Identification of Indian Raagas
Identification of Indian Raagas
Identification of Indian Raagas
Abstract— Hindustani Classical Music is one of the oldest music cultures still being performed actively. Despite of the
advancements in the technologies related to music analysis, very little has been tried related to the expressiveness of
Hindustani Classical Music. Ragas are the central structure of Hindustani classical music. Raga can be thought of as
the sequential arrangement of notes that is capable of invoking the emotion of a song. In this paper we have tried to
identify eighteen ragas played by three string instruments: Santoor, Sarod and Sitar using signal processing
techniques. A database consisting of recorded Aaroha and Avaroha of these 18 ragas played by three performers is
used as input to the system. The notes present in the audio file are obtained using Harmonic Product Spectrum
method of pitch detection. Using this technique we could achieve about 85% accuracy. This shows that our approach,
though simple, is effective in solving the problem.
Keywords— Hindustani Classical Music, Raga recognition, Aaroha-Avaroha, Swara, Pitch, Harmonic Product
Spectrum
I. INTRODUCTION
Hindustani Classical Music is one of the oldest musical traditions in the world. The subject of classical Indian music
is rich, with its historical, cultural, aesthetic, theoretical, and performing facets. For the past fifty years, due to the
emigration of Indians and the popularity of Indian artists, it has become widely known to international audience. Ragas
are the building blocks of Hindustani classical music. In its simplest description a Raga is a collection of notes. Actually,
they are a lot more than just a collection of notes. Ragas are the melodic modes on which a Hindustani musical
performance is based.
RAGA: The Melodic Framework
The most fundamental melodic concept in Hindustani classical music is raga. Raga is a melodic abstraction around
which almost all Hindustani classical music is organized. Raga, in the Sanskrit dictionary, is defined as "the act of
coloring or dyeing" (the mind in this context) and "any feeling or passion especially love, affection, sympathy, vehement
desire, interest, joy, or delight". In music, these descriptions apply to the impressions of melodic sounds on both the
artist(s) and listener(s). A raga consists of required and optional rules governing the melodic movements of notes within
a performance.
The term, Raga, first occurred in a technical context in the Brihaddeshi [1] where it is described as "That which is a
special dhwani (tune), is bedecked with swara (notes) and varna and is colorful or delightful to the minds of the people, is
said to be rāga". Hence, raga is neither a tune nor a scale; it is a set of rules which can together be called a melodic
framework.
The rules of a raga can be defined by
The list of specific notes (swaras) that can be used during playing of the raga
The manner in which the notes are used, i.e. specific ways of ornamenting notes or emphasizing/de-emphasizing
them
Manner in which the scale is ascended (Aaroha) or descended (Avaroha)
Optional or required musical phrases, the way in which to reveal these phrases, and/or combine them
The octave or frequency range to emphasize
The relative pacing between the notes
The time of day and/or season when the raga may be performed so as to invoke the emotions of the raga for
maximum impact on the mental and emotional state of the performer and listener
Observance of these rules during the performance of a raga does not aspire to be purely a technical or intellectual
exercise, but also to evoke the rasa or bhava (the experience, mood, emotion, or feeling) of the raga in both the artist and
the listener. A raga is best experienced rather than analyzed.
Any raga can be characterized by: Aaroha (ascending sequence of notes) and Avaroha (descending sequence of notes),
the set of unique notes in these sequences (scale), Jaati of raga (number of notes in Aaroha and Avaroha), the most
stressed note (Vadi swara), the second most stressed note (Samwadi swara), the notes that are not allowed (Varjit swara),
pakad (catch/characteristic phrase): a set of one or two sequences and Thaat (scale type: swaras that make a raga).
The Indian Santoor is an ancient string musical instrument native to Jammu and Kashmir, with origins in Persia. The
Santoor is a trapezoid-shaped hammered dulcimer often made of walnut, with seventy two strings [10]. In ancient
sanskrit texts, it has been referred to as Shatatantri vina (100-stringed vina). The special-shaped mallets are lightweight
and are held between the index and middle fingers. A typical Santoor has two sets of bridges, providing a range of three
octaves. The Indian Santoor is more rectangular and can have more strings than the Persian counterpart, which generally
has 72 strings. The instrument currently available in the market has 87 strings, clubbed in 29 sets each consisting of 3
strings.
The sitar is a plucked stringed instrument used mainly in Indian classical music. It is used mainly in India and to some
extent in neighboring countries. The name "Sitar" in Persian means "Sè" (Three) and "Tār" (String Pairs) hence it has the
name "Sitar" although a typical sitar used in India has 17-25 strings. It derives its resonance from sympathetic strings, a
long hollow neck and a gourd resonating chamber. It is also said that Sitar is derived from an Indian instrument called
Veena [10].
