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.'"

Comments

Re:re-creation? ITS A GUESS

[thunrida]

It reminds me of Matrix quote: Because you have to wonder: how do the machines know what Tasty Wheat tasted like? Maybe they got it wrong...

...ahem...

[viyh]

Ricoooooooolllllaaaaaaaaa

Re:...ahem...

[SerpentMage]

As people have modded you funny, that was exactly what I was thinking... I live in Switzerland and see these long unwieldy instruments and they look very similar to the things that they are trying to play. But of course going to Switzerland, comparing notes would have BEEN TOO EASY...

Re:...ahem...

[jbengt]

But of course going to Switzerland, comparing notes would have BEEN TOO EASY...

From TFA:

But Dr Braden and his supervisor Professor Murray Campbell, were approached by a Swiss-based music conservatoire specialising in early music , the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, to help them recreate the Lituus - even though no one alive today has heard, played or even seen a picture of this forgotten instrument.

Re:...ahem...

[danwesnor]

Seriously? Any excuse to go to Switzerland, I'm there.

Re:...ahem...

[DryHeat122]

Nah, an Alpenhorn is made of wood, and the bell is bent up at the end at a right angle. A Lituus is straight and made of brass. They would sound completely different.

Lost instrument

[moon3]

Looks a bit like those Slovak Fujara pipes, but the sound is not so convincing, Fujara sound is amazing!

400 years from now...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:400 years from now...

[syousef]

Scientists will try to reconstruct a long-lost instrument called a turntable based on the lyrics from an ancient artist named Lady Gaga.

Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Re:400 years from now...

[bertoelcon]

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.

So much wrong with that, RIAA is getting away now, Linux is ready now, and Lady Gaga it not an artist.

Re:400 years from now...

[bertoelcon]

Your entire post is wrong.

Does that include the quote, which would cause a paradox of incorrectness?

Re:400 years from now...

[ciderVisor]

That year is 2409

2112, according to the writings of the holy trinity.

Re:400 years from now...

[Thinboy00]

Oh noes, somebody is WRONG on the INTERNETS!!!1!!1!11!!one!!

Let sleeping dogs lie

[OpenSourced]

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.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[Zenne]

The article didn't give a timeline - but to me it sounded more like people who haven't put in years of practice on that particular instrument. Understandable, considering the whole 'long-lost' bit.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[Takichi]

By that logic, we shouldn't study past civilizations or organisms because they obviously weren't good enough to survive. Maybe the sound it produced or the music that was written for it wasn't to your liking, but it still uncovered information we didn't previously have. I personally applaud any work into historical sound since we've only had the technology to preserve them for about a century. It's not like we can dig up some soil to listen to things in the past.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[jellomizer]

The instrument sounded Ok, They players themselves were off. It was basically having a professional choir/orchestra with some good high schoolers musicians playing the instrument. But these people haven't put their life into learning these instruments they probably were brass players winging it on the instrument, which has a different response and a different delay before it leaves the instrument.

As for the sound it makes it is actually kinda pretty. Kinda a mix between a trumpet and a french horn.
There are a lot of factors why instruments go extinct, and it has little to do about the actual instrument but the styles/forces of the times. I think the reason why that instrument went extinct is because of the political forces of the time. Rome being sacked, people on the move. There was little permanency in Europe during this time. This instrument was too clumsy to move around/got easily broken. Thus gave way for the modern Brass instruments which are bent to allow a similar effect but in a smaller size. They used the instrument for centuries before so it wasn't like a quick fad that died.

As for some of the unreleased songs a lot of them don't get published because of the quality. Sometimes they get left out because they didn't fit on the record and that song didn't go with the others on that album. The song covered something that was politically incorrect at the time or just in bad taste (say publishing an Anti-American song right after 9-11). Music that didn't go with your perceived style.

You view on music extinction seems like bad understanding of evolution and extinction in biology that a lot of people make. Animal X became extinct while Animal Y survived so Animal Y is superior. Which isn't the case. Animal Y could be inferior to X in all ways but one. And that one fact allowed it to survive by chance. Say the Animal X cannot survive in presence of excess UV rays while Animal Y can. Well animal H somehow put a hole in the ozone layer and killed of X.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[Threni]

> I mean, if they didn't release them then, it was probably because they weren't good enough.

