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STUDY OF CONSONANCE OF MUSICAL TONESAuthor: Radha Manisha Date: 2017-07-31 Report no: IIIT/TH/2017/44 Advisor:Navjyoti Singh AbstractMelodic music is a linear succession of musical tones which creates an aesthetic stasis of musical flow in our mental realm. Melody can be analysed with physical and mental concepts like frequency, pitch etc and is perceived as one single unit creating distinctive harmonious ensemble of states in our mind. It can be visualised as a unique concoction of perceptual constants (notes) and combination of notes. The thesis makes an attempt to analyse the consonance of the unique combinations of perceptual constants in the context of Indian Classical Music. In Indian Classical Music, svara-sth ̄ ana-s (notes) are ‘seen’ by musical inner eye as perceptual constants. Perceptual constants in r ̄ aga (melody-class) are analyzed with concepts of v ̄ adi (sonant), samv ̄ adi (con- sonant), anuv ̄ adi (assonant), viv ̄ adi (dissonant), ̄ aroha (ascent sequence), ̄ avaroha (descent sequence), pakad (grip sequence), ch ̄ alan (stylized path sequence), saragama (composition) and more. We have created a database of about 163 r ̄ aga-s with these concepts as given in the book Kramik Pustak Mallika by Bhatkhande. Any melody creates sth ̄ ayi bh ̄ ava which is a perceptually harmonious aesthetic-state collectively created by the sequential cohabitation of svara sth ̄ ana-s or perceptual constants of melody. We build a model which consists of combinatorial aspect of perceptual constants to analyse sth ̄ ayi bh ̄ ava through the concept of ‘consonance’ in Indian Classical Music. We study the consonance of musical tones in Indian Classical Music using the phenomena of ‘Local consonance and dissonance of tones’ by Dr. William Sethares. The idea is to come up with concept of consonance for exploring harmonic possibilities through the implementation and further refinement of the consonance theory. Our research examines how sounds with different kinds of spectral relationships work together to derive a schema of harmonic consonances in musical space to arrive at consonance atlas of musical sounds. To come up with consonance atlas of Indian Classical Music, we perform the analysis by consider- ing various ‘granularities’ of musical tones. We begin with a single interval between tones and then expand it to combination of tones taken together and come up with consonance analysis of musical tones. On the other hand, we take combination of tones and decompose it further into microtones and perform consonance analysis. We arrive at a model to study consonance of musical tones, microtones and ambient sounds. Further, we also arrive at a concept of ‘consonance measure’ which can be used vi vii for objective assessment of musical tones. The outcome of the study we got not only validated the harmony of note combinations in 163 r ̄ agas as outlined by Bhatkhande but also resulted in harmonious v ̄ adi (sonant), samv ̄ adi (consonant), anuv ̄ adi (assonant) and viv ̄ adi (dissonant) structures which are not prevalent in contemporary practices and the- ory. We have performed the analysis by taking two tones and expanded to combinations of tones taken together. Our analysis has resulted in 69 consonant two note combinations out of which only 26 pairs have been traditionally believed to exist. By expanding it to combinations of tones, we arrive at thou- sands of combinations of tones which are consonant, thereby creating a new space for composition. We also perform consonance analysis of microtones. We study the phenomenon of microtones ( ` sruti) using the concept of critical bandwidth and ‘conso- nance measure’. The consonance analysis of microtones is compared with the traditional model of ` sruti in Indian Classical Music. We arrive at a ` sruti model with 24 consonant microtonal notes using Just Intonated and Equi Tempered scales and make several inferences. Using the framework of consonance measure, we also make an attempt to study the relation between r ̄ agas and environmental sounds. Every r ̄ aga has an interesting relationship with various ambient prop- erties like time of the day, season etc. By our analysis, we make an attempt to validate the traditionally existing practice of r ̄ agas and their time/season in which they are played and also predict the association of r ̄ agas whose relation with ambient sounds is not mentioned traditionally. The model produced an accuracy of 78% for about 128 r ̄ agas and 1000 ambient sounds taken together. Our model is one of its kind and opens up the interesting possibility of sound art involving ambient sounds and musical sounds Full thesis: pdf Centre for Exact Humanities |
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