Post by Sirius W. in An Appreciation of Ancient Songs and Instruments

Viewing post in An Appreciation of Ancient Songs and Instruments

So, I was wandering around the British Museum the other day, and came across a couple of fascinating instruments I hadn’t seen before. I thought they’d make an interesting addition to this old thread!

I was originally going to post some pictures I took myself. However, there’s an image on Wikipedia that’s so much better than my attempts, and I thought it would be best to use that instead. So, here’s a picture of these two instruments, taken by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg):

This image shows two lyres, found at the Royal Cemetery in the ruins of Ur, dating from about 2600BC. It’s hard to stress just how early this is. This is nearly *2000 years* before Homer, and centuries before the Minoans built their first palaces!

The thing I find so striking about these instruments is that they’re *huge*. Thankfully, the person in the picture above helps to give an idea of scale. Both lyres are around 1m tall! That’s much, much larger than the traditional dimensions of the classical Greek lyre! They both contain large amounts of metal, too, so these instruments would be *heavy*. And yet, remarkably, murals from the period show that they were simply held in the hand when they were played. These musicians would have had to be strong and dextrous, I think!

Interestingly, all the instruments from this set are decorated by bulls!

Here’s an informative video which demonstrates how a lyre like this might have sounded. The instrument here is a replica, but it’s enough to give a rough idea! The metallic frame gives the instrument quite a distinctive colour:

I was thinking about this, and started to wonder what sorts of instruments Asterion might have played in his lifetime. Feel free to ignore the rambling theorising below!

It’s only really possible to guess what instruments Asterion would have been familiar with if we know roughly when he lived. It’s possible some dates have already been given – if so, I’m sorry for being forgetful! – but here’s some crude guesswork. We know that Asterion knows Linear A well, but not Linear B. Thankfully, that helps us to tie things down pretty neatly. From archeological records, we know Linear A was only widely used from about 1625BC to about 1450BC. That’s a pretty narrow window. So we should be able to place Asterion somewhere within this two century gap! Given he’s at least aware of Linear B, he’s probably closer to the 1450BC end – but probably not pushing right up against that boundary.

But there might be a problem here, at least so far as lyres go. The earliest record we have of a classical Greek lyre is a Minoan mural on the Greek mainland – which is good! – but it only dates to about 1400BC. That’s ever so slightly later then the Linear A period. In other words, there’s no evidence that classical lyres were used while Linear A was also in popular use. So, if Asterion speaks Linear A, then the historical record suggests that he might have slightly *predated* the Greek lyre. At least, when he was alive. Maybe he picked the instrument up later, in the underworld? Could his childhood lyre have been something else entirely?

If Asterion played something different during his physical lifetime, what might that have been? Well, even in his relatively late period of Minoan history, the Minoans would presumably have been powerful maritime traders. Asterion lived before the sacking of Troy, so Crete would have had a powerful trading partner close by. And the Trojan borders covered much of the distance from Crete, in the west, to the Babylonian Empire, in the east. So it’s a possibility – albeit it a shaky one – that Babylonian instruments could have made it all the way to the Minoans.

So perhaps Asterion would have been familiar with huge lyres like these after all?

Of course, there’s a bundle of problems with this theory. We don’t see big lyres during this period *either*, so my earlier argument cuts both ways. And Asterion clearly *does* know about classical lyres! As much as I’d want to argue he might have picked that up in Hades, I can’t really justify that. Asterion pretty much contradicts that himself.

Still, I rather like the idea that both types of lyres might have been competing in the Crete of Asterion’s day. Maybe he actually learned on both sorts of instruments, but eventually ended up preferring the newer Greek style?

Anyway, sorry for the theory ramble!

Minoh Workshop2 years ago(+3)

Ah, yes. I've been aware of those Mesopotamian lyres for a good while now. I think I want to geek out about them, if you'll permit :)

There's a lot more engineering in them than meets the eye, some of which Peter Pringle talked about here and there. The first attempts at recreating those lyres — including trying to get something like the sound said to come out of them — ended quite catastrophically. If memory serves me, there was a lot of debate over how those "pegs" at the top could be used to tune them (which I know for a fact is a solved problem nowadays) but mainly getting the tuning right seemed impossible.

The issue was that the tension on the strings was so high that the crossbar would bend down with each string that was tuned, which in turn made all the previous ones out of tune. Wood alone just couldn't take it! I think the video you posted was recorded back when Pringle was still commenting about this issue, which I believe he later solved as you can see in this beast of a performance below.

I can't quite pull a quote here, but I believe he ended adding a metal bar inside the crossbar to be able to bear the load... And this refinement might have been there in the original specimens of this instrument, I was told. It's really incredible, isn't it? The instrument itself does sound like a cow, and in the video description Peter Pringle explains a lot about his rationale in the recreation.

Now, another very interesting lyre comes from Crete itself, from the Hagia Triada sarcophagus, which I had the pleasure of seeing for myself.

