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 having evolved under distinctly different historical and cultural influences. Both styles are grounded in the me- lodic and rhythmic framework of raga and tala. The styles differ along dimensions such as instrumentation, aesthetics and voice production. In particular, Carnatic music is perceived as being more ornamented. The hy- pothesis that style distinctions are embedded in the me- lodic contour is validated via subjective classification tests. Melodic features representing the distinctive char- acteristics are 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 presence of specific pitch modulations characteristic of ornamentation in Indian classical music. The combined features show high classification accuracy on a database of vocal music of prominent artistes. The misclassifica- tions are seen to match actual listener confusions.