Characterization of embellishments in ney performances of makam music in Turkey

Abstract

The embellishments of makam music in Turkey are an/ninherent characteristic of the music rather than a separate/nexpressive resource, thus their understanding is essential to/ncharacterize this music. We do a computational study, in/nwhich we analyze audio recordings of 8 widely acknowledged/nTurkish ney players covering the period from the/nyear 1920 to 2000. From the extracted fundamental frequency,/nwe manually segment and identify 327 separate/nembellishments of the types vibrato and kaydırma. We analyze/nthem and characterize the behavior of two features/nthat help us differentiate performance styles, namely vibrato/nrate change and pitch bump. Also we compare these/nembellishments with the ones used in Western classical/nmusic. With our approach, we have an explicit and formalized/nway to understand ney embellishments, which is a/nstep towards the automatic characterization of makam music/nin Turkey.