It's also visible in this pottery from around 1200BC:

It's also been recreated by Luthieros, though it naturally comes with a number of creative liberties.

I bring all of this up for a reason, though. Crete was quite the maritime and economical powerhouse back in its time. There are Cretan artifacts spread all over the Mediterranean and North of Africa, and there's been a very healthy cultural mixing between Crete and Egypt. Scarab jewels were found in Crete, and it seems like there was a lot of artists coming back and forth learning techniques in foreign lands.

Mind you, both the Mesopotamian and the Hagia Triada lyres far precede Ancient Greece as we know it! The myth of Hermes tells of his mother, Maia, giving birth to him and his little adventures shortly after, wherein he killed a turtle and some of Apollo's cattle, then used the shell, horns, leather and guts to fashion a lyre. If we think of this as belonging to "Ancient Greece" as a historical period, then look how advanced the Cretans and Mesopotamians that preceded them were! And that's being generous to the Cretans, because I wouldn't be surprised if the Hagia Triada lyre actually originated from Egypt. And Mesopotamia was not too distance from Crete either — don't quote me on this, but I think I saw on the Heraklion Museum some stuff about Cretan artifacts being found in Mesopotamian ruins.

Mind you, nowadays I play the lyre and I've become very immersed on its research and recreation. My interpretation, or perhaps I should call it my hypothesis, is that lyres must have been a very developed and refined category of musical instruments back in 1400BC. The ancients were no less criterious with their songs than we are today, they must have been inventive and ingenuous. I believe the most traditional turtle shell lyres (called chelys lyres) must have been extremely ancient, and by the Neopalatial Period (between 1750 and 1490BC) there must have been a wide variety of them. The consensus among historians and players is that, for example, the kithara (another kind of lyre, which you can see below) seems to have been exclusive to professional players, while the more average people used simpler versions of the instrument.

Now, I'm very eager to talk about all of this because recently I've been doing a lot thinking on this subject. Asterion's lyre will pop up a lot on Chapter 20 and I plan on giving it a new look. Back when the game started we didn't know much about lyres ourselves, so we went with a pretty standard design but now that I've been playing it for a while I have a better feel for what kind of lyre Asterion would want and how it would be preserved across the centuries.

It's probably a bit dorky of me, but I want Asterion's lyre to be reproducible in real life because I've been approached by a handful of people who want to learn it because of Minotaur Hotel. In short, I'd love it to be a design and a sound that Asterion would be satisfied with, and I want it to have the standard of quality I've demanded out of my own lyre. Though I will say that I've realized that Asterion would not want a truly traditional Greek (chelys) lyre because they really are a bit too limiting. Someone like him, with all the time he's had, would want something more, which we will probably see soon. We haven't settled on a design, but for sure it will be one that is possible, good and affordable*

But I should probably confess that I'm not the most traditional of players myself! My lyre is almost 1 meter tall too, which almost every person on Earth would say is too much but I love this beast.

*Affordable in comparison to the usual price good lyres go for, which are easily above the 600-700USD range for even basic ones with only 7 strings, which I consider overpriced (my big beast of a lyre came out cheaper than that, it's better and has 13 strings, so I think I'm in a position to say this).

Anyway, I hope I've given you some food for thought, Sirius. As you can see I have a lot of opinions about lyres.

Sirius W.1 year ago(+1)

Me, complain about geeking out over early instruments? You must be kidding! :)

Uh, I did get a bit over-zealous in thinking about this, though, producing a bit of a hefty ramble. So sorry in advance for being a bit wordy here ...

I had a feeling these instruments wouldn’t be new to you! Thanks for going into detail. You’ve certainly given me plenty to think about! These instruments are a new discovery for me, so it’s great to have more information about them, and their modern reconstructions too. I’m slowly reading more, as and when I have time, and I’m having a whale of a time.

It sounds like I should really start looking into Peter Pringle in more detail. He’s clearly put a lot of thought and effort into reconstructing these instruments, over many years to boot, and he’s produced some really impressive results. He must have some insightful things to say about the reconstruction progress! That point about adding a metal bar into the frame to support the tension of the strings under tuning clearly shows that he knows his stuff!

Thanks, by the way, for posting his Lament for Gilgamesh. It’s phenomenal! I appreciate how he’s really going all out in that performance, fully emoting all the way. The two instruments and the voice combine beautifully, too. And the sound of the lyre is really quite something. Those deep metallic overtones are extraordinary. I really can’t think of any other instrument that produces a tone quite like that!

You’ve also pointed out something really obvious, but which I somehow hadn’t clocked. I’d thought about Crete being a powerful trading centre, but only in the sense of collecting artifacts from other cultures. Somehow, I hadn’t thought about the *reverse*! It makes perfect sense in hindsight that Minoan artifacts would have spread widely around the Mediterranean area, and that the cultural mixing would go both ways. I think, whenever I’ve looked at Minoan artifacts in the past, I’ve not really checked where they were actually *found*. I’ll have to pay to may more attention to that in the future!