You've got it. If it was any good, Bach would have released a CD featuring those instruments - the fact that he didn't proves that they're not really any good.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[inviolet]

As for the sound it makes it is actually kinda pretty. Kinda a mix between a trumpet and a french horn.

Now see, that's why I'm not buying it.

The researchers are basically saying "Hey, there was an ancient instrument, that was practical to manufacture as far back as Rome, and sounded pretty, kinda a mix between a trumpet and a french horn, and that even Bach wrote music for, and it COMPLETELY VANISHED FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH."

No, I'm sorry, the world doesn't work that way. Things completely vanish if they SUCK. This thing probably did NOT sound "pretty", or there would still be a few around. These guys kept tweaking their software until it sounded "pretty", because that what us moderns want, not because that's how an ancient Roman instrument must've sounded.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[chrismeidinger]

Rome being sacked, people on the move. There was little permanency in Europe during this time. This instrument was too clumsy to move around/got easily broken. Thus gave way for the modern Brass instruments which are bent to allow a similar effect but in a smaller size. They used the instrument for centuries before so it wasn't like a quick fad that died.

Not to mention the fact that musicians moved around back then just as much as here. They were always having concerts and festivals here-and-there and motion was a much more manual process. This thing is somewhere between drum-kit and upright bass on the Unwieldiness Scale. Musicians themselves much prefer lighter instruments that are easier to move.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[maxume]

They were replaced by instruments that are easier to play, or at least, that can generate a wider range of tones (a valved trumpet can play a full scale...). So they are replaced by more capable or more fashionable instruments, not necessarily because of how they sound.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[ockegheim]

Bach only wrote one piece for them, perhaps because it was a funeral ode and the "In 17th century Germany a variant of the bent ancient lituus was still used as a signalling horn by nightwatchmen" (thank you Wikipedia). Something to signal the dead as they pass on. If the performance was anything like the one on the news page it would have been a good reason for not writing any more.

I would go further than to say "Bach's motet... was one of the last pieces of music written for the Lituus". It's definitely the only known piece and almost certainly the only post-ancient piece for Lituus.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[machine321]

Meanwhile, you're sitting there playing with your collection of old computers that didn't beat out Windows/x86.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[mabhatter654]

You are exactly correct. Hand made "impractical" instruments fell out of fashion in the mid 1700's en masse for the beginnings of mass manufactured instruments. People would have replaced this with trumpets or coronets. Which were newer and more standard. What you see is a trend from 4-6 piece "chamber" or "folk" music to something that looks like the modern orchestra. In folk music handmade instruments and the "flaws" of instrument and player are features that make live performances better. In large groups you want to minimize individual players to have the group play as one "instrument".

I'm getting into middle ages instruments [a good guide is here: http://www.music.iastate.edu/antiqua/instrumt.html%5D And most of the list is woodwind or string. You can see the take over of strings because they are compact, portable (like another poster below mentions) and they are easily tuned to match each other. About the time the time lituus was lost brass instruments became affordable to produce nearly identical copies of and could be played in tune like Trombones, or tuned with sliders like trumpets and tubas. Why keep a single purpose non-tunable horn?

There's nothing like hearing music played on the instruments it was written to be played on. When listening to old music it helps put you in the mood the people then would have been in. It may not be the best thing now, but it was the best they had then.

Of course, the most popular music now is the 4-6 piece "rock" band. Drums, keyboard, and some number of guitars is the "standard" pop music right now. [much like violin, viola, cello, and bass in the 1600's] The core needed instruments of even the Rolling Stones fit in the back of Mom's minivan. We (ok not slashdotters, but other we) go to rock concerts because they play to the audience, even though their CDs are technically better and more polished we like to be there to watch and the artists do different things depending on the crowd.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[nametaken]

It really, really sounds like a trumpet being played by someone who can't manage notes that high. It's hard to acclimate to a mouthpiece and develop the ambrochure necessary to play a horn properly.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[fbjon]

It may be that some crucial details are missing that would make it easier to play, perhaps around the mouthpiece. IANAwind player, though.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[spauldo]

I dunno, if it was played by the Romans during the Roman empire, that would have it being produced and used sometime before around 400AD or so. Bach lived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

I doubt if the instrument was as horrible as you say it would have lasted (at least) 1200 years, or that someone of Bach's status would have bothered writing a piece for it.

