A Statistical Approach to Modeling Indian Classical Music Performance

TL;DR

This paper introduces a probabilistic method for analyzing Indian classical music to objectively identify significant notes and musical ornaments, revealing structural properties of ragas through statistical analysis.

Contribution

It proposes a novel probabilistic approach to determine important notes and ornaments in ragas, moving beyond subjective assessments.

Findings

Relative frequency of key notes stabilizes quickly.

Distinct frequency movements reflect structural properties of ragas.

Method applied successfully to multiple case studies.

Abstract

A raga is a melodic structure with fixed notes and a set of rules characterizing a certain mood endorsed through performance. By a vadi swar is meant that note which plays the most significant role in expressing the raga. A samvadi swar similarly is the second most significant note. However, the determination of their significance has an element of subjectivity and hence we are motivated to find some truths through an objective analysis. The paper proposes a probabilistic method of note detection and demonstrates how the relative frequency (relative number of occurrences of the pitch) of the more important notes stabilize far more quickly than that of others. In addition, a count for distinct transitory and similar looking non-transitory (fundamental) frequency movements (but possibly embedding distinct emotions!) between the notes is also taken depicting the varnalankars or musical ornaments decorating the notes and note sequences as rendered by the artist. They reflect certain structural properties of the ragas. Several case studies are presented.