Inheriting the legacy of the development of tunes and lyrics in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, tune music in the Song Dynasty achieved unprecedented development. This literary genre of singing with long and short sentences can be divided into word card forms such as lead, slow, close, beat, and order. In terms of word-writing techniques, there are already "spreading", "reducing characters", "stealing sounds", etc. Jiang Kui of the Southern Song Dynasty was a famous lyricist and musician who could not only compose lyrics but also compose music based on his lyrics. He has seventeen self-written songs and one qin song "Ancient Resentment" with reduced word notation handed down to the world. Most of these works express the author's concern for the people of the motherland and depict a quiet and desolate artistic conception, such as "Yangzhou Slowness", "Mei Ling of Gexi", "Apricot Blossom Sky Shadow" and so on.

Guo Chuwang’s representative work "Xiaoxiang Shuiyun" in Song Dynasty pioneered the guqin genre. The work expresses the author's love for the mountains and rivers of his motherland. In the long history of the development of bowed string instruments, records of "horsetail huqin" appeared in the Song Dynasty. In the Yuan Dynasty, the emergence of the national musical instrument Sanxian is noteworthy.

In music theory, records of Yan music scales appeared in the Song Dynasty. At the same time, early Gongchi notation patterns also appeared in Zhang Yan's "Etymology" and Shen Kuo's "Mengxi Bi Tan". A kind of Gong Chi spectrum popular in modern times was directly derived from this time. The Song Dynasty was also an era when Chinese opera matured. Its symbol is the emergence of Southern Opera in the Southern Song Dynasty. Nan Opera is also known as Wenzhou Zaju and Yongjia Zaju. Its music is rich and natural. Initially, some folk tunes could be sung without the restrictions of palace tunes. Later, when it developed into Qupai style opera music, there was also the form of "collection" that organized several phrases from different Qupai to form a new Qupai. Nan Opera has various singing forms including solo, duet, chorus and so on. Three kinds of Southern opera scripts handed down from ancient times, such as "Zhang Xie Zhuangyuan" and others, can be found in "Yongle Daqu".