Medieval music is generally refered to as the music written in Europe durring the Middle Ages. This era known as Middle Ages commenced after the fall of the Roman Empire and ends approximately the middle of the fifteenth century. Durring the Medieval times, it was very expensive to document music due to the cost of the parchment and labour, transcribing music was a luxuory reserved only for the wealthy who could afford to do it and so the music from this era that we have today is soley that of the royal demographic so it does not represent the general population's taste. Most of the preserved music was that of the monasteries. In the earlier portion of the era, music was simple, emphasizing monophonic and homorhythmic qualities primarily composed of vocals without instrumental support. Music had no means of transcribing and was often transferred orally by individuals. Rhythmic and instrumental notations were developed by the end of this era.Popular instruments of this time were composed of woodwind and plucked string instruments. Flutes, recorders, ocarinas, as well as the trombone's great uncle, the sackbut, all existed durring this time, but have undergone some changes since. Lutes, mandoras, gitterns as well as vielles all paved the way for modern instruments like the guitar and violin. The theoretical aspects of music as we know it today also made some progress in this era with the understanding of rhythm and the evolution of a comprehensive notational system. Some of the most primitive forms of notation used chain texts called neumes, the seeds to modern notation. The main problem concerning neumes was that there was no way to pinpoint a pitch and only indicated quanities of notes and whether they went up or down in relation to other notes. Music was not reserved soley for the people of Europe during this time and can be seen all over the world. In China, strange instruments such as the pipa and zheng developed. Scotland has also been cited as the home of rap where drunken humans would exchange rythmical insults to each other in pubs. In general, music made a huge improvement in the course of the thousand or so years of this time frame.