Other rare/disused musical instruments:

• 
  The lute - a very pretty sounding stringed instrument that almost no one plays anymore due to the popularity of the guitar.
• 
  The harp - extremely versatile instrument that also happens to be very expensive and difficult to learn
• 
  The mandola - you never see these outside folk (think celtic, not John Denver) music or the occasional bluegrass band
• 
  The banjo - this used to be the number one selling instrument in America. How many people do you know personally who can play one today?

Granted, the harp probably won't completely disappear for quite some time, but it was once considered a mainstream instrument whereas now it's an oddity. I doubt the banjo will be around for another century - fewer and fewer people listen to bluegrass music as time goes on (pity, but there ya go). The lute is pretty much already gone outside of ren faires and SCA events, and the mandola will probably share the same fate eventually.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[OpenSourced]

Sometimes they get left out because they didn't fit on the record

Well, the other songs of the record did fit on the record. So the left overs were probably considered worse than the others. I do think there is a certain, not evolution, but selection of good music going on. Not always work, but most of the time it does. Good music tends to be kept, bad to be forgotten. I think that's one of the reason why classical music seems better than contemporary. It's just that we are spared the tons of bad classical music that have mercifully been erased from global consciousness. There are other reasons too, having to do with rules and constraints, but that's beside this point. Notice also that I used The Beatles in my example, the idea being that if the songs had kept unreleased for so many years, it's probably just greed and the need to profit from a good trademark, that cause today's publication.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[jc42]

No, I'm sorry, the world doesn't work that way. Things completely vanish if they SUCK. This thing probably did NOT sound "pretty", or there would still be a few around.

Well, that's often true, but there are a number of other reasons. One that keeps biting us is a peculiar logical failure in the human mind: the idea that advances or improvement require augmenting an object. This is a recognized problem with software, which we know as the usual development of "bloat" with time as new features are added and bugs are fixed. But the same thing happened in the 18th century, when the recorder died out and was hardly played except by a few academics until the Baroque revival in the mid-20th century.

The main problem with the recorder was that, unlike the closely-related transverse flute, it had a limited range (2 octaves), a very limited dynamic range (playing quietly makes it go flat, while paying louder makes it go sharp), not to mention an insanely complex fingering system. Many experiments were done, including the use of the newfangled key systems to simplify the fingering. But the limited dynamic range couldn't be fixed. So it was abandoned in favor of the transverse flute, which can easily be played quietly or loudly, and the player can make fine adjustments of the pitch to correct for the flute's tendency to go sharp when played louder. Flute makers also extended the range to 3 octaves.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the Japanese were playing the shakuhachi, which is nearly identical to the European recorder, except for being made of bamboo. It had a 3-octave range, simple fingerings, and could be played quietly or loudly without going out of tune. The Europeans didn't know about it, because such a primitive "folk" instrument of an inferior culture was beneath their notice.

So why could the Japanese solve the instrument's intonation problem when the Europeans couldn't? Simple: The shakuhachi didn't have the "air guide", the short tube that the player blows into, which shapes the airstream as it hits the sharp edge that makes the noise. The shakuhachi just has a simple opening with an edge, and the player forms the airstream with their lips. As with the European flute, this takes a bit more learning at the start, since the instrument doesn't form the airstream for you. But the Japanese form, like the European flute, gives the player 3 octaves, dynamic range, and fine tuning of individual notes. I know flute players who never bother tuning; they just listen to the other instrument(s), and use their embouchure to adjust the flute's pitch appropriately. (The shakuhachi isn't tunable, so that's what they always do.)

The reason the Europeans couldn't fix the recorder's intonation was simple: Doing so required removing part of the instrument, that short little air guide at the top. They even had the example of the transverse flute, which lacks the air guide, and the instrument makers still couldn't solve the problem. The recorder had an air guide tube, it was part of the instrument, and it apparently didn't occur to anyone to just remove it and see how the instrument played.

Of course, the instrument was revived with the air guide. This presents us with the other major problem with the instrument: A total novice can easily get sound out of it. So it's used in schools as kids' first instrument, it's played by zillions of novices who insist on minimally learning what is really the most difficult woodwind instrument and then inflicting their playing on the public (unlike novice fiddlers, who usually have the sense to know that they should play in private for several years until they no longer cause listeners to cover their ears). Removing that silly air guide would have solved this problem too, since novices and kids would pick one up, blow into it a few times, get no sound at all, and decide that it's not the instrument for them.

