Automatic Detection of Hindustani Talas

Abstract

The thesis aims to develop a system of Hindustani tala automatic recognition which can be trained by building a labeled corpus of Hindustani songs with tabla accompaniment. Most of the research concerning rhythm in the North Indian classical music was developed around monophonic recordings and the scope was just recognizing the tabla strokes or modeling the expressiveness of tabla solos and not the metric cycles in which these strokes usually occur, the talas. The aspects researched were segmentation and stroke recognition in a polyphonic context, as recognizing the talas is a perceptually challenging task and the automatic detection proved to be even more difficult.