Detection of Raga-characteristic Phrases from Hindustani Classical Music Audio

Melodic motifs form essential building blocks in Indian Classical music. The motifs, or key phrases, provide strong cues to the identity of the underlying raga in both Hindustani and Carnatic styles of Indian music. Automatic identification and clustering of similar motifs is relevant in this context. The inherent variations in various instances of a characteristic phrase in a bandish (composition) performance make it challenging to identify similar phrases in a performance. A nyas svara (long note) marks the ending of these phrases. The proposed method does segmentation of phrases through identification of nyas and computes similarity with the reference characteristic phrase.