Now if there were only a good design solution that would discourage novice guitar players from playing in public ...

(Maybe removing the strings would work. ;-)

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[jollyreaper]

[quote]Of course, the most popular music now is the 4-6 piece "rock" band. Drums, keyboard, and some number of guitars is the "standard" pop music right now. [much like violin, viola, cello, and bass in the 1600's][/quote]

Popular is a relative term. While I would agree that rock-style instrumentation is popular amongst those operating under the "alternative" label, and nothing but synthesizers and samples seems to suffice for hip-hop, there's still music produced today that requires more players, music that's even popular. Orchestral metal is fairly popular over in Europe.

As one example, Therion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZtCRJld08c

Ignore any of their live stuff on youtube. They're more of a studio band -- they'd have to be given the range and complexity of the arrangements, and trying to translate it to stage can be problematic at times, even though they put together the full male and female choruses to try and pull it off.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[ResidentSourcerer]

Mouthpiece. Good point. In band while waiting for the teacher to show up we'd swap mouthpieces. A trumpet sounds VERY different if you used a french horn mouthpiece.

And Sax invented a whole new class of instruments by putting a clarinet mouthpiece on a brass instrument. So how do they know what the mouthpiece was like?

As to earlier posts comment that there is a reason for early instruments to become extinct implying that they sound awful.

There are many other possible reasons -- here's some guesses.

1. A lot of instruments died in the conversion from salon music to concert halls. The old instruments weren't loud enough. The metal flute replaced the wooden flute for this reason. (Although the latter is not extinct, only endangered)

2. Many early instruments were built in a specific key, and could not easily accommodate the half notes.

3. Some didn't have the range. More and more pieces expect a range of several octaves. A recorder gets two octaves, a flute gets 3+

4. Some are just plain hard to play. (Compare a bagpipe chanter to a clarinet or oboe)

5. The invention of valves put to rest a bunch of brass instruments. A valveless trumpet has only a few notes -- all overtones of the fundamental frequency. In a way the valved brass was the first digital instrument -- 3 valves allowed adding any combination of 3 lengths of tubing, giving 8 possible lengths to the instrument. This gives 8 'fundamental' notes which allows playing a scale, something that a valveless trumpet couldn't do.

6. Musicians became mobile. While some are cursed with instruments that are difficult to move (e.g. double bass) many of the newer instruments were more portable. One
valved trumpet replaced a trunk full of separate valveless instruments all formed in different keys.

There's some that I wish were still around outside museums.
I remember in my music class hearing recordings of medieval instruments. There was one, I can't remember the name, that sounded much like a kazoo being used as a mouthpiece in a Sousaphone

With the advent of high quality digital recordings, some of the old instruments are making a comeback. It's one way to be different from the herd. (Should that be heard?)

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[some guy I know]

To hear the sounds generated by this re-created instrument, reinforced me in my belief that extinct instruments are extinct with very good reasons.

Then explain why bagpipes are still around.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[brokenbeaker]

I know at least 10 people who play the banjo...

Liitus see ...

[upside]

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".

Re:Liitus see ...

[phme]

Don't you think it already pretty much looks like -- or at least sound like -- Klingon?

Reverse PM?

[marsu_k]

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.

Re:Reverse PM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Researchers are able to reconstruct an instrument that "no one knew what it looked or sounded like" and you fail to see how it's news?

It's not "just" reverse physical modeling. Most PM is a fairly cut-down simulation (such as waveguides) which are approximations of physical instruments given a set of parameters (length, width, wave source). If you haven't got those parameters, you can't do PM. And the parameters didn't exist.

It's sort of like saying that rockets aren't interesting because they "just" reverse the effect of gravity. And a computer which plays chess "just" needs to calculate the best moves. It's hardly a trivial task, and it is news.

Re:Reverse PM?

[MaskedSlacker]

Actually, brute-forcing a game of chess IS trivial. Computationally intensive, but it is not a complicated algorithm.

The computer considers a move (Say, Knight pawn e5)

The computer computes all possible states of the board X moves after the move it is considering (upperbound 16^x, should usually be around 10^x or less).

