.