North-Indian Sitar and Sarod Concerts: Visualization of the Rhythmic Structure
Hindustani classical instrumental concerts follow an episodic development, the musicological description of which is based chiefly on the rhythmic attributes. Analyses of the concert structure with computational methods applied to audio recordings provides for powerful visual representations that are potentially valuable in music appreciation and pedagogy. We consider the structural analysis of concerts of two plucked string instruments, the sitar and the sarod. The concerts feature both unmetered and metered sections with a prominent aspect of the latter being the interplay between the melody soloist and the accompanying drummer (tabla). We demonstrate that computational features designed to exploit musicological and acoustic distinctions of the genre have the potential to reveal musically important insights about concert structure and improvisation.