Which notes are Vadi-Samvadi in Raga Rageshree?

TL;DR

This paper investigates the Vadi and Samvadi notes in Raga Rageshree using statistical analysis of vocal recordings, revealing phase-dependent note distributions and proposing a novel approach combining musical and statistical insights.

Contribution

It introduces a statistical framework for identifying Vadi-Samvadi notes in Raga Rageshree, addressing the complex quasi-multinomial behavior observed in the last phase.

Findings

Vadi note identified from the last phase analysis.

Distribution is multinomial in first two phases.

Note occurrence shows unstable, quasi-multinomial behavior in the last phase.

Abstract

The notes which play the most important and second most important roles in expressing a raga are called Vadi and Samvadi swars respectively in (North) Indian Classical music. Like Bageshree, Bhairavi, Shankara, Hamir and Kalingra, Rageshree is another controversial raga so far as the choice of Vadi-Samvadi selection is concerned where there are two different opinions. In the present work, a two minute vocal recording of raga Rageshree is subjected to a careful statistical analysis. Our analysis is broken into three phases: first half, middle half and last half. Under a multinomial model set up holding appreciably in the first two phases, only one opinion is found acceptable. In the last phase the distribution seems to be quasi multinomial, characterized by an unstable nature of relative occurrence of pitch of all the notes and although the note whose relative occurrence of pitch suddenly shoots is the Vadi swar selected from our analysis of the first two phases, we take it as an outlier demanding a separate treatment like any other in statistics. Selection of Vadi-Samvadi notes in a quasi-multinomial set up is still an open research problem. An interesting musical cocktail is proposed, however, embedding several ideas like melodic property of notes, note combinations and pitch movements between notes, using some weighted combination of psychological and statistical stability of notes along with watching carefully the sudden shoot of one or more notes whenever there is enough evidence that multinomial model has broken down.