For instance, I find the idea of cultural mixing between Egypt and Crete rather appealing. I’d always held the two cultures in my head separately, not properly realising that these two cultural powerhouses would naturally have been in contact. It’s interesting to think about how they might have interacted! I had no idea that there were Scarabs were found in Crete, for instance. I’ll have to look those up!

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Minoan artifacts turned up in Mesopotamia, too. It they made it as far as Egypt, I can image them getting to Babylon as well. I did propose something like that, but it would be interesting if there were artifacts that actually backed that up. I’ll keep an eye out for any references while I’m reading around!

For what it’s worth, I do like your theory that lyres were a highly developed class of instruments in c.1400BC. That makes a whole lot of sense to me.

My thinking on this comes down to the time factor. We know that lyres were in use in 2600BC, over a thousand years previously. And there’s evidence of other stringed instruments that goes back even further. I had a dig around for another reference while thinking about this, which I’ll put here just for fun. Here’s a cylinder seal found in a broadly similar area to the Mesopotamian lyres, Uruk this time, dating from c.3100BC. The general consensus seems to be that the figure on the left (of the righthand portion of the image) is playing a sort of lute. This artifact is in the British Museum, and the image is under their copyright:

Also, there seems to be good consensus that people were employed as professional musicians as far back as the Mesopotamian lyres, and possibly even earlier. That ties in with what you said about the kithara! (Fun fact, references to the kithara pop up in my work from time to time, but almost exclusively in Latin texts.) Moreso, it seems that musicians were employed by royalty, presumably in well-paid, honourable positions.

As soon as you start giving people power and status for something, you get innovation! I simply cannot imagine that musical instruments and playing techniques would have remained static for a thousand years, given that. Musicians would surely have competed with each other for the top jobs, developing refinements to existing instruments, new ways of playing instruments, new modes of composition, even new instruments, all to gain an advantage over the competition. Since lyres were around in at least 2600BC, they must have received significant refinement by the high period of the Minoan civilisation. And with refinement comes variety. I can well imagine that a great variety of different types of lyre would have developed, much as there is great variety of violin-like instruments in the modern day.

So I would totally buy your idea of lyres being a highly developed set of instruments by c.1400BC.

I’ll tie that into your comment about lyre sizes, too. While there seems to be a broad consensus on the sorts of sizes of ancient lyres, I – speaking only as an amateur, of course! – think it’s possible to read too much into the archeological evidence. Lyres are relatively fragile instruments (except for these hardy metal early models, I suppose), and decompose easily. We really don’t have all that many surviving examples of them, in the grand scheme of things. And the ones we *do* have are presumably fairly traditional. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that lyres produced and played by the common person would have been largely lost.

So, while we do have a range of lyres in the archeological record, I’m not convinced they’re a representative sample. I would guess there’s more variety than we strictly have evidence for. And I don’t think there’s any harm in making some logical guesswork about what might be missing, given what we know about music in general.

I think one fairly natural innovation in music is in pitch. If you have instruments playing together, it makes sense to have the instruments playing at quite different pitches. That makes the different parts easier to hear. Since we have some evidence of people singing to lyres – that is, two musical instruments playing together – then wouldn’t someone also have thought to have several *lyres* playing together as well? That might also help explain the rather elaborate tuning systems on these instruments, too. While these are naturally needed to keep the instrument in tune with itself, one important facet of a tuning system is to help one instrument play in tune with *other* instruments.

When you propose an idea of a ‘lyre consort’, like this, it makes sense to have lyres of different base pitches too.

Since the pitch of a lyre scales with its size, then I’d argue that you should expect lyres of several different sizes to exist. The two obvious sizes to have are ‘big’, making a ‘bass’ lyre, and ‘small’, making a ‘treble’ lyre. If you add more instruments, you’d put them in-between those two sizes, where they can add internal harmony (giving you ‘alto’, ‘tenor’ ‘mezzo’, etc. lyres). It looks like there’s variation like this in existing lyres already, to some degree – hopefully I'm not rehashing something that's well-known! – but I’d propose there’s more variation than we have evidence for.

So, while your 1m tall lyre might seem large compared to the historical record, I’d just argue that you’ve made a ‘bass lyre’! Or maybe even a ‘contrabass’!

Now that I think about it, I wonder if Asterion might have some views on this? I can picture Asterion wanting to teach the lyre to the player (perhaps particularly for an artist-type player?), but maybe they could also play *together*? I’m envisioning a situation where Asterion and the player form a little lyre duo! (In a slightly niche reference, I can’t help but think back to the little duet between Marin and Link in the original Link’s Awakening).

It’s interesting to hear that you’re working on a new design for Asterion’s lyre, too. One thing that got me wondering about this topic was thinking back to the early design you used. Reading what you’ve said here, it makes perfect sense that you’d go for something straightfoward (and easily recognisable!) early on, when you didn’t know as much as you do now!

