Rhythm analysis of tablā signal by detecting the cyclic pattern

Abstract

The Indian classical music system follows a cyclic perception as against the linear approach of reductionist concept in Western music. In every tāla, there exists a pattern of tangible and intangible events that keeps on repeating in smaller cycles. If such repeating pattern is detected, it will be an important step in the context of rhythm analysis of music and also for rhythm-based retrieval. In this work, a simple but novel methodology is presented to detect two important rhythmic aspects of tāla namely, tempo and mātrā. It is focussed on the detection of the repeating structure by analysing the tablā signal. The work extends our earlier effort that deals with only the electronic tablā signal which is well behaved. In this work, pitfalls of the earlier methodology are analysed and corrective measures are adopted to formulate the improved methodology. The present work computes and tunes the parameters based on the signal content and can work with the signals of wide variety, including the not so well-behaved real tablā signal, i.e. the signal captured when tablā is played by human artist. Experiment is carried out with a large number of electronic and real tablā clips reflecting variety of tempo and tāla. Performance of the proposed methodology is also compared with that of the earlier one. Result indicates the superiority and effectiveness of the proposed methodology.