Sheet music
（重定向自Short score）
![](/Images/godic/202502/10/QoMH5806.png")
![A conductor's score](/Images/godic/202502/10/Full_score5806.jpg")
![Excerpt of a piano-vocal score (from the opera William Ratcliff, by César Cui). Play](/Images/godic/202502/10/CuiVil3_2p2045806.png")
![A photograph of the original stone at Delphi containing the second of the two Delphic Hymns to Apollo. The music notation is the line of occasional symbols above the main, uninterrupted line of Greek lettering.](/Images/godic/202502/10/Delphichymn5807.jpg")
Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols to indicate the pitches (melodies), rhythms and/or chords of a song or instrumental musical piece. Like its analogs – printed books or pamphlets in English, Arabic or other languages – the medium of sheet music typically is paper (or, in earlier centuries, papyrus or parchment), although the access to musical notation since the 1980s has included the presentation of musical notation on computer screens and the development of scorewriter computer programs that can notate a song or piece electronically, and, in some cases, "play back" the notated music using a synthesizer or virtual instruments.