This has been done not only with folk or traditional rock (e.g., Bartók's volumes of Magyar and Romanian folk music), but also with firm recordings of improvisations by musicians (e.g., jazz piano) and performances that may only partially be based on notation. An exhaustive ideal of the last in recent times is the collection The Beatles: Complete Scores (London: Educated Publications, c1993), which seeks to transcribe into staves and tablature all the songs as recorded by the Beatles in instrumental Sheet Music Cabinets and vocal detail.

The first machine-printed music appeared around 1473, approximately 20 years after Gutenberg imported the printing press. In 1501, Ottaviano Petrucci published Harmonice Musices Odhecaton A, which contained 96 pieces of printed music. Petrucci's printing method produced clean, readable, elegant music, but it was a long, difficult action that required three far between passes through the printing press.