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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMPUTATIONAL COGNITION (HTTP://WWW.IJCC.US), VOL. 8, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2010

Melody Revisited: Tips from Indian Music Theory

Soubhik Chakraborty, Kolla Krishnapriya, Loveleen, Shivee Chauhan, Sandeep Singh Solanki and Kartik Mahto
Observe that this denition explains the phrase . . . perceived as a single entity given in the Wikipedia as a denition of the term. Melody is also sometimes called tune. Denition I.2 [segment] A segment is a sequence of notes which is a subset of a melody but is itself incomplete. For example, in the raga Ka, belonging to Ka thaat , of North Indian Classical music (a raga is a melodic structure with xed notes and a set of rules characterising a particular mood conveyed by performance [7]), the note sequence {Sa, Sa, Re, Re, Ga, Ga, Ma, Ma, Pa} or simply {S, S, R, R, G, G, M, M, P} is a melody while {S, S, R, R, G, G} is a segment. To see why, one only has to sing or play the sequences. Although some subjectivity is involved it is guided by music theory. The choice of melody groups is not unique, which further merits a statistical attention. Taking Sa at C conventionally, the twelve notes in the middle octave can be represented by the numbers 0 to 11 respectively. Sa of the next higher octave will be assigned the number 12 etc while Ni (sudh) of the lower octave (before middle) is assigned the number -1 etc. C Db D Eb E F F# G Ab A Bb B

Abstract The aim of this article is to tighten the mathematical denition of melody to capture its musical meaningfulness. This is supported by a comparative statistical study of melodic structures of two North Indian ragas, Bageshree and Bhimpalashree, that c use the same notes. Copyright 2010 Yangs Scientic Research Institute, LLC. All rights reserved. Index Terms Raga, melody, segment, signicance, statistics, probability.

I. I NTRODUCTION N music, a melody is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity (Wikipedia). Mathematically, it is simply dened as a sequence of notes as determined by their pitch values [2]. In the following discussion, we shall rene this simple mathematical denition to capture the musical meaningfulness and support it with a comparative study on two North Indian ragas of the Ka thaat*, namely, Bageshree and Bhimpalashree. Let us consider the following sentences: Bob is a doctor. He has two cars. Evidently {Bob is a doctor} and {He has two cars} are both meaningful sentences and both are sequences of words. But {a doctor He has} is meaningless although sequential! That is where the crux of our argument lies. If any arbitrary sequence of words taken from a prose need not be a sentence, how can any arbitrary sequence of notes taken from a musical piece be a melody? In order to qualify to be a melody, it ought to be complete in some musical sense where what is complete and what is not should be decided not by mathematics but by music theory, e.g. Indian music theory in case of Indian Classical music or Western Art Music (WAM) in case of Western music. However, an arbitrary sequence of notes can, of course, be a segment, i.e. a subset of a melody. Let us not forget that mathematics, when applied to music, is always welcome but ultimately it should aim at understanding music better. We expect a melody to be a sequence of notes which is musically meaningful and this can be assessed only when it is complete. See the example in Denition I.2 below and Section IV.

S r R g G M m P d D n N(lower octave) -12 -11 -10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 S r R g G M m P d D n N(middle octave) 0 S 1 r 2 R 3 4 5 6 g GM m 7 8 9 10 11 P d D n N(higher octave)

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Abbreviations: The letters S, R, G, M, P, D and N stand for Sa (always Sudh), Sudh Re, Sudh Ga, Sudh Ma, Pa (always Sudh), Sudh Dha and Sudh Ni respectively. The letters r, g, m, d, n represent Komal Re, Komal Ga, Tibra Ma, Komal Dha and Komal Ni respectively. A note in Normal type indicates that it belongs to middle octave; if in italics it is implied that the note belongs to the octave just lower than the middle octave while a bold type indicates it belongs to the octave just higher than the middle octave. Sa is the tonic in Indian music. Sudh means natural and Komal and Tibra means at and sharp respectively. We provide some more denitions [2].
Remark: Ragas can be grouped according to thaats depending on the permissible notes xed for it. This is similar to mode in Western music. There are ten thaats in North Indian Classical and many more in the South. The ten thaats are Bilawal, Ka, Khamaj, Purvi, Bhairav, Kalyan, Todi, Marwa, Bhairavi and Asavari. For Example, {Sa, Sudh Re, Komal Ga, Sudh Ma, Pa, Sudh Dha and Komal Ni} represents Ka thaat and accordingly ragas Bageshree, Bhimpalashree both belong to this thaat as they use these notes.

Denition I.1 [melody] A melody is a sequence of notes taken from a musical piece that is complete as determined by music theory. This means a melody should at least be a complete musical phrase if not a complete musical sentence.
Manuscript received August 20, 2009; revised January 31, 2010. Soubhik Chakraborty, Department of Applied Mathematics, BIT Mesra, Ranchi-835215, India. Kolla Krishnapriya, Loveleen, Shivee Chauhan, Sandeep Singh Solanki and Kartik Mahto, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, BIT Mesra, Ranchi-835215, India. Corresponding authors email: soubhikc@yahoo.co.in (S. Chakraborty). Publisher Item Identier S 1542-5908(10)10302-9/$20.00 c Copyright 2010 Yangs Scientic Research Institute, LLC. All rights reserved. The online version posted on September 05, 2010 at http://www.YangSky.com/ijcc/ijcc83.htm

CHAKRABORTY, KRISHNAPRIYA, LOVELEEN, CHAUHAN, SOLANKI & MAHTO, MELODY REVISITED: TIPS FROM INDIAN MUSIC THEORY

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Denition I.3 [Length] Length of a melody or its segment refers to the number of notes in it. Denition I.4 [Signicance] Signicance of a melody or its segment (in monophonic music such as Indian classical music) is dened as the product of the length of the melody and the number of times it occurs in the musical piece. Thus both frequency and length are important factors to assess the signicance of a melody or its segment. The term has a more technical denition in polyphonic music [2]. Denition I.5 [Shape] Shape of a melody is the difference of successive pitches of the notes in it represented by the numbers as given above. Thus the raga Darbari Kanada can have a melody {M, P, d, n, S} which would be represented by {5, 7, 8, 10, 12} and its shape is {7-5, 8-7, 10-8, 12-10} which yields {2, 1, 2, 2]. Denition I.6 [translation] Two melodies are in translation if the correlation coefcient r of their shapes equals +1. Denition I.7 [inversion] Two melodies are in inversion if the correlation coefcient of their shapes equals -1. Denition I.8 [different] Two melodies are called different if the correlation coefcient of their shapes approaches 0 in magnitude. Thus r here is a measure of similarity between melodies. Mazzola [13] and Buteau [4] have investigated similarity by proximity and similarity by symmetry in combination. Remark: Since correlation coefcient is a number between -1 and +1, fractional values approaching -1 or +1 or even zero can be interpreted likewise based on the above mentioned denitions. Signicance of a correlation coefcