A Turkish makam music symbolic database for music information retrieval: SymbTr

Abstract

Turkish makam music needs a comprehensive database/nfor public consumption, to be used in MIR. This article/nintroduces SymbTr, a Turkish Makam Music Symbolic/nRepresentation Database, aimed at filling this void./nSymbTr consists of musical information in text, PDF, and/nMIDI formats. Raw data, drawn from reliable sources,/nand consisting of 1,700 musical pieces in Turkish art and/nfolk music was processed featuring distinct examples in/n155 diverse makams, 100 usuls and 48 forms. Special/ncare was devoted to selection of works that scatter across/na broad historical time span and were among those still/nperformed today. Total number of musical notes in these/npieces was 630,000, corresponding to a nominal playback/ntime of 72 hours. Synthesized sounds particular to Turkish/nmakam music were used in MIDI playback, and transcription//nplayback errors were corrected by input from/nexperts. Symbolic representation data, open to the public,/nis output from a computer program developed exclusively/nfor Turkish makam music. SymbTr was designed as a/nwholesome representation of aforementioned distinct auditory/nand visual features that distinguish Turkish makam/nmusic from other music genres. This article explains the/ndatabase format in detail, and also provides, through examples,/nstatistical information on pitch/interval allocation/nand distribution.