Swara Indentification for South Indian Classical Music

Abstract

This paper deals with the identification of the swaras in a given Carnatic song, which is an essential component, needed for raga identification of South Indian Classical - Carnatic music. Raga is a representation of the possible swaras that can occur in a given Carnatic song. This paper first deals with the segmentation of Carnatic vocal music and then attempts to find the pitch associated with each segment. We propose a two level segmentation algorithm to yield the probable swara segments. For each segment, pitch information is extracted to find the frequency of that particular segment. The fundamental frequency associated with the music signal conveys the overall pitch of the singer, which in turn corresponds to the middle octave swara 'Sa'. The frequencies associated with the segments are identified and the exact tagging of swara is performed to find the 7-swara combinations in the given music signal.