Anirban Patranabis

On tanpura drone and brain electrical correlates

We describe a new conceptual framework of using tanpura drone for auditory stimulation in EEG. The question of reference for baseline EEG in the resting condition where the subject has no task to perform is addressed. In a laboratory setting we observed spontaneous brain electrical activity during Tanpura drone stimulation and periods of silence. The sound stimulus was given by an electronic substitute Tanpura (EST) that allows to closely control its parameters. The timbral characteristics of the drone samples are given. The brain-electrical response of the subject is analyzed with global descriptors, a way to monitor the course of activation in the time domain in a three-dimensional state space, revealing patterns of global dynamical states of the brain. Preliminary results are presented that serve as a stepping stone for a larger longitudinal study.

Production, Perception and Cognition

This chapter is devoted to muse over the basic principles behind the making of music instead of presenting a synopsis of techniques and technologies used in modern day music production. In the introductory chapter we attempted a comprehensive definition of music. Let us add further that music as an acoustical emotive (except for the emotion of anger, disgust) communication, generally universal in nature. The simultaneity of the three elements acoustics, emotion, and universality (not in the absolute sense) is integral to the definition.

Automatic Musical Instrument Recognition

This chapter deals with analysis of musical instruments especially the Indian musical instruments by analyzing its sound. Sections 9.1, 9.2 and 9.3 concerns the automatic recognition of musical instruments with the idea that extract the perceptually relevant features from acoustic musical signals that a computer system “listen” to musical sounds and recognize which instrument is playing. For this, timbre of the sound of those musical instruments needs to be studied extensively. Only five musical instruments which are popularly adopted in Hindustani music were chosen for study.

Vadi-Samvadi Controversy and Statistics

There is a concept of alankar in Indian music, meaning a musical ornament. The shastras talk about shabdalankars and varnalankars. The varnas include sthayi (stay on a note), arohi (ascent), awarohi (descent) and sanchari (mixture of ascent and descent). The rising and falling transitions can be further classified into convex, concave and linear. We also have hats and valleys. A hat may be interpreted as an ascent followed by immediate descent, and a valley as a descent followed by immediate ascent. By making a count of all the above, we can study the transitory as well as non-transitory pitch movements between the notes.

Tonic Detection and Shruti Analysis from Raga Performance

The technological advances of modern times make it possible to have an in-depth analysis of songs of renowned singers of North Indian Classical music to objectively assess the vexing questions related to shrutis and swaras. Not only this, the issues related to musical scales in India are many, and to say the least, not simple.

Pitch Transition and Pitch Stability

The pitch is the fundamental parameter for understanding objectively various aspect of melodic music. A pitch contour describes a series of relative pitch transitions adjoining the abstractions of a sequence of steady states called notes. While the quasi stationary states in the dynamics of pitch in Indian music have been elaborately discussed in other chapters it is also necessary to pay attention to the transitory movements.

Scales and Shruti Concept

Music of modern days transcended the simplicity of early human music and its practical needs. The artistic and the aesthetic aspects began to emerge through its entertainment potential during the medieval times. Its beauty and serenity along with its potential to touch the emotional chord evoked intense interest among the earliest thinkers in every civilization and India is no exception. The recorded evidence of musical activities in India dates back to more than 2000 years.

Music Information Retrieval

Music is a very interesting topic in our society as almost everyone enjoys listening to it and many wants to create. Broadly speaking, the research in Music Information Retrieval (MIR) is one of the upcoming research interest with the extraction and inference of meaningful features from music (from the audio signal), indexing of music using these features, and the development of deferent search and retrieval schemes (for instance, content-based search, music recommendation systems, or user interfaces for browsing large music collections), as defined by Downie (2003).