Characterization of embellishments in ney performances of makam music in Turkey

Özaslan, Tan Hakan; Serra, Xavier; Arcos, Josep Lluís

Characterization of embellishments in ney performances of makam music in Turkey

Citation

Özaslan TH, Serra X, Arcos JLL. Characterization of embellishments in ney performances of makam music in Turkey. In: Gouyon F, Herrera P, Martins LG, Müller M. Proceedings of the 13th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR 2012); 2012 Oct 8-12; Porto, Portugal. Porto: FEUP Ediçoes, 2012. p. 13-18.

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.