I have to admit, I’ll be really interested to see the sort of design you come up with. I can imagine Asterion going in a bunch of different directions with an expanded instrument, especially if modern design techniques come into play. I look forward to seeing how that looks!

And no, it is absolutely *not* dorky to want to make his lyre reproducible! Anything that encourages people to play music is a great thing, especially if it’s in relatively niche areas such as ancient (or ancient-ish) instruments. I think that’s a pretty cool venture, myself. Kudos for you for wanting to make it affordable, too.

Now, you’ve probably already thought really carefully about this. And you already know far more about the design of these instruments than I do! So anything I come up with you’ve probably already thought of! Still, I couldn’t resist having a little think about how a good-quality, affordable lyre could be produced. It’s an interesting little puzzle.

This might be a bonkers idea, but I’m wondering whether one solution might be making it out of metal? As I understand it, the high cost of many high-end string instruments is due to the time and skill needed to carve the wood. Making metal objects can be much quicker and cheaper, under the right circumstances. That’s particularly the case if you choose the metal well – certain metals come surprisingly cheap.

This is bit beyond my simple metalworking skills, but I think you could make the frame of a metal lyre using a casting process. You make a mould, pour molten metal into it, and when it cools you have a metal frame. With the Mesopotamian lyres, you do have some degree of historical precedent too! I say this with the caveat that the internet claims that such a process is unsuitable for short production runs, although I’m sure my serious metalworking friends do things like this quite regularly. I’d have to check with them – it’s possible I’m being stupid, and misunderstanding something they’re doing! At least using this approach you’d only need to pay for the production of the mould first off, and then just the material and time taken to pour and cast after that. Maybe it would come out cheaper than wood?

The other option that comes to mind, which people could make independently, is 3D printing. It should be possible to create all the components of a particular lyre (minus the strings, naturally) out of plastic. This approach has the advantage that you could make an official Minotaur Hotel CAD design, which people could download and use straight away! The worry I have with this, though, is that I’m not sure how a plastic lyre would sound. I think that the material of a lyre should be really important for its tone quality. Since plastic isn’t very dense, it won’t make a very good resonator, and I’d worry that a lyre made using it would be quiet and tinny. It might not be nice to hold, too. And, somehow, I can’t quite envision Asterion going for plastic. But maybe it’s worth experimenting with, just in case?

Anyway, you’ve probably had better ideas than those already!

By the way, there’s something I meant to say earlier in this thread, but never got around to. Would you perhaps consider sharing some sound files of you playing your lyre at some point? I’d be interested to hear your instrument, and your interpretations, and I’m sure other people would be too. Your beast of a lyre must produce a pretty awesome sound! (Of course, no pressure. I know only too well that public performance is a whole different world to playing in your own company!)

Minoh Workshop1 year ago(+2)

Alright... It's been four months since this message, and I wanted to respond to it with what I was working on at that time.

So, first thing: here's a little something I recorded and posted on Youtube. It was just a recording experiment and far from my most complex performance (I can play Lina Palera's Seikilos Epitaph by now!), but it's something.

Now, properly responding to what you said...

Last year when I visited Crete, saw the palaces and the archeological findings for myself, understood just how long-lived the lyre was an instrument and how diverse they were across multiple cultures...

Well, to put it simply, I understood that the current lyre designs that have been uncovered can only be an extremely narrow representation of reality. With the Mesopotamian lyres we even see these incredible, impressive instruments that were so impressively decorated, that no doubt they were one of a kind. At the same time the lyre is a rather rudimentary instrument in design, with the chelys lyre being made of simple natural materials, many of them leftover from food — animal hide, a turtle shell, horns, gut strings — so I even would go as far as saying that there might have been a lot of variability even between lyres of the same general type.

In the same way that only a tragically small number of ancient compositions survived to this day, what we found in murals, pottery and other artifacts can only be a small, thin slice of what the ancient civilizations had going on.

So, instead of trying to limit myself to what was clearly portrayed in archaeological findings, I tried a different experiment. I asked myself: "looking at what has been found of the Minoans, their preferred motifs and symbols, can I extrapolate and produce a design that could have been produced?" And, taking it a step further, can I make it embody a few more useful characteristics?

Now, since the whole purpose of the exercise was to extrapolate, I cannot ever say that its result would be an ancient or even a Greek lyre. It would be an original creation, at best inspired by ancient motifs, and if I had to attribute it a nationality I could only use mine. What Greek-ness it would have could only come from taking my experience with Greek lyres and using them as a basis. And, speaking more frankly, considering the Minoans were pre-Greek I don't think using their motifs would entitle it to being called a Greek instrument.

