Deep learning based Tonic identification in Indian Classical Music

Abstract

Tonic (Shadja) is a central idea in Indian Classical Music (ICM). It is the base pitch that an artist selects to create the melodies in a Raag composition, and it acts as a reference for the artist and for tuning all the accompanying instruments. Therefore, automatic identification of Tonic is a crucial task in the computational approaches of ICM, such as Raag Identification, melodic phrase analysis, etc. In this article, we propose a deep learning-based approach using frequency histogram peaks for Tonic identification. We demonstrate that the proposed approach combining deep learning and peaks of frequency histogram in most cases provides very high results with small mean absolute error and is easier to deploy in production systems than the existing multi-pitch-based approaches. Finally, we provide a systematic error overview of our approach, which provides further insight into the benefits and drawbacks of our methodology,