Assign each of these possible states a desirability value. This can be computed based on any set of strategic criteria. The simplest is material value, more complicated ones will consider control of the center, pins, forks, open files, etc.

Average the values together.

Repeat for each of the computer's possible moves.

Choose the move with the highest value.

Most immediate way to improve this is to add a dynamic weighting to the average as the computer moves down the tree of possible moves. Some moves an opponent is just not likely to make, so outcomes proceeding from those moves should be weighted less (this is just an expansion of the rule-awareness of the computer, for example the computer should be assigning zero weight to any moves that cause the opponent to put their own king in check, capture their own pieces, etc.--basically this is adding soft-rules, not likely in addition to impossible).

Computer chess AI was only noteworthy back in the day because of the power needed to do it, not because programming the AI is an inherently difficult task. Building the computers that could do all the calculations in a timely fashion was the real problem of a chess computer. Sure, Babbage's machine could have done it, but you would have died of old age waiting for the computer to respond to your spanish opening.

Re:Reverse PM?

[Threni]

> Actually, brute-forcing a game of chess IS trivial. Computationally intensive, but it is not a complicated algorithm.

It's not trivial because the sun will burn out before you get the answer to the very first move of the game. I agree that if your solution doesn't have to work then the solution is indeed trivial, but if the solution doesn't have to work then an even simpler one is to just resign the game immediately, move a random piece, etc, for all the difference it will make.

Re:Reverse PM?

[Yogiz]

Chess can not only be brute-forced but completely solved. Given enough computational power and storage for the solutions one could simply find out all the possible states for the game and then only select ones which lead to victory each turn. That would make chess as interesting to play as tic-tac-toe but we're still a bit off regarding our computers : P. Game theory is an interesting thing.

To not be completely offtopic, the modeling they use (if I understood correctly without RTFA) reminds me of how newer text-to-speech engine voices are made. They don't just contain random values that distort the sound in random ways but basically describe the features of a human vocal tract according to which the sounds are created.

Re:Reverse PM?

[smallfries]

I was actually supposed to meta-mod this comment but decided to reply instead. You don't understand what trivial means. It doesn't mean that it's "easy" as in a low number of computational steps. It means that there are no complicated decisions in the algorithm. For brute-forcing a game this is true, you simply evaluate every possible response to every possible until you reach the leafs of the game tree. So it is a trivial algorithm even though it is computationally intractable.

Re:Reverse PM?

[Threni]

> For brute-forcing a game this is true, you simply evaluate every possible response to every possible until you reach the leafs of the game tree. So
> it is a trivial algorithm even though it is computationally intractable.

It wasn't really the word `trivial` I had a problem with - it was more the word `solution`. The OP's `solution` doesn't solve anything - ie it doesn't let you play chess in the real world. A genuine solution, which a human, living today, on Earth, breathing oxygen etc (ie assumptions I should have thought obviously implied) could actually use, is less trivial.

Re:Reverse PM?

[smallfries]

Well.... yes and no. Chess is not that intractable. It is just beyond the current horizon of what we can compute. Before I started writing this comment I had thought the size of the game-tree was conjectured to be about 2^120 which would put it in the sun burning out category. But then I stumbled across this reference on google:

Jurg Nievergelt, of ETH Zurich, quoted the number 2^70 (or about 10^21) in
e-mail, and referred to his paper "Information content of chess positions",
ACM SIGART Newsletter 62, 13-14, April 1977, to be reprinted in "Machine
Intelligence" (ed Michie), to appear 1990.

Now 2^70 is not that intractable at all. Let assume that you're going to build a *large* machine. 2^20 processors is quite doable. Each of these processors can perform 2^32 operations per second without getting to far ahead of what we have now. That's 2^52 operations per second. Or about 2^18 seconds, roughly 2 days +/- some fudge factor. That fudge factor is how many atomic operations it takes to evaluate a position. On a commodity machine it will be a large number, on a custom architecture (like Deep Blue) it will be very low.

So brute-forcing chess is currently on the horizon of what can be done now. Memory for the game tree would be more of an issue than processing speed. Because we can loop through the same position the game tree is really a dag, so it is not feasible to compute local solutions to sub-trees. As a (very) loose estimate of the lower bound on the memory required: assume an average branching factor of 32, each position can be stored in 70 bits, so 70*(32+1) bits per tree node is about 2^11 bits, so the tree would need 2^81 bits. That is a hell of a lot, but memory densities are increasing exponentially as well. I don't know how big the Googleplex is, but researchers are starting to consider exabyte-sized systems. It will probably be done by somebody in 10-20 years.

