Identifying Melodic Motifs and Stable Notes from Gestural Information in Indian Vocal Performances

Nadkarni, Shreyas; Rao, Preeti; Clayton, Martin

Abstract

Manual gesture plays an important role in Indian classical singing, and one of its functions is to support, illustrate or communicate aspects of raga melody. We explore the relationship between hand movements and melodic elements in Indian classical vocal performances, using kinematic data to classify stable notes and raga‑specific phrases. Our findings reveal consistent gestural patterns across singers, with potential applications in gesture-based music analysis.

Citation

Nadkarni, S., Rao, P., & Clayton, M. (2024). Identifying Melodic Motifs and Stable Notes from Gestural Information in Indian Vocal Performances. Transactions of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval, 7(1), 246-263. https://doi.org/10.5334/tismir.211

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 26, 2024
• Publication Date: Dec 2, 2024
• Deposit Date: Dec 3, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 3, 2024
• Journal: Transactions of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval
• Electronic ISSN: 2514-3298
• Publisher: Ubiquity Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 7
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 246-263
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/tismir.211
• Keywords: melodic similarity; unsupervised segmentation; gesture correspondence
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3198288