So, I set out to gather some Minoan motifs and weave them together with my own sensibilities as a lyre player. For instance, I decided that the deeper notes would be on the left, the higher ones on the right, which follows the same arrangement used by Greek lyremakers. It would be designed to be playable with both hands, which is absolutely mandatory for Greek lyres but often disregarded in some of the cheaper lyres on Amazon. It would either use widely available fishing line as strings or nylgut, sugarcane or gut strings — no metal strings. It would be designed so that harmonics are possible. Tuning should be easy. It would have to be structurally robust, portable and easy to carry — this is an instrument meant to be carried around and played outside.

Now, when I mentioned "a few more useful characteristics"... The lyre, as I said, is a rather rudimentary instrument. But if you look online you will find that generally they are either cheap Donner lyres of questionable quality or expensive Luthieros ones. There are other lyremakers, but they aren't so easy to find and their prices can also be very high. Suffice it to say, there is no middle ground.

Now, I decided that I wanted a lyre which, by virtue of its design, should be cheap and easy to produce. In case I put it on the game, I know that there will be people who want to get a similar one, so I didn't want it to be some luxury good that few can afford. I want it to create joy, and being accessible is crucial.

And, of course, I set out to use Minoan motifs. That was the easiest part: a visit to the Palace of Knossos showed me exactly what I needed.

The horns of consecration as they are known are a recurring motif in Minoan architecture and art. It was all over in the palaces, art and even in their tombs.

This symbol was immensely important to them and all over the place.

And it just so happens to be perfect as a basis for a lyre. The horns can function as arms, the base can be lengthened to become a sound box, a length of wood at the top becomes a cross bar. The base is flat so it can even stand on its own! And if the horns are hollow they can act as extensions of the soundbox. If the surface is kept flat that would also make it far cheaper and easier to produce than the traditional Greek lyres. And, to top it off, I decided to base its dimensions around those of a standard cabin carry-on luggage, so that people could easily take it with them on trips no matter what transportation they took.

I can't be so bold as to say that what I came up with must have existed at some point in time. But I think the experiment has been a success so far. Here's the result.

It hasn't arrived yet. I haven't had the chance to hear what it sounds like. But damn I'm happy with the results already. This baby packs 13 strings — you won't find a Luthieros lyre with this number for less than a thousand Euros, while this one cost less than 400USD. The flowers are Cretan crocuses and the paint on the sides is gold leaf, and even with those bits of extravagance it still came at that price. The wood is cedar.

Once it arrives I plan on recording the same song with it and my main lyre, to see how they compare. I'll post it here, and I'll probably make a devlog about it all once it's in my hands.

Sirius W.1 year ago

Okay, so this is awesome on so many levels! I wanted to reply sooner, but I’ve been caught up in the last stages of preparation for an important interview, and there weren’t quite enough hours in the day. For what it’s worth, I actually considered mentioning this lyre project of yours in that interview, as an example of innovation in modern historically-informed performance, but in the end I couldn’t quite fit it in!

But, before I get distracted, thanks so much for sharing that recording of your own lyre! And, wow, do you have every reason to be proud of your instrument! The tone is gorgeous; the sounds your lyre produces are rich and resonant, and full of colour. Good choice on the music, too. That particular theme works beautifully on your lyre. That’s especially true at the slightly slower speed you chose. Not only does that highlight the resonance of your lyre, but it nicely brings out the peaceful side of the original track. And you give a good demonstration of the range of your instrument too, in a solid performance.

I know it’s simple, and just an experiment on your part, but I think the result is quite captivating. I hope you’ll consider uploading some more in the future! Maybe there’ll come a point where you could even contribute something to the Hotel’s soundtrack yourself!

Now, onto your new instrument. I’m really impressed by this, both from what you’ve produced, but also from your entire approach. Or perhaps ‘ethos’ would be a more appropriate word here, haha.

I think the way in which you’ve used your knowledge of the history and culture of the Minoans to inform your design choices of a new instrument is very sound. Your extrapolation approach is a very reasonable one to take, I would say! Even going back just a few centuries, it’s all too easy to get bound by actual physical artifacts, and to not look beyond them. And you’re going back thousands of years, when all we have are odd scraps of information! Humans are creative creatures, both in the modern day, and in the past. I think it’s quite acceptable to take the historical record as a starting point, and to speculate what other things could have been produced based on it. If we in the modern day can speculate about something that could have been produced in a particular culture, who’s to say that someone in that culture might not have had similar ideas, even if we can’t prove it as such? And if the results of that extrapolation ends up producing something interesting, something that *could* have been, then surely that can only be a positive thing!

As a slightly random example, later this week I’m singing a vocal piece that dates from the 1500s. Only three of the four voice parts survive: one has been forever lost. A music editor has written a new part, in the style of other voice parts of the time, which completes the piece, and allows it to be performed in the modern day. Is this modern version identical to the original piece? Almost certainly not! But the piece is unperformable without it. Is it better that that piece is never performed again, preserving the integrity of the historical record, or that it’s performed in a way in which it *could* have sounded five centuries ago, so long as that’s clearly indicated? If the result is something beautiful that people enjoy, surely extrapolation is the better choice!