As far as the living breathing human part goes, I think that was the OP's point. We can solve the game with a "dumb" approach, so it is not amongst the hardest of problems (those that we can't evaluate solutions to effectively). Whether or not that "dumb" approach is effective depends entirely where you are on the current exponential curve of processing power.

PS I mean MaskedSlacker's point, not the OP. I can see that the AC he was answering was actually using trivial in completely the wrong sense.

Re:Reverse PM?

[Threni]

I've never heard of Jurg Nievergelt, but I have heard of Claude Shannon, and he referred to 10^120, which is plenty to be getting on with!

Re:Reverse PM?

[sjames]

He was coming from the theoretical viewpoint, you're coming from the practical. In the theoretical, a solution merely has to satisfy the problem even if we can't imagine the hardware that could make it practical.

That's a useful metric because there are some problems that have no known solution even for that generous definition of solution.

Re:Reverse PM?

[m50d]

Actually, brute-forcing a game of chess IS trivial. Computationally intensive, but it is not a complicated algorithm.

That's true for any brute-force algorithm. If only there were a name that reflected this kind of approach...

Re:Reverse PM?

[petermgreen]

Whether or not that "dumb" approach is effective depends entirely where you are on the current exponential curve of processing power.
And whether that exponential trend continues and how close the complexity estimates are to reality.

Re:Reverse PM?

[TopherC]

I think you're right about the acoustics problem being non-trivial. There are many factors to consider in the design of instruments. I'd guess that the first problem to solve is how one can reproduce the notes called for in Bach's score. The shape of the mouthpiece, bore, and bell will affect the pitches that it resonates at. Real brass instruments play notes in a kind of harmonic sequence, and notes get closer together as you go up the scale. Sounds like this instrument is a little like a french horn in that it's about the same length (about the same as a trombone too) but is played high (maybe 3 octaves or more?) above the fundamental. But the exact shape of the instrument is what dictates the frequencies of these modes of vibration. Probably even the stiffness of the brass makes a small difference. And beyond the notes it can make, each resonant mode will have a kind of width, or Q value, that relates to how easy it is to bend the pitch to something in a 12-tone scale. A related problem is working out the timbre or general sound of the instrument, also a function of the shape. I don't know how the designers would have any reference for that.

I don't know how they went about modeling the instrument. I guess the basic approach would be to consider a geometry and then sweep through frequencies, looking for resonances. But how would you simulate the buzzing of lips in a mouthpiece? If they just put a microphone up to a mouthpiece of some shape and had a musician play different pitches, that still wouldn't account for the feedback or back-pressure of the rest of the instrument.

While I know enough physics and acoustics to be arrogant, I still would hardly know where to start on such a project. I'm really curious to learn about the details of what they did.

Re:re-creation? ITS A GUESS

[interkin3tic]

they keep saying re-creation, and it sounds unique and what not -- sounds like a million squeaky horns i've heard before.

We'll know when the inevitable "Oh, we've had one of those in our family for generations, didn't realize they were supposedly extinct. Sounds kind of like it but not quite" comes forward.

None are left?

[the_other_chewey]

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?

Re:None are left?

[c6gunner]

They sounded so frigging awful that people went out of their way to destroy them?

Re:None are left?

[MaskedSlacker]

They played them for 2000 years, and THEN just figured it out? Doubtful. Especially since the Jonas Brothers still records.

Re:None are left?

[mabhatter654]

People probably learned how to mass-produce the "coiled" version of bass instruments about that time. Trumpets, Trombones, Tubas, etc are all 6,12, 20 foot of brass tubing wound up with buttons added to make playing easier. At the time people probably turned in their 8 foot straight horns to have the metal reused in smaller, more versatile instruments. Raw metal was rather valuable so I'd expect horns were recycled into other objects as well.

yea right.

[mustafap]

>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? :)

Re:re-creation? ITS A GUESS

[paganizer]

I really don't want to say anything, But I would swear i remember seeing one of those hanging on the wall of my great-uncle's barn 35 or so years ago; the barn is in Extreme Rural Tennessee, so you could imagine my surprise.
I'll see if I can get my mm to investigate.

great research

[speedtux]

And the best thing about it--nobody can prove it wrong.

