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.

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]

Your entire post is wrong.

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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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:None are left?

[c6gunner]

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

great research

[speedtux]

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

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.

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.

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: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.

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

[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.