Objectives
Immerse yourself in the world of traditional musical instruments
Discover the fusion of ancient melodies and cutting-edge technology
S01
Digital reproduction of the holistic sound production process of cultural heritage musical instruments.
MusicSphere aims to revolutionize heritage instrument preservation by providing an immersive, digital environment where modern builders, researchers, and museum visitors can engage with centuries-old craftsmanship. This will bridge the gap between historical authenticity and contemporary innovation, ensuring that even endangered or damaged instruments remain accessible for future generations. By extending digital simulations to contemporary instrument design, MusicSphere also aspires to innovate new organ-building approaches while maintaining historically cherished tonal and design elements. The digitization of the dynamic process of sound production of new and preserved wind instruments, such as Pipe Organs, will help towards the projection of the results to their musical ancestors that include the Hydraulis and Aulos or Tibia. cription
S02
Hierarchical risk mapping of material degradation and environmental conditions, through an integrated methodology for maintaining the structural integrity, sound production and acoustic performance of cultural heritage musical instruments.
MusicSphere will focus on identifying degradation risks, monitoring environmental factors, and developing predictive models to correlate material aging with sound quality. The development of an integrated methodology will try to safeguard the structural integrity, acoustic performance, and historical authenticity of cultural heritage musical instruments, focusing on complex pipe organs, through a multidisciplinary approach aiming at producing hierarchical risk mapping of damage and material degradation of these artifacts. By performing sensitivity analyses, the methodology will evaluate the impact of material properties on the dynamic characteristics of the instruments, including their acoustic behaviour and structural responses under stress.
S03
Preventive maintenance, through the development of musical instruments, digital twins, virtual sensors and simulation tools.
MusicSphere will build on existing knowledge to provide state-of-the-art advancements in the preservation of cultural heritage musical instruments while developing a holistic framework for remote monitoring and predictive maintenance procedures. Within the project, 3D representations of instruments and XR assets will be created, along with a simulation toolkit tailored to the unique needs of each artifact. These assets will enable the development of DTs of selected cultural heritage musical wind instruments, embedding virtual sensors to assist in their monitoring and maintenance. This approach ensures a detailed understanding of the instruments’ condition and supports informed decisions for their conservation, fostering sustainable preservation practices.
S04
Dynamic Acoustic Simulation and Binaural Rendering for Immersive Cultural Heritage Experiences
MusicSphere will develop a comprehensive framework for simulating and understanding the dynamic and directional acoustic properties of cultural heritage environments, incorporating advanced binaural rendering and hybrid modelling techniques. Moreover, it will enable seamless integration of these simulations into platforms such as the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH), supporting data sharing and collaborative workflows. With this, educational, research, and tourism applications can be promoted by delivering accurate, perceptually realistic, and user-friendly tools for exploring and preserving the auditory heritage of cultural spaces.
S05
AI-Enhanced Analysis and Synthesis for Real-Time Musical Performance Reproduction in XR Applications.
MusicSphere will advance the state-of-the-art in polyphonic music transcription by resolving the challenge imposed by the typically inharmonic overtone spectrogram of music organs, the overlap of harmonics in polyphonic music performances, and the restricted model complexity to enable real-time processing. The transcription will not only focus on extracting a note-based representation of the music signal but further a precise tracking of the instrument’s tuning frequency, allowing to guide a retuning of the instrument, if possible, as well an estimation of timbre parameters, which can allow to systematically evaluate the simulation quality in the physical modelling approaches. Having a precise real-time synthesis model to replicate the instrument sound production expands the accessibility and understanding of musical heritage instruments.
S06
To develop and integrate interoperable tools for Cultural Heritage (CH) accessibility, compliance, and wider deployment.
As we said previously the main goal of MusicSphere project is to revolutionize the preservation of endangered musical instruments by providing a sustainable way to preserve the sound and performance of endangered instruments, ensuring their accessibility for future generations. By providing MusicSphere platform and its interconnected data warehouse we also envision to establish interoperability between MusicSphere and ECHOES platforms to create a unified ecosystem for cultural heritage tools. By this way we believe that we will enable wider use of MusicSphere tools through integration with the ECCCH, fostering reuse via the Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage and the European Open Science Cloud. Our main ambition is to deliver MusicSphere tools to researchers, cultural institutions, and the broader community and promote the digital transformation of cultural heritage in the domain of endangered ancient instruments.
S07
Establish close, strong, and continuous collaboration of MusicSphere with other EU-funded projects under the ECCCH-2023 and ECCCH-2024 calls, for working on common ground, early knowledge exchange, and adoption of best practices, methods, and tools.
MusicSphere will have a key-role in the development of collaborations among the ECCCH ecosystem and the EU-funded and forthcoming projects under the Horizon-Europe’s HERITAGE calls. Through the participation in densely scheduled workshops in the context of project meetings MusicSphere aims at active contribution in the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage. Moreover, the MusicSphere consortium will be actively represented in both technical and coordination meetings with the sister projects, as well as with the ECCCH-2023 mother projects. CERTH in assistance with HEMO and CTL will organise an intensive clustering plan with the ECCCH consortia, as well as with other relevant projects that will be in progress. All partners will actively participate in ensuring the compatibility of the solutions, knowledge transfer and close technical and communication collaboration.
S08
Evaluate and validate the solutions of the MusicSphere project by experts in the field and end users for finalising the digital products of the project and delivering the sustainable MusicSphere solution to the ECCCH platform, ready-to-use. Training and engaging activities for the maximum awareness and adoption of the MusicSphere solutions
MusicSphere will go through evaluation tests of its overall framework’s performance to ensure its efficiency, compliance, quality and its commitment to serving the needs of the European cultural community. MusicSphere will also include a training programme to prepare the end users of the innovative solutions during the large-scale pilots and evaluation. Moreover, the MusicSphere project includes an open call for funding support to third parties of CH institutions with a target to maximise the awareness and the adoption of the digital solutions by the stakeholders. To validate the effectiveness of the MusicSphere’s solutions, extensive testing and validation procedures will be executed. Real-world CH digitisation and analysis of dynamic processes, objects and complex combined data scenarios will be employed to assess the project’s usability and adaptability. Continuous efforts will be made to enhance and upgrade the solutions, guaranteeing its long-term applicability and efficacy in digitisation and analysis of dynamic processes, objects and complex combined data of CH assets. EUROXR, assisted by all partners will deliver the detailed evaluation plan of two rounds of pilots. All partners will participate in the small and large-scale tests, and they will provide their feedback for further improvements. VLABS assisted by the whole consortium will lead the preparation and the execution of one open call that will provide funding to third parties of CH, to aware, use, evaluate, and possibly adopt the solutions of the project. HEMO assisted by the whole consortium will design, develop, and execute the training of the stakeholders and end-users to the innovative solutions of the project, while EUROXR will include training sessions in the context of its annual conferences and summer schools. The results of the evaluation and the validation of the advanced tools and human-centred and centralised framework will be widely communicated.