Slashdot Mirror
Software Enables Re-Creation of 'Lost' Instrument
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that the Lituus, a 2.4m (8ft) -long trumpet-like instrument, was played in Ancient Rome but fell out of use some 300 years ago. Bach even composed a motet (a choral musical composition) for the Lituus, one of the last pieces of music written for the instrument.. But until now, no one had a clear idea of what this instrument looked or sounded like until researchers at Edinburgh University developed software that enabled them to design the Lituus even though no one alive today has heard, played or even seen a picture of this forgotten instrument." (Continues below.)
The team started with cross-section diagrams of instruments they believed to be similar to the Lituus and the range of notes it played. 'The software used this data to design an elegant, usable instrument with the required acoustic and tonal qualities. The key was to ensure that the design we generated would not only sound right but look right as well,' says Professor Murray Campbell. 'Crucially, the final design produced by the software could have been made by a manufacturer in Bach's time without too much difficulty.' Performed by the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (SCB) the Lituus produced a piercing trumpet-like sound interleaving with the vocals in an experimental performance of Bach's 'O Jesu Christ, meins lebens licht' in Switzerland earlier this year, giving the music a haunting feel that can't be reproduced by modern instruments. The software opens up the possibility that brass instruments could be customized more closely to the needs of individual players in the future — catering more closely to the differing needs of jazz, classical and other players all over the world. 'Sophisticated computer modelling software has a huge role to play in the way we make music in the future.'"
lats psot
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
they keep saying re-creation, and it sounds unique and what not -- sounds like a million squeaky horns i've heard before.
Ricoooooooolllllaaaaaaaaa
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." --Mark Twain
Looks a bit like those Slovak Fujara pipes, but the sound is not so convincing, Fujara sound is amazing!
Software has been giving /. readers the horn for YEARS.
Scientists will try to reconstruct a long-lost instrument called a turntable based on the lyrics from an ancient artist named Lady Gaga. But since RIAA at the time is basically runs the all governments it will brand these scientists enemies of the state and will summarily execute them. That year is 2409. The same year Linux is finally ready for the desktop.
To hear the sounds generated by this re-created instrument, reinforced me in my belief that extinct instruments are extinct with very good reasons. It's like when I hear that they will publish some "previously unreleased" songs from The Beatles, or whoever. I mean, if they didn't release them then, it was probably because they weren't good enough.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Does that mean there's a job opening for someone to punch a series of numbers into a computer every 108 minutes?
That's what I'd imagine an instrument created by a software model would look like. Wake me up when the software "creates" an instrument that looks more Klingon and less "software model".
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Isn't this just reverse physical modeling, that is, instead of calculating how an instrument with certain physical qualities would sound, they calculated what physical qualities an instrument with a certain sound would have? But PM is hardly new so I don't see why this is news.
well it could be recreated from a prop to a real time traveling device on some far away island...er..wait..not that Lost..
Aw Frell this
So they completely modeled after images and assumptions?
I would understand that no instrument remains playable after >300 years.
But I'm a bit surprised that there aren't any left at all. 300 years
isn't that long, even on the "human history" scale.
What happened?
>even though no one alive today has heard, played or even seen a picture of this forgotten instrument."
So in fact he could make it sound like any old shit, and who is to disagree with him? :)
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
Sounds extremely false in many places. Either they still need to learn to play these instruments or the design is not good at all.
The instrument's sound resembles slightly a cornetto (also a revived instrument). Here you can listen to it played perfectly: "Le Concert Brisé - Musique Transalpine".
And the best thing about it--nobody can prove it wrong.
I thought someone had created that Swan electromagnetic thingy from "Lost"!
From images on Roman coins and walls, you could get an idea how original version of the instrument looked like. What these guys re-created is version from Bach's time, and after watching the video, I admit it matches character of music :). (I love Bach BTW)
I would like to see original version, though.
It should also be noted that nobody had a clear idea of this instrument's appearance and sound, and that a program was recently used to make a replica, which nobody had heard for hundreds of years, by the way.
We still have these instruments in some parts of Romania, they are called "bucium" or "tulnic" (varies across the regions of the country).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucium
http://i41.tinypic.com/6jgkk8.jpg
root@127.0.0.1
To quote TFA, they created an instrument based on one no one has ever seen before, how is this the same instrument? It is simply an instrument that might make similar sounds, and probably looks quite different...
Laughter is the best medicine, except if you have a broken rib.
The allegedly "Roman" Lituus looks remarkably like the Swedish NÃverlur http://files.reseguiden.se/files/0/rg_738300_m600.jpg. I remember David Munrow demonstrating something like it in his Early Music TV programme back in the mid-70s. It sounds very difficult to keep in pitch and I'd suggest that a Renaissance Cornett (perhaps even a Lysard, but not a Serpent) would be a more appropriate instrument for the performance.
Conjectural instruments like the Lituus aren't really worth the effort.
Physical Modelling synthesis has been around for a long time and produces great results. Why go through all the trouble of making an actual instrument when PM synthesis would have allowed the recreation of the sound on a much more limited budget, and without the trouble of finding people to try to play the thing ?
