Speech to singing synthesis: Incorporating patah lagu in the fundamental frequency control model for Malay asli song

Singing traditional Malay asli music requires a type of ornamentation called patah lagu although it is often not indicated in the musical score. Therefore, new singers often learn through listening to previous performance and depend on rote learning and memory.In this paper, we introduced a new patah lagu contour to be incorporated in a speech to singing synthesis model of Malay traditional asli music.It works by modifying duration and fundamental frequency (F0) contour of input Malay spoken lyrics and convert it into singing voice based on musical notes, length and values from the score.A new contour called patah lagu based on original singing sample is incorporated in the F0 control model to accommodate Malay asli singing synthesis voice. Based on multivariate repeated measures, patah lagu makes the singing voice in the song sounds more natural as compared to without

The Art of Tablā Accompaniment in Vilambit Ektāl

Accompaniment is by far the primary usage of the tablā in modern Hindustānī music. This research presents the framework by which tablā accompaniment is developed throughout a performance. This framework is developed through transcription and analysis of two performances provided by tablā musician, Vishwanath Shirodkar. Thought processes and theories on accompaniment are scrutinised through interviews and comparison with the transcriptions. The model proposed in this thesis is that the tablā accompanist has a pre-conceived tablā motif which he manipulates depending on certain parameters. These parameters include familiarity between co-performers, gender, tāl, and tempo

An investigation into the influence of the "Cape Malay" child's cultural heritage upon his taste in appreciating music, with a proposed adaptation of the music curricula in South African schools to reflect a possible application of "Cape Malay" music therein

This investigation of a repertory of music, grew out of a need to find a link between the societal structures created, and the activity of a group of people for whom they are intended. Music is a universal phenomenon but has definite cultural boundaries. Ever since the author became a student at the University of Cape Town, he came under the deep impression of differing cultural activities. This dissertation is a result of cultural differences observed by him from childhood, concerning a group of people, who are termed 'Cape Malay', for the lack of a more appropriate term. 'Cape Ma lay' music, which refers to the who le repertory of moppies, ghommaliedjies, nederlandsliedere, ouliedere, £udjies and djiekers of the 'Cape Malay', was observed by him as a way of life of many South Africans. This is not always realised, and it is the hope of the author that educational authorities would try to recognise not only this 'Malay' musica l culture, but also make provision for its inclusion in the syllabus. The basic philosophy which the author has tried to convey, is that education should link up with the pupil's social environment. Allied with this, is an attempt by the author to develop and awareness of 'Malay' music amongst those South Africans who might not be aware of this repertory of music, which is unique in the world. The reading material is extensive, as may be ascerta ined from the lengthy bibliography at the end of this dissertation. Unfortunately, it is not nearly complete. Two very important sources are regrettably not included: A pre liminary thesis by Erica Mugglestone completed for a master's degree at Monash Un iversity in Australia, relating to the topic of this dissertation; and van Warmelo's work, which relates to 'Cape Malay ' music, and fro

Instrumental Music Learning in an Irish Bimusical Context

This study focuses on bimusical instrumental learning, exploring the perceptions, beliefs and musical practices of students who are simultaneously engaged in learning classical and Irish traditional musics. The literature on bimusicality addresses how it has evolved in various social and educational contexts. This research focuses on the bimusical learning processes and practices of students, aged sixteen to twenty years, as they cross between the different learning modes associated with these two musical traditions in an Irish context. This qualitative study adopts a collective case study approach, using a purposive sampling strategy. Data collected include: videotaped lessons, recorded practice/playing sessions, observations of a range of music-making activities, and interviews with the participants, their parents and teachers. The seven participants were chosen from various formal and informal learning contexts and represent a range of instruments: a saxophonist/traditional flute/uilleann piper; two violinist/fiddlers; a cellist/uilleann pipes/whistle player; a classical/traditional harpist/concertina player; a pianist/flute player; and a pianist/accordion player. The research findings highlight the individuality of these students’ bimusical practices and are suggestive of a more nuanced image of the natural bimusical musician than was perhaps indicated in earlier literature. There is evidence of different levels of immersion, participation, commitment and, to some extent, fluency in the participants’ involvement in the two traditions. The research illustrates how issues such as diversity, choice, ease and ownership are important to these students as they sustain their musical involvements in both traditions. The communal/social dimension of music making receives special attention, particularly in the context of group music making. Such concepts as tradition, innovation and identity also emerge as the thesis explores how these young musicians negotiate the many similarities, confluences and contrasts of their individual bimusical worlds

