The oldest known full piece of music is the the Seikilos epitaph, which, according to the International Music Score

Library Project, was written anywhere from 200 BC to 100 AD.

  It wasn’t written in the same way that modern music is written, and it is mostly vocals, but it is still possible to decipher and translate it to modern means.

    There’s a lot to decipher in just one line of this sheet music, which is like the language of music. It shows the proper notes to play on an instrument, and how long to play it.

  The first piece of information given is the weird squiggle on the left. This symbol is called a Treble Clef, and it tells how high the pitch of a note is. Instruments that commonly play on a Treble scale are guitar, violin, trumpet, and saxophone.

  The next piece of information given is in the form of two number signs on certain notes in the scale. These notes, F and C, which are just arbitrary names for certain pitches, make raised up half a note to make the whole piece in D major, rather than C major, which is the default for piano.

  D major is a very interesting thing for this piece to be in, because D major is most commonly associated with classical and baroque music. However, D major is also a common scale for modern songs to be in, too.

  The most widely known piece of classical music written in D is most likely Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D, which was written anywhere from 1680-1706, and is recognizable on a range of instruments from violin to guitar to piano.

  6/8 is used because it has a rhythmic, waltz feel, due to the grouping of notes. Modern songs written in 6/8 include Queen’s “We Are the Champions” and The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood.”

  Everything else on the bars dictate which notes to play on an instrument, and can be better explained by just listening to the piece.

  After that brief excursion to the past, it’s time to move forward about 1900 years. In 1964, British band, The Animals released a cover of a traditional song titled “House of the Rising Sun,” which became a hit across the Atlantic.

  The Animals did not write “House of the Rising Sun;” the original source is unknown. Thereby, it entered the public domain, which means we can use the audio file and sheet music here.

  This is a picture of the opening of the piece, helpfully arranged by Martin Ludenhoff, who undertakes music transcriptions for free all the time.

  As you can see, this piece shares a treble clef like the previous piece, but the two hash marks are missing from this piece. That’s because this piece is written in C major, which is what the standard bar is in.

  It’s also technically written in A minor, because C major and A minor are the same notes played in a different order.

  The other interesting thing about this piece is the weird S with a slash through it above the first note. This symbol indicates from where a piece should be repeated, as later in the piece it indicates to loop back to the beginning.

  Loops are common in music. Some songs are just the same instrument parts over different vocal arrangements. For example, the White Stripe’s song “Fell in Love With a Girl” is the same four guitar chords played again and again over Jack White’s lyrics.

  Does looping instrumentals make artists lazy writers? Maybe, maybe not. Not a lot of people have written songs, and recently lyrics are what make a song, not catchy guitar riffs.

   It seems to have become apparent that, as a medium, songs are moving away from recognizable riffs and are moving into choruses being the basis of their songs.

  For example, in classical music, Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata has instantly recognizable triplets, and this trend of catchy instruments continued, from guitar riffs of the 70s, like Derek and the Dominos’ “Layla.”

  Even when it’s not a guitar, it can still catch a listener’s attention, like the opening of Toto’s “Hold the Line,” which, while it may not be the best song ever written, it still is recognizable.

  In this decade, it takes some looking to find songs that have instantly recognizable instrumentals. A recently popular song, “Despacito,” by Luis Fonsi, had the nation singing, but nobody was humming the guitar riff.

  Of course, not every song is so heavily lyrical; for example, soundtracks for video games still gain popularity for their orchestral brilliance, such as the soundtrack for the latest video games. Anyone who’s played a Legend of Zelda game can recognize the first notes of the titular themes.

  Even as music shifts and genres continue to grow, it never really changes. As a people, we’ve been humming the same notes for a millennium and will continue to for the next.