The epigonion: sounds from the Ancient world

A musical instrument popular in Ancient Greece, but not heard for centuries

The second episode of the ongoing ‘Stories from the Grid’ series of documentaries all about the epigonion – a musical instrument popular in Ancient Greece, but not heard for centuries.

 

The video takes us to Cambridge, where Domenico Vicinanza, a product manager at DANTE and a professional music composer, describes how he used a technique called physical modelling to recreate the sound of the epigonion’s 48 strings.

 

Each string was modelled separately, taking into account information from ancient sources on what the instrument looked like, the materials it was made of, how the strings were constructed and the way it was played. The result is a set of 48 digital files containing the epigonion’s sounds that can be downloaded and played by any musician using a simple keyboard.

Domenico used computing resources provided by EGI to bring the epigonion back to life. Thanks to grid computing, it took him just a few hours to create the 48 digital files. In a single core computer Domenico would have to wait a month.

The European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) is an e-infrastructure put together to deliver integrated computing services to European researchers, driving innovation and enabling new solutions to answer the big questions of tomorrow.

The diverse range of science supported by EGI is showcased in the ‘Stories from the Grid’. Each episode focuses on a particular piece of research that would have been near impossible without EGI.

Link to the video: http://go.egi.eu/epigonion
EGI website: http://www.egi.eu
More ‘Stories from the Grid‘: http://www.egi.eu/news-and-media/videos/
by Sara Coelho (Communications officer EGI.eu),  http://www.digitalmeetsculture.net/