Traditional Irish Musical Elements in the Solo-Piano Music of Ryan Molloy

Music in Ireland has become increasingly popular in recent decades. There is no shortage of Irish musical groups, recordings, and live performances featuring Irish music both in Ireland and abroad. Contemporary art music in Ireland has also seen an increase in support and notoriety. Irish composers face a decision of how, if at all, to engage with traditional folk music that is so prominent in their culture. Ryan Molloy (b. 1983 in Pomeroy, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland) is a composer and performer who incorporates elements of traditional Irish music in the context and in the language of modern art music. Molloy received a childhood education in both traditional Irish music and in classical piano. He is fluent with both of these musical languages, which gives him a unique perspective and cultural context. This dissertation explores the way in which Ryan Molloy uses traditional musical elements and recontextualizes them in his solo-piano works. Chapter One provides background information about the recent history of Irish art music. Chapter Two provides a brief biography of Molloy and presents some of his chief compositional goals and purposes. Chapter Three introduces basic concepts of traditional Irish music. Chapter Four presents Molloy’s solo-piano works and discusses how he uses the music of his traditional heritage. The appendices include a chronological list of Molloy’s compositions as well as transcripts of interviews of Molloy by the author. Molloy’s music continues to grow in prominence both in Ireland and abroad. His perspective generates a music language that is fresh and innovative. His music, which draws upon two seemingly opposing worlds, deserves increased performance and research

Vocal Source Separation for Carnatic Music

Carnatic Music is a Classical music form that originates from the South of India and is extremely varied from Western genres. Music Information Retrieval (MIR) has predominantly been used to tackle problems in western musical genres and cannot be adapted to non western musical styles like Carnatic Music due to the fundamental difference in melody, rhythm, instrumentation, nature of compositions and improvisations. Due to these conceptual differences emerged MIR tasks specific for the use case of Carnatic Music. Researchers have constantly been using domain knowledge and technology driven ideas to tackle tasks like Melodic analysis, Rhythmic analysis and Structural segmentation. Melodic analysis of Carnatic Music has been a cornerstone in MIR research and heavily relies on the singing voice because the singer offers the main melody. The problem is that the singing voice is not isolated and has melodic, percussion and drone instruments as accompaniment. Separating the singing voice from the accompanying instruments usually comes with issues like bleeding of the accompanying instruments and loss of melodic information. This in turn has an adverse effect on the melodic analysis. The datasets used for Carnatic-MIR are concert recordings of different artistes with accompanying instruments and there is a lack of clean isolated singing voice tracks. Existing Source Separation models are trained extensively on multi-track audio of the rock and pop genre and do not generalize well for the use case of Carnatic music. How do we improve Singing Voice Source Separation for Carnatic Music given the above constraints? In this work, the possible contributions to mitigate the existing issue are ; 1) Creating a dataset of isolated Carnatic music stems. 2) Reusing multi-track audio with bleeding from the Saraga dataset. 3) Retraining and fine tuning existing State of the art Source Separation models. We hope that this effort to improve Source Separation for Carnatic Music can help overcome existing shortcomings and generalize well for Carnatic music datasets in the literature and in turn improve melodic analysis of this music culture

Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Folk Music Analysis, 15-17 June, 2016

The Folk Music Analysis Workshop brings together computational music analysis and ethnomusicology. Both symbolic and audio representations of music are considered, with a broad range of scientific approaches being applied (signal processing, graph theory, deep learning). The workshop features a range of interesting talks from international researchers in areas such as Indian classical music, Iranian singing, Ottoman-Turkish Makam music scores, Flamenco singing, Irish traditional music, Georgian traditional music and Dutch folk songs. Invited guest speakers were Anja Volk, Utrecht University and Peter Browne, Technological University Dublin

Acoustic Feature Identification to Recognize Rag Present in Borgit

In the world of Indian classical music, raga recognition is a crucial undertaking. Due to its particular sound qualities, the traditional wind instrument known as the borgit presents special difficulties for automatic raga recognition. In this research, we investigate the use of auditory feature identification methods to create a reliable raga recognition system for Borgit performances. Each of the Borgits, the devotional song of Assam is enriched with rag and each rag has unique melodious tune. This paper has carried out few experiments on the audio samples of rags and a few Borgits sung with those rugs. In this manuscript three mostly used rags and a few Borgits  with these rags are considered for the experiment. Acoustic features considred here are FFT (Fast Fourier Transform), ZCR (Zero Crossing Rates), Mean and Standard deviation of pitch contour and RMS(Root Mean Square). After evaluation and analysis it is seen that FFT  and ZCR are two noteworthy acoustic features that helps to identify the rag present in Borgits. At last K-means clustering was applied on the FFT and ZCR values of the Borgits and were able to find correct grouping according to rags present there. This research validates FFT and ZCR as most precise acoustic parameters for rag identification in Borgit. Here researchers had observed roles of Standard deviation of pitch contour and RMS values of the audio samples in rag identification. &nbsp