Or, thinking about your case specifically, your experience of Knossos gave you a really good idea: making the horns of the consecration into the basis of a lyre. But if you, as a modern person immersed in Minoan culture, could think of that, what would have stopped *an actual Minoan* from thinking the same? We may not have any evidence of an instrument like this, but it seems a little unreasonable to think that, over the thousands of years of Minoan culture, a Minoan musician didn’t at least have the idea, and experiment with it. Maybe that hypothetical experiment wasn’t successful, or the instruments weren’t sturdy enough to survive, or ended up being show-pieces that were never used, or sacred instruments that ended up being destroyed, or the whole idea was taboo from a religious standpoint, so the instruments never really saw the light of day. There are many possibilities.

Clearly, we can’t say that an instrument like that actually existed. There’s no evidence for it. But *could* it have existed, at least in principle? I would think so! And for a project like this, I think that’s more than enough. After all, your project here is to make a new instrument, using history as a guide, rather than to reproduce something that’s already been made. From what you’ve said, I think you’ve more than met that goal!

Incidentally, I love that first picture you showed of the horns, from the palace itself. I don’t think you have chosen a better picture to show the importance of that symbol!

All that being said, I think your idea to make a lyre that is both high-quality and affordable is where this project gets really interesting. Making an instrument that produces a quality sound, but which isn’t a heavy-duty investment that prices out most potential players, is such a good thing I can’t begin to emphasise it. A ‘middle-ground’ instrument like this can only help to encourage people into ancient instruments, perhaps trying them out for the first time. You’re opening up a really interesting world of music to a whole group of new people, and that’s a really great thing. I might even say a noble one.

After all, if the only trumpets one could buy were toy plastic trumpets, or trumpets made out of platinum-infused gold, who on earth would play the trumpet?

(For what it’s worth, as a professional musician, I eye the Luthieros lyres with a bit of suspicion. I’m not a string player – so I don’t know what I’m talking about! – but my instinctive, gut feeling is that those instruments might have been designed more as show-pieces than actual performing instruments. They seem more extravagant than durable. But what do I know?)

I am *super* impressed by those images you’ve shown of your new instrument. It looks beautiful, and it’s even in cedar! The design touches are classy too, particularly the flourishes in gold. That little stand is nice, too, although I’m not sure if it’s part of the set. The instrument certainly looks the part! The size sounds very practical, too. Yet the overall price is thoroughly reasonable! From my perspective, 400USD is very cheap for a decent musical instrument (although I’m not based in the Americas, so maybe my viewpoint is skewed).

The real tell here, I think, is this: based just on the looks at this point, I’d be tempted to pick up one of these instruments! I’ve idly thought about trying out stringed instruments before, so I could go full-on bard and accompany myself singing. But I’ve never really come across an instrument that I think would work for me. For instance, lutes are great, but tricky to transport. But a lyre like this? There’s a chance it might just work! It sounds like it might just hit the sweet spot of having a good tone, and get still being easy to carry around.

So you’ve already got one potential convert. So far so good!

When it arrives, please do make that comparison recording you mentioned! That’s one really good way to demonstrate how the instrument sounds. Could I also request that you say something about its dynamic range? I know that's probably a little niche, but I’d be interested to know whether it can comfortably play at a volume that could accompany a singer / another instrument. Although, given that’s the way in which Asterion uses his instrument – I hadn’t really thought I’d be duplicating his approach until just now! – maybe that’s a more important question than I thought?

Anyway, you’ve done a superb job on this instrument. Kudos! Here’s hoping it sounds as good as it looks! Although, given the materials and the construction, I think there’s a good chance that it will!

Minoh Workshop1 year ago(+1)

I hope you’ll consider uploading some more in the future! Maybe there’ll come a point where you could even contribute something to the Hotel’s soundtrack yourself!

That's the plan! I'd like to record some songs for the game and if all goes well I'll include at least one in the next build. I feel like I'm skilled enough to be satisfactory, but I still need to improve my recording setup.

I figured I had some minutes to spare now and quickly recorded an attempt of the Seikilos Epitaph as we play it in the game. Again, bad microphone setup, next to no editing, all recorded in one take and after spending a week not practicing, so there are quite a few stumbles and weird noises.

View on Vocaroo >>

This uses my lyre, a big boy that's closer to a bass lyre/barbiton.

Now, regarding the Minoan-esque lyre... I haven't received it yet, but the luthier sent me a sample of what it sounds like.

View on Vocaroo >>

When I receive it I plan on recording the same Seikilos Epitaph song with my big lyre, this new one and a Luthieros one I have access to. You will be surprised how different they sound, and you will come to understand on a deeper level why I'm so happy with the Minoan-esque lyre having an accessible price tag. To put it bluntly, a lyre this small and cheap has no business sounding this good when you compare it with the expensive Luthieros one. I'll say no more on this regard, and let you reach your own conclusions when I record the same song with the same recording equipment with these three instruments.

