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| Ancient Musical Instruments Play Again Through Astra Project Ancient musical instruments can now be heard for the first time in hundreds of years, due to a new computer modelling project. ASTRA (Ancient instruments Sound/Timbre Reconstruction Application) has recreated the sounds of the harp-like Epigonion musical instrument from Ancient Greece and has performed one of the oldest known musical scores dating back to the Middle Ages. To achieve this it used the GÉANT2 and EUMEDCONNECT research networks to link high capacity computers together, sharing information to enable the computer-intensive modelling of musical sounds. Knowledge of the Epigonion musical instrument, dating back from the Ancient Greek era, is based on archaeological findings, historical pictures and literature. Using this archaeological data as an input, it was then transformed by a complex digital audio rendering technique to model the actual sound of the instrument. This advanced physical modelling synthesis creates a virtual model of the instrument and reproduces the sound that the instrument might have made by simulating its behaviour as a mechanical system. The Epigonion is a wooden string instrument that musicians have likened the sound to something similar to a modern harp or a harpsichord. The ASTRA team have compiled the sounds of four Epigonion instruments to recreate a medieval musical piece, making this the first time that these instruments have been heard performing together. The physical modelling process needs extreme amounts of computing power – taking about four hours for a high powered computer to correctly reproduce a sound lasting only 30 seconds. To bring together sufficient power and to share information the ASTRA project is using the GILDA and EUMEDGRID grid computing infrastructures, which link computing resources across the Mediterranean at high speed (up to 2.5 Gbps) through the GÉANT2 and EUMEDCONNECT research networks. The benefits of the collaborative approach used in this project are far reaching. ASTRA not only makes it possible to recreate instruments that previously would have been either too expensive or too difficult to manufacture by hand, it also allows any model and its associated data to be accessed by our collaborators. Research data can therefore be shared around the world, making it a truly international project of immense value to working archaeologists and historians. write your comments about the article :: © 2008 Computing News :: home page |