Not sure why this study and article claims the instrument was "lost", and that no one knows what it looks like â" there are -countless- details and elaborate accounts on the various Lituus in musical history. Furthermore, the "long horn" type of instrument shown as being the recreation of the "lost Lituus nobody has ever seen" is not a Lituus at all â" it's nothing short a very common design of long horn from the european medievals.
So what they're really saying is "we just made it all up". Just because someone spent 3 years on a PhD thesis "just making it all up" using complex engineering software and vast amounts of computer time doesn't change the fact that they "just made it all up" and actually have little clue what the original instrument sounded like.
Deleted
For a second I was worried I'd be pushing a button every 108 minutes
Of course it is extinct....the little kiddies kept having all of their teeth bashed out and breaking the instruments whenever they moved them around. Little Timmy hated carrying the 8ft plus thing around. Eating and playing are very difficult with no front teeth, and Dad isn't buying a new one every time Timmy decides to use it as a lever or play lances with his neighbor. Dad went out and bought him something far more easy and safe to carry and handle, a Tuba or drumset.
You can actually buy it at e-Bay: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/-Roman-lituus(100-AD)for-reenactors-Rome%27s-army-AH3870T_W0QQitemZ370193812188QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ20090428?IMSfp=TL090428139003r20522
Do a search from "Lituus" on Google and you will find how it really looks like.
http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~jg95/graphics/avatars/100/mphg_trumpets.jpg
Do we really have scientists that have nothing to do?
Are they trying to get onto American Idol with the pseudo-trumpet?
I'd love for someone to tell me one useful application of a restored instrument...a new way to play "I like big butts"? Does someone think it'll play all the music of the really, really, really old days all on it's own?
This is folly, is it not? Can we have someone NOT being paid by the government to look at the fossil record and tell the government who wants complete power, that CO2 is not only not a problem, but removing it will make the climate hotter? (The truth)
I'm sorry, this is not-quite as stupid as resurrecting a wolly mammoth from DNA.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Dang, I thought it was related to television/TV series!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
was it anything created by the Dharma Initiative?
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Please those types of models are always good enough for "Global Warming".
Why do you think they reset their models every few years? The "old models" diverge way too radically from actual data. So, to hide the "we just made it all up" factor, they reset their models so the divergence is now 0 and start fresh.
The models can't back predict and they can't forward predict with any accuracy. But since those are "computer models" (Ohh , Ahhhh) and therefore they have to be right.
Oh and I am sorry I forgot it isn't "Global Warming" anymore, it is now "Climate Change" because it was becoming tough to sell warming when the Earth has been cooling since the peak temperatures in 1998 and in our new "de-politicized science" science is now all about marketing.
You may find this interesting A virtual recreation of an ancient instrument from the 6th century BC
In order to invoke the god reknowned as "Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!", you must pay tribute to it's Son-at-law over in SUIJURISCLUB.NET. The right to invoke this god allows one to ignore facts, quash motions, trespass, kidnap, steal, and bill families for the cost of your labor and materials needed to kill their individuals. Thankyou for your support.
Sincerily,
Agent #1001, eartag A9xb41
District of Payne,
Hillary Rosen County,
RIAA Island,
Planktopolis Micronation.
I wouldn't doubt if the instrument fell out of use because everyone smoked themselves to sleep. Reminds me of when I found the glass pipe of some friends of mine back in Colorado. I told them that it looks too "contraband" and should just buy some musical instruments to use in smoking their materials. In came a flute, and they just never learned to play it. It was like a beginning pianist rehearsing their study. It was horrible, as nails raking across a chalk-board while eating onions. Oh God what have I done? Needless to say, the instruments deformed over time from the heat of lighting their material in each note finger-hole, and the music got worse... It always started out horrible, then it started sounding like a bunch of trains running through a tunnel.
This "lituus" thing was probably abandoned the same way. Started out as a hollow pimp cane or something, and then the whole country disappeared after someone made a poor suggestion as I did to those two boys. Truly sad, we may never know how it functioned prior. I suppose this is how evolution makes its way to create tools, crossed with the movie Alien (1st). How many bad things need to be blown out through a f*cking air-lock before someone finds a use for it? Truly sad day, the lituus will sorally be missed, just like Stephen King.
Aren't these the things they hang banners on and play when the king shows up to the joust, in like, every movie ever made?
Please read the second link in the summary. It's completely bonkers to think that an ancient Roman instrument just happened to survive into Bach's time, and then disappeared without a trace. We have descriptions of instruments and musical practice from Bach's time, and there is no lituus. We also have descriptions of ancient Roman (and Greek and Biblical) instruments from Bach's time, stuff that Bach would have known, and there are Litui in there. Bach took the name of an ancient Roman instrument because for some reason, probably having to do with the original purpose of that particular "cantata" (more likely it was a funeral motet), a fancy Latin name was more appropriate. The instrument itself would have been a horn or, less likely, a trumpet pitched in Bb. The difference between a Baroque horn and Baroque trumpet of that pitch would have been only the exact shape of the bore and the configuration of the mouthpiece.