And, FYI, I can say with a lot of experience that your suspicions about Luthieros' durability are completely justified. I won't go in details here, suffice it to say that some of the issues I've seen with them informed my decision to make resilience and durability a priority in this lyre.

But if you, as a modern person immersed in Minoan culture, could think of that, what would have stopped *an actual Minoan* from thinking the same? We may not have any evidence of an instrument like this, but it seems a little unreasonable to think that, over the thousands of years of Minoan culture, a Minoan musician didn’t at least have the idea, and experiment with it. Maybe that hypothetical experiment wasn’t successful, or the instruments weren’t sturdy enough to survive, or ended up being show-pieces that were never used, or sacred instruments that ended up being destroyed, or the whole idea was taboo from a religious standpoint, so the instruments never really saw the light of day. There are many possibilities.

Yes, I fully agree with your thought process. When I was in Crete I saw it in almost mathematical terms: the horns of consecration as a motif were present in some of the earliest and most rudimentary clay pottery found in Crete, and were absolutely overwhelming in their frequency in some places. This was a symbol they used in all sorts of places and occasions, be it in architecture, funerary rites and even daily tools. We can only speculate about its importance, but given how often it was used... I mean, it's plausible that they would have made many things using that shape, which just happens to be perfect for a lyre.

I'd put my money on someone, at some point, having made an instrument like this.

I plan on including this lyre in the game, in Chapter 20. I don't want to give spoilers but I can say that Asterion, like any artist, experimented across the centuries and built some lyre prototypes which haven't been shown in the chapters so far. And I plan on giving this lyre some history inside the game's story.

Incidentally: it will be really funny if at some point in the future someone discovers that the Minoans did make lyres like this and they look back on it being independently developed as a speculative exercise for a minotaur-fucking gay game. That will be one hell of a story.

After all, if the only trumpets one could buy were toy plastic trumpets, or trumpets made out of platinum-infused gold, who on earth would play the trumpet?

Let me just show you what's the situation here...

All those cheaper lyres use metal strings and my experience is that they just keep ringing for so long, it really muddles up the song, and they are often built in a way that you can't even play all the strings with both hands. My first lyre was one built in this style and I pretty much stopped playing after a few months because of how limited and unsatisfactory it felt.

This will be it for now, I've got to go back to writing. I might add some more later, but for now bye bye!

Minoh Workshop1 year ago(+1)

lmao the lyre just arrived

Sirius W.1 year ago

Okay, so I’ve been working late, and I don’t quite have time to write anything just now. But I just couldn’t resist the coincidence. The lyre arriving *now*, of all times, is superb. How’s that for timing? :)

Your Seikilos Epitaph is legitimately impressive, by the way. And the guest appearance of the horse at the end of the sample track for the new lyre made me smile!

Minoh Workshop1 year ago(+1)

Despite the construction work going on in the apartment above mine, I managed to record a bit.

My main lyre:

View on Vocaroo >>

The Luthieros lyre:

View on Vocaroo >>

The new, Minoan-esque lyre:

View on Vocaroo >>

(I played it a little differently in this one because my fingers got too sore from doing harmonics. You also might be able to hear a meow here and there, my cat wanted me to come out and play.)

Sirius W.1 year ago

Thanks so much for recording these! Especially with the construction work going on around you. Commiserations about that, by the way. I know that can be a *real* pain. Oh, and hello off-screen cat! *waves*

This is a really great way of demonstrating the differences between these instruments. It’s interesting making a comparison based just on sound, since that avoids any distractions based on the look of an instrument (which is obviously important, but it's nice to focus on sound). And the comparison is fascinating. You’re weren’t kidding. These three lyres sound remarkably different!

For what it’s worth, here are my thoughts, speaking as a professional musician who isn’t a string-player.

Main lyre:

I’ve already talked about this lyre before! Still, as a quick summary, this instrument has a gloriously rich tone, one that’s full of colour. And this richness extends throughout the range of the instrument. I really like the tone of this lyre. I could listen to it all day!

Luthieros lyre:

This is an interesting one. When I first listened to this recording, the tone of the instrument repelled me a little. The opening sounded a little off-putting. But the lyre’s tone grew on me the more I listened to it. Once I’d listened to the whole track, and gotten used to the instrument, nothing sounded particularly strange if I went back and listened to the opening again. On reflection, I don’t think that’s any fault of the lyre itself. I think what’s happening there is that this lyre is tuned slightly differently to your main lyre. I don’t mean that either was out of tune – just that they were tuned slightly differently compared to each other. That small difference in tuning was throwing me off, which was clouding my judgement a little!