Re:great research

[Daimanta]

Well, if you make a piece of Bach sound awful, you know you have failed in your task.

Re:great research

[Hurricane78]

Depends on your taste of music. Bach is something for the mathematicians of the music students. So something that real existing people with a real life enjoy. ^^

Re:great research

[Threni]

> Depends on your taste of music. Bach is something for the mathematicians of the music students. So something that real existing people with a real
> life enjoy.

Only if by 'real people' with a 'real life' excludes pretty much any serious classical composer from the last couple of hundred years (as well as lot of jazz, rock etc musicians). You'll have to look pretty hard to find any composer or performer who doesn't appreciate what Bach did.

Re:great research

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I think it's surprising that a kind of instrument that's been use for millennia apparently doesn't have much in the way of surviving examples in any condition.

Re:great research

[hey!]

Well, the players are obviously having trouble getting notes out the thing. Where they do, some of them sound flat to me, which makes me wonder whether they got the instrument this piece was designed for correct. Can the instrument actually produce the scale the piece was written for?

Re:great research

[mabhatter654]

CAN the instrument do it, or can they play it? It sounds like these were built strictly to the plans provided by the computer and not "polished" by a craftsman. A few revisions from practiced craftsmen would probably improve the scale and playability of the horn without changing its sound too much. I'd think that would be an interesting lesson in polishing their software with how real-world craftsmen tweak and build instruments.

Re:re-creation? ITS A GUESS

[djsmiley]

I was thinking something along these lines too - H2G2 Has something about making predictions of the future - one nice tip - Predict something that can never be proven wrong (or at least is very unlikely to be proven wrong).

Isn't this what these guys have done, but instead taken a bit of the past, and proven it, without it being unprovable? Also if one of these horns was now found in original condition, they could simply go "well thats not the right horn, this : (insert newly created horn) is the one we remade, that must be some other type of horn!".

And its likely some students passed their courses via this too. I mean, they have created some impressive technology, the ability to create usable, realistic instruments... but dont claim its solving some unsolvable problem. To solve that problem it must come up with ONE and ONLY ONE solution, and im sure you could do lots of with the horn and still get something which sounds close enough to be concidered the "correct" one.

Lituus - not a Roman one

[hubert.lepicki]

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.

We still have them in some parts of Romania

[galaad2]

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

Re:We still have them in some parts of Romania

[nametaken]

That Bucium does does indeed look like the lituus and various sorts of alphorn.

Per the wiki article, there's some suspicion of a direct relation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpenhorn

How is this the same instrument

[GreenTech11]

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...

Ummm yes.......

[SurlyToad]

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.

Not lost...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:re-creation? ITS A GUESS

[Threni]

> I'll see if I can get my mm to investigate.

It's supposed to be quite a large instrument - you might be better off asking your cm or maybe even your m to help out.

Um.. Nobody has heard, seen or played it

[Colin Smith]

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.

 

Re:Um.. Nobody has heard, seen or played it

[mabhatter654]

The PhD thesis was the horn profiling software. It's quite a technological advance in music. We went from hand made horns individuals figured out to play, to mass produced horns designed to a specification of brass and wood everybody learned to play exactly the same way. Now we've come full circle, the purpose of the software was to aid manufacturing of an individual instrument to their style of play. and physical ability.. that's actually a huge accomplishment in the history of music. It's the same type of advance made in sports so Tiger Woods can be digitally analyzed and have golf clubs made specifically for the mechanics of his swing based on scientific data.

I think the lituus was sort of a "parlor trick" use of the software. They had a piece of music, so sound patterns it was supposed to play, and they had written accounts of it's length, material, and basic appearance. They were able to plug that in and get a pattern for a real instrument out.

To complete the technology circle, these plans need to be given to real antique instrument re-creators to improve the playability and quality of the horn. Building a horn to a computer spec is way different than a craftsman building one by hand. They could improve their software if they had a craftsman "fix" their design to smooth out the rough patches and properly match the technology of the time, which would introduce "errors" that make the instrument more unique than one made by CNC machine.