The Sarod is also a stringed musical instrument, used mainly in Indian classical music. Along with the Sitar, it is the
most popular and prominent instrument in Hindustani (northern Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani) classical music. The
Sarod is known for a deep, weighty, introspective sound, in contrast with the sweet, overtone-rich texture of the Sitar,
with sympathetic strings that give it a resonant, reverberant quality. It is a fretless instrument able to produce the
continuous slides between notes known as meend, which is important to Indian music. The Sarod is believed to have
descended from the Afghan rubab, a similar instrument originating in Central Asia and Afghanistan [10]. The name
Sarod roughly translates to "beautiful sound" or "melody" in Persian. It normally has 25 strings classified into three types:
4 main strings, 6 rhythm and drone strings and 15 sympathetic strings. The instrument us played with a plectrum (a
plucking aid) made from coconut shell.
Apart from the recording of isolated notes, Aaroha and Avaroha of selected 18 Ragas played by all three instruments
were also recorded. The Ragas selected are listed in Table 2.
Test Procedure:
Following procedure is used for getting the Scale/ Upayojita Swaras from the Raga sample under consideration:
The input data is windowed with a window size of 16384 samples (371 ms) and hop size of 8192 samples (185
ms)
Hanning window is used
S r R g G M M’ P d D n N
A 1 is put in the position of the notes present in the wave file. A 0 is put if it is absent
This note sequence is compared with the standard note sequence of various Ragas (Template matching) for
identification of the Raga.
TABLE 3: RESULT OF RAGA RECOGNITION FOR VARIOUS RAGAS PLAYED BY THE THREE
INSTRUMENTS
Santoor Sarod Sitar
Sr. No. Raga
HPS2 HPS5 HPS2 HPS5 HPS2 HPS5
1 Basant *C C C C C C
2 Bageshri C C C C IC IC
3 Bhairav *IC C C C C C
4 Bhairavi C C C C C C
5 Chandrakauns C C C C IC IC
6 Des C C C C IC IC
7 Kafi C C C C C C
8 Lalit C C IC C IC C
9 Madhuwanti C C IC IC IC IC
10 Malkauns C C C C C C
11 Miyan Malhar C C IC C IC IC
12 Patdeep C C C C C C
13 Piloo IC IC C C IC IC
14 Puria Dhanashri C C C C C C
15 Sohoni IC C C IC IC IC
16 Tilang C C C C IC IC
17 Todi C C C C IC C
18 Yaman C C C C C C
Correctly recognized/ out of 15/18 17/18 15/18 16/18 8/18 10/18
*C= Correctly recognized, IC = Incorrectly recognized
The above results are analyzed using Chi-square method with 5% level of significance. It shows that the Raga
recognition accuracy depends on the Raga recognition method as well as on the instrument playing the Raga. The Raga
recognition accuracy is the best with HPS 5 method and for the Ragas played by Santoor. The Raga recognition accuracy
is poor for Ragas played by Sitar.
Hence we analyzed the audio files for Sitar and observed that the accuracy is poor because of the meend and the
chikari/ intermittent Sa played during the performance. To overcome the problem and to improve the recognition
accuracy we first performed note onset detection for Sitar and the notes are detected using HPS 5 method. The results of
Raga recognition accuracy obtained using HPS 5 method and HPS 5 method after note onset detection are as shown in
Table 4.
The accuracy of Raga recognition is good using HPS 5 as compared to the other method. These are listed in Table 5.
VI. CONCLUSION
Identification of Raga in Hindustani Classical Music is a very challenging problem as Raga a very complex structure.
In this paper, we have presented a system for automatic Raga identification which uses scale matching technique. Out of
various characteristics of Raga, here we analyze the sequence of notes for Raga identification. The Aaroha – Avaroha
pattern is well defined for each raga and hence it is very useful feature in identification of the Raga. The system works
successfully for monophonic recording of the Aaroha and Avaroha of these Ragas played by three string instruments:
Santoor, Sarod and Sitar. The maximum accuracy which we obtained is about 85%. The accuracy of Raga identification
is quite good for Santoor and Sarod but it is poor for Sitar. This is because of the meend and the chikari/ intermittent Sa
played during the performance. By using note onset detection this can be improved slightly.
We can improve the Raga recognition method by using additional characteristics of Raga like pakad.
Acknowledgment
The following artists spared their valuable time for the database generation:
Santoor : Pandit Dr. Dhananjay Daithankar
Sarod : Pandit Praashekh Borkar
Sitar : Pandita Ms. Jaya Jog
Pandit Sharadji Sutaone gave his valuable guidance for selection of Ragas. Mr. Mangeshji Waghmare, All India
Radio, Pune extended all his support for this activity.
The recording was done at Studio Saz Sargam, Prabhat Road, Pune by Mrs. Radhika Hangekar.
REFERENCES
[1] P. Sharma and K. Vatsayan, Brihaddeshi of Sri Matanga Muni, South Asian Books, 1992.
[2] H. Sahasrabuddhe and R. Upadhye, “On the computational model of raag music of india,” in Workshop on AI
and Music: European Conference on AI, 1992.