But, that aside, the tone itself is interesting. There’s a significant difference between this and your main lyre, but I’m not sure quite how to describe what that is. The Luthieros lyre is definitely not as rich in tone as your main instrument. But there’s another quality there. The tone sounds slightly more fluid to me. It almost seems as if the strings are a little looser somehow, although I don’t think that’s how the physics works! My guess is that the individual notes might be slightly more resonant on this instrument? Perhaps the notes sound slightly longer, which is giving that fluid quality I’m hearing? Whatever the cause, the fluid quality of the notes works nicely in the faster-moving sections.

I was also struck by the tone across the range. Your main lyre has a fairly even tone, but this one has more variation. At least to my ears, I think it produces its best sounds in the middle register, but is perhaps a little lacking at higher pitches. Incidentally, without wishing to labour the point, it’s interesting to hear that my gut feeling about the resilience of these instruments wasn’t entirely unfounded!

If I were to use an analogy, the tone of your main lyre is like syrup, and the Lutherios lyre is like custard. It’s less rich, but flows a little more easily. In any case, while there is something nice about the fluidity, I very much prefer the overall richness of your main lyre!

New lyre:

Now this is something else altogether! I know this will partly be due to you playing a little differently, but there’s a gorgeous clarity of the sound here. The sound is so crisp and clear. It makes me think of cut glass. Or perhaps, to continue the food analogy, sugar-glazing!

From my perspective, this lyre combines a beautiful, crisp tone with some of the fluidity of the Luthieros lyre. So I guess, in a sense, it’s something of a middle-ground between your main lyre, and the Luthieros one. Also – and apologies if there’s a proper term here that I don’t know – I think the glissandi work particularly well on this instrument. While I was pretty impressed by the sample you posted above, this track has *really* impressed me. This lyre produces a very nice sound indeed!

And yet it’s small, and cheap! That’s just remarkable. I think the sound of this instrument compares very favourably to the Luthieros lyre. But it’s a fraction of the cost and, from the sounds of it, much, much more practical both to play and transport! Again, you weren’t kidding. This lyre really shouldn’t sound anything like this good. But, wow, doesn’t it just! You’ve made something super impressive here: a practical, affordable instrument that makes a wonderful sound. You have the evidence to prove it too! For my money, I get the impression this instrument would work particularly nicely in a small chamber setting (Asterion playing to Luke and Kota comes to mind).

If I saw a lyre of this price in a shop, and it produced a sound like this, I would *strongly* consider buying it! Very nicely done. I think you’ve done some really exciting here!

But, just to continue the comparison a little, I’ve now had time to have a listen to the videos you showed of the very cheap lyres. And ... okay, so they obviously weren’t going to be great, but I really see why you didn’t stick with an instrument like that. Wow. For me, the tone itself is off-putting. The metal strings produce a sound that’s pretty harsh, at least to my ears. That might work for some modern instruments, but I’m not sure it works well in this case. Surely the tone of a lyre should be much warmer than that? And, as you said, there’s a really serious problem with excessive resonance. The notes really bleed together, which must make complex songs almost impossible to play. It would be like playing Bach in a boomy bathroom – you’d just hear mush!

And here are a couple of quick other points on your last point. It’s great to hear that you’re going to be including your own playing in the game! I look forward to hearing it! I’m also quite pleased to hear of your plans for Asterion’s lyre experiments too. I think I may have mentioned this before but, given how important music is to him, it makes a whole lot of sense to me that Asterion would have done some experimenting with the lyre. Perhaps especially as he came across new ideas from visitors to the hotel. I’m guessing he might have gone in a bunch of different directions before coming up with something that he particularly liked. I’ll be really interested to see where you go with that!

Also, this, all the way:

Incidentally: it will be really funny if at some point in the future someone discovers that the Minoans did make lyres like this and they look back on it being independently developed as a speculative exercise for a minotaur-fucking gay game. That will be one hell of a story.

I’m having great fun imagining how journals would reference this. And thinking of carefully chosen snapshots from the Hotel featuring in lectures and seminars! :)

(Finally, my last few posts all mentioned that I wanted to reply sooner, but wasn’t able to. I think I jumped the gun there, because today I have the most absurd reason of all. I'm really, *really* not someone who likes bragging, but this one’s so incredibly unusual that I can’t quite resist. So: I couldn’t reply sooner this time because I was performing for my country’s King – in a room guarded by people wielding *actual, real-life pikes*. Pikes are way longer than I ever thought they’d be, by the way. This is why I like work in music, because you end up doing all sorts of crazy things. And no, I don’t do things like that every day!)

MalPerMeCheMaffidai1 year ago

If you don't mind me asking, what in particular did you perform for the king and his pike-men? I'm not asking for a recording of you in particular, but I am just curious what it was you did.

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Minoh Workshop29 days ago(+1)

Hey, Sirius! It's been a while since we had any news about the game (we're working on that) but I was thinking about you recently, thinking back to our conversations about lyres and the songs you've posted here. So I got curious, how have you been doing lately?

Sadly Itch doesn't have a DM system so responding to an old comment is the best I can do. Maybe it'll take a while before you see this message but, hey, I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

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