Classification of indian classical vocal styles from melodic contours

Abstract

A prominent categorization of Indian classical music is the Hindustani and Carnatic traditions, the two styles/nhaving evolved under distinctly different historical and/ncultural influences. Both styles are grounded in the melodic/nand rhythmic framework of raga and tala. The styles differ along dimensions such as instrumentation,/naesthetics and voice production. In particular, Carnatic music is perceived as being more ornamented. The hypothesis/nthat style distinctions are embedded in the melodic contour is validated via subjective classification tests. Melodic features representing the distinctive characteristics/nare extracted from the audio. Previous work based on the extent of stable pitch regions is supported by measurements of musicians’ annotations of stable notes. Further, a new feature is introduced that captures the/npresence of specific pitch modulations characteristic of/nornamentation in Indian classical music. The combined features show high classification accuracy on a database of vocal music of prominent artistes. The misclassifications are seen to match actual listener confusions.