Examining transposed makams in Turkish music through machine learning: classification of Rengidil-Neveser and Ruhnevaz-Buselik pieces

Abstract

The concept of shad-makam is explored through an analysis of pieces in makams Rengidil and Ruhnevaz, to see whether these two are distinct structures or transposition of their antecedents; Neveser and Buselik. The analysis was performed using ML algorithms on features extracted from symbolic Turkish music data. The standard tuning and the shad-makam pieces transposed to the same pitch with original makam were examined. Falsely classified pieces were analysed qualitatively, to explain quantitative results. We determined that Rengidil is a transposed form of Neveser and should not be considered as a distinct makam. In contrast, Ruhnevaz is different from Buselik.