Tonic Pitch Estimation in South Indian Classical Music using DSP Processor

Abstract

In South Indian Classical Music, a performer chooses the tonic pitch as the reference note throughout the performance. The tonic pitch is the swara Sa in the middle octave range of a performance. Automatic tonic identification is essential in South Indian Classical Music to perform computational melodic analysis based on data. The identification of the tonic in real time is often required to judge the quality of the singer or instrumentalist. In this era of a musical reality shows, an autonomous electronic system for tonic identification is very relevant in which the system accurately judges the competitor in terms of tonic perfection. In this proposed method, a tonic identification is performed by using the characteristics extracted from the pitch histogram through frequency ratio method. A mathematical model is proposed based on the parameters of the tonal histogram for tonic identification. In this context, a Tonic identification system also implemented in a Texas Instruments TMS320C6713 Digital signal processor.