ComputerVaadan: On Understanding and Making Indian Classical Music Using Computers

Musical sounds and their compositions can be analysed and synthesised using digital signal processing techniques. Computers are now increasingly used in editing, processing and even synthesis of music. Publicly available programming environments enable experimentation and construction of sophisticated audio processing, visualisation and synthesis tools on home computers.

In this talk, we will provide an introduction to the models and the techniques used in digital processing and synthesis of music. We will also discuss the role of computational and machine learning techniques in analysing the structure and the form of musical compositions. We will discuss the issues in applying the computer music technology to Indian Classical Music and describe some of our experiments in this direction. The talk will include demonstrations of (Indian) music  analysis (raag recognition) and synthesised using some of the discussed techniques. Finally, we will speculate on the question of whether computers can "understand"  music.