Sorry, but the only evidence for the existence of the ancient Lituus in Bach's time is the occasional use of a Latin term in place of a German or Italian or some other vernacular term. That adds up to exactly zero evidence.
That said, the modelling software is pretty neat.
---
I am a musicologist, but I am not your musicologist, and this message does not constitute musicological advice. (In most juristictions.)
Maybe it's a trumpet (mostly cylindrical bore) not a horn (conical bore). The other instruments don't have Latin labels, but if this was indeed a funeral motet, the use of a Latin name for the trumpet could have been to get around guild restrictions, since the use of trumpets (and timpani) was tightly, although somewhat incoherently, regulated. Bach wouldn't have been allowed to hire a "tromba" or "clarino" player, but give the instrument another name, and it's ok. (The guild regs really were that ridiculous.)
There's no evidence for this, but it's a lot more plausible than a literal lituus.
making a computer synth sound is different than making the instrument. The physical form of the instrument adds much to how it was played. In many instruments from that time the flaws and human errors were as much part of the performance as the the tone or clarity of the instrument.
Look at a standard guitar. in addition to plucking the strings you can make a dozen other sounds with the instrument not specifically "playing" it, but they're key to live performance. You wouldn't know that unless you had one in your hands to play.
So, basically, it sounded like a really crappy french horn / trumpet. Wonderful.
Next up: Scientists in 2230 recreate the extinct 'Ford Model-T' from photographs and wonder why it's no longer made.
they are building an instrument that nobody nows how it sounds, but it sounds exactly like the old version that no one ever heard?
David Monette http://www.monette.net/ has been making trumpets customized to the players for years. I don't see a lot of added value in the software.
" The software opens up the possibility that brass instruments could be customized more closely to the needs of individual players in the future -- catering more closely to the differing needs of jazz, classical and other players all over the world."
Please. This has been the case for years! As someone who has played a brass instrument for 18 years, I can authoritatively tell you that there are already significant differences between a trombone made for jazz music, classical music, and beginning players, to list only a few categories. As far as "customized," Edwards Trombones http://www.edwards-instruments.com/index.shtml can heavily customize an instrument to the player - having played one, I can tell you specifically how my embouchure differed from the owner of the horn. Leadpipe, bell flare, material, even the finish can be customized and predictably constructed to match the player. This is not a "new" concept based on a history professor with a computer - this is an extension of the tradition and history of instrument-making.
Greetings. I am the developer of the software referred to in this article, and the underlying techniques. The discussion on this page has been of considerable interest and value, and I would like to answer a few of the queries it has raised. 1) None of us thought that Bach used the same instrument as the Romans did, as the article suggested. This conclusion could, however, have been reached with 5 minutes, google, and not a great deal of thought. 2) The object of the project was a single musical performance, a recording of which you have heard. Music exists to communicate and evoke emotion, and it's pretty hard for a performance to 'be proven wrong'. The musicians wanted to communicate the most authentic performance possible, well knowing that a truly 'authentic' (whatever that means) performance was impossible. They commissioned us to design them an instrument to their (broad) specifications, and make it as playable as we could. This we did, and they built the result and played it for their performance - and by doing so they achieved their objective, however authentic or otherwise the result. 3) The instrument is an educated guess at what a Lituus looked and sounded like, and that alone is an interesting and thought-provoking object. Best-guesses at things that no longer exist are quite popular in academia - history, paleontology etc. The guesses aren't always right, but we still end up knowing and understanding more than we did before, and that makes it worthwhile. 4) The performance recorded is clearly not perfect. I haven't played the Lituus yet, but I expect it is very difficult to play. For a start, it has no valves/slides, and is restricted to a harmonic series; the player changes notes by lip control alone. It probably doesn't respond terribly well - I've played other historic brass instruments which were very unwieldy compared to their modern equivalents. Instruments have come a long way since Bach's time - as you've correctly pointed out, they are extinct for a reason. The players hadn't had much time to get used to the instruments. Frankly, if they gave a flawless performance under the circumstances, I'd have been very impressed. Even recordings on period instruments by established period-ensembles are not perfectly in tune by modern standards. 5) I completely agree that further work by craftsmen would enhance the instrument. The software was developed as a tool to help designers/manufacturers, never to replace them. In this case, building a workable Lituus without the computer assistance would require building and discarding many instruments in a long and expensive trial-and-error process; the software allowed them to skip straight to a working model. Further tweaking would almost certainly help. Experimenting with mouthpieces also would - these are much harder to model accurately, because the motion of the lips is so complex. The judgement of the musicians is paramount, and technology, however powerful it is, can only ever make helpful suggestions. 6) In principle, combining a model with an optimisation algorithm, a shape parameterisation, some physical constraints, and an objective function, is not revolutionary. That is not to say that it hasn't been done for brass instruments before (at least with this level of success), and it is not to say that there aren't a lot of domain-specific problems to overcome. Revolutionary it may not be, but I promise you it wasn't trivial! I found this a fascinating subject to work on, because it is using hard science to help create instruments, which are then used to make music, which exists to communicate feeling. It is not often that scientists get to work on a project where the ultimate goal is something as transitory, subjective, and human as a musical performance to be experienced only by the players and their audience.