The music can be performed in two ways -- sitting and walking. Seated performances are a kind of chamber music that involve more than 20 musical instruments, including wind instruments, such as the di zi, sheng (a kind of reed pipe wind instrument), guan zi, and percussion instruments, such as the zuo gu ("sitting drum"), war drum, du gu ("single drum"), big cymbals, small cymbals, big gongs, a slit drum, etc.

Strolling performances mostly take place outdoors, such as during street processions and temple fairs. This type of genre can be subcategorized as "Tongyue Drum" ("joint-happiness drum," also called "gao bazi") and Luan Baxian ("mixed eight immortals," also called "Single-sided Drum"). "Tongyue Drum" involves musical instruments like the di zi, sheng, gao ba drum (long-legged drum), gongs, jiao zi (a scissors-like instrument), hand- held slit drum, etc. Luan Baxian incorporates eight kinds of musical instruments, namely the di zi, sheng, Chinese gong chimes, single-sided drum, yun luo (a kind of gong), jiao zi and the hand-held slit drum.

 Worldwide fame

War drum

Sitting drum

For over 1,000 years Xi'an ancient music has spread widely throughout the country, as well as beyond China. The influence of this type of music can be found in nan yin , a genre from South China, and the imperial music of Japan. The famous Naxi ancient music, which is popular in the Lijiang area of Southeast China's Yunnan Province, is also believed to have its roots in Xi'an ancient music.

As an important material that boasts a very high academic value, Xi'an ancient music once attracted much attention from domestic and foreign scholars. When Yang Yinliu, the first superintendent of the Musical Research Institute of the Central Conservatory of Music, was translating the scores from Jiang Kui, a ci writer and musician of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), he came across some untranslatable elements.

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