Han musical instruments have a long history. Only unearthed cultural relics can prove that there were various musical instruments as early as the pre-Qin period. For example, the bone whistle unearthed from Hemudu, Zhejiang, the mound unearthed from Banpo Village, Xi'an, Yangshao Cultural Site, the stone chime and wooden python drum unearthed from Yinxu, Anyang, Henan; the chimes, chimes, hanging drums, floor drums, Bangzi, flute, sheng, gong, gong. These ancient musical instruments show people the wisdom and creativity of the Chinese nation.

Ancient musical instruments often had a dual function - expressive and practical. In other words, these musical instruments are not only tools for expressing music, but also tools for labor and production or utensils for daily life. For example, Lu's "Spring and Autumn Ancient Music" records: "Emperor Yao represents enjoyment. This is the sound of mountains and valleys, but it uses elk skin to beat drums. It is like the sound of divine jade, so all animals can dance." The article says The drum was made of elk hide, a living vessel - a basket cover. "Stone Throwing" is a primitive dance in which ancestors beat hunting stone tools into sounds and matched them with hundreds of animal costumes. Written in "The Biography of Han Shu and Yang Yun": "After drinking, my ears felt hot, and I looked up at the sky, but my name was Wu Wu." This record describes that people became more interested after drinking, and sang in the air after knocking on the wine vessel. Ancient chimes may have originated from some flake stone tools. It can be said that during the long-term labor process, the ancestors gradually discovered some stone tools that could make sounds and be used as musical instruments, so they invented the Qing Dynasty.

The practicality of musical instruments is not only reflected in the fact that some musical instruments are used as production tools or daily utensils, but also in the fact that people use them to convey some specific life information. Such as war drums, golden drums, drums in the morning and evening, drums to tell time, gongs to clear the way, drums to go to court, etc. In China, some ethnic minorities still use oral strings to convey messages of love, which have become a tool and symbol for expressing love.

The development of musical instruments is closely related to the development and improvement of social productivity. In the Stone Age, only when people mastered higher smelting technology could they change from chimes to metal chimes and own metal chimes. With the invention and development of sericulture and silk reeling, it became possible to produce silk trees for Qin, Qin and Zheng.

There were nearly 70 kinds of musical instruments in the pre-Qin period. There are 29 types in the Book of Songs alone, including 21 types of percussion instruments such as drums, bells, chimes, and bells, 6 types of performance instruments such as flutes, wind instruments, violins, and shengs, and 2 types of string instruments such as pianos and harps. With the increasing number of types of musical instruments, according to the different materials used to make them, musical instruments in the Zhou Dynasty were divided into eight categories: gold, stone, earth, leather, silk, wood and bamboo, which are called "eight tones".

Since the Qin and Han Dynasties, new musical instruments have continued to appear. For example, a new type of stringed instrument appeared in the Qin Dynasty - "people playing stringed drums". The string is a pipa with a straight handle and a round sound box. In the Han Dynasty, it developed into the "Chinese Pipa" with four strings and twelve columns, also known as Ruan Xian. The Han nationality is a nation that is good at absorbing. Since the Han Dynasty, a large number of foreign musical instruments have been widely absorbed. For example, during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Zhang Qian introduced it to the Western Regions; during the reign of Emperor Xian of the Han Dynasty, the vertical scorpion was introduced and the "rolling" and "washing the piano" made of bamboo pieces appeared. In the Song Dynasty, people used horsetail bows to play the pipa, and the name "Huqin" appeared. For example, Guo said in his book "Meng Qian's Bi Tan" that "Mawei Huqin and Han

China's four major musical instruments "playing, playing, playing and pulling" have gone through a long historical stage. After the founding of the People's Republic of China , to address the shortcomings of inherited instruments such as impure sound quality, inconsistent melodies, uneven volumes, inconvenient pitch changes, inconsistent pitch standards for fixed-pitch instruments, and the lack of bass instruments in comprehensive bands, many explorations and reforms have been made, and great achievements have been made.