Phew

[skroops]

For a second I was worried I'd be pushing a button every 108 minutes

Re:re-creation? ITS A GUESS

[Chysn]

To solve that problem it must come up with ONE and ONLY ONE solution, and im sure you could do lots of with the horn and still get something which sounds close enough to be concidered the "correct" one.

And "close enough" is important here, because there never was a One True Lituus. Modern acoustic musical instruments exhibit a great deal of variety in dimensions, materials, shape, and even UI (for example, number of keys or valves), and still go by the same name. It's always been that way.

So they know the instrument's range and typical length. They know what materials were available in the past. It's an interesting exercise to have a computer reproduce it, but hardly necessary, given the skill of the makers. What they have here can almost certainly be called a Lituus.

Re:re-creation? ITS A GUESS

[apparently]

But I would swear i remember seeing one of those hanging on the wall of my great-uncle's barn 35 or so years ago; the barn is in Extreme Rural Tennessee, so you could imagine my surprise.

I hate to tell you this, but that was just a horse dildo. Funny, the things age does to memory: one minute you're looking at a horse dildo, the next minute, you're convinced that ancient instruments are hanging out in rural Tennessee.

Re:why not PM synthesis?

[mabhatter654]

the software was designed to improve real instruments and match them to their players better to produce the sound and style of music the player wanted. They used the software "backwards" rather than analyze an existing instrument for flaws or tuning they took a set of parameters like the scale and size and tried to predict how a real instrument that had those specs would be made. I'd say that's the peak of analytical software to recreate what you have no way of knowing for sure convincingly.

Lost

[antdude]

Dang, I thought it was related to television/TV series!

Re:why not PM synthesis?

[gyrogeerloose]

Why go through all the trouble of making an actual instrument

Why do people try to put Linux on an iPod or some other obscure bit of hardware?

Because it's a challenge and it's fun.

Re:re-creation? ITS A GUESS

[Anonymous Coward]

and you down for being useless

Ancient Greek instrument called Epigonion revived

[TropicalCoder]

You may find this interesting A virtual recreation of an ancient instrument from the 6th century BC

Wait...

[oljanx]

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?

Yes, I am a musicologist, and it's bogus

[geckoFeet]

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.)

Re:re-creation? ITS A GUESS

[jollyreaper]

I hate to tell you this, but that was just a horse dildo. Funny, the things age does to memory: one minute you're looking at a horse dildo, the next minute, you're convinced that ancient instruments are hanging out in rural Tennessee.

I wonder if Catherine the Great was a relative.

slight reconsideration

[geckoFeet]

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.

Re:Ancient Greek instrument called Epigonion reviv

[mabhatter654]

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.

Re:re-creation? ITS A GUESS

[Phoghat]

Take the violin. Millions made but why is it that a Stradivarius sounds better than all of them? Back then there was no one big musical instrument maker to make a standard to adhere to. Even today the sound of an old Gibson Les Paul or Fender Strat is something a manufacturer might strive for but not quit achieve.

Re:re-creation? ITS A GUESS

[paganizer]

I asked my MOM (damn you, failure to spellcheck), she didn't remember it, and said she thinks the barn burned down 20+ years ago. which is a real shame, because it had a complete whitesmith setup.
She did, however, say that her uncle, who's barn it was, had married a woman from San Morino who was allegedly some form of minor nobility (seems to be a thing in my family), which was why his farm was gigantic; it's not totally improbable that some weird instruments were hanging up.
Or, it could have been a horse dildo.

TFA/Summary written by non-musician...

[flattop100]

" 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.

Re:TFA/Summary written by non-musician...

[Liche_UK]

Indeed, you are entirely correct, and I am well aware of this fact (I have spent a couple of enjoyable afternoons at the http://www.rathtrombones.com/ factory...). In defence of the author of the article, they have written "more closely", which I think is reasonable. The tool was also intended for use by modern manufacturers to refine good instruments; as you point out, modern instrument design is becoming ever more customised to the specific needs of the individual player, so a tool to help the designers will inevitably be used for "catering more closely". The statement is true, if you read it from a journalist's point of view.

Some responses

[Liche_UK]

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.

Re:Some responses

[Liche_UK]

Sorry about the lack of formatting. It has swallowed my paragraphs.

Have since figured out how to do this, but I can't edit the above comment. Fail.

Re:re-creation? ITS A GUESS

[gyrogeerloose]

Mighty brave of you to post that anonymously. Asshole.