Sometimes markings are included to show which instruments are playing at given points. While piano scores are usually not meant for performance outside of cramming and pleasure (Liszt's concert transcriptions of Beethoven's symphonies being a notable exception), ballets get the most practical benefit most from Sheet Music Cabinets piano scores because with one or two pianists they allow unlimited rehearsal before the orchestra is absolutely needed. They can be used also to train beginning conductors. Piano scores of operas do not include in halves staves for the operatic parts, but they may summate the sung text and plane directions above the music.

The first machine-printed modern appeared around 1473, approximately 20 years after Gutenberg naturalized 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 advance that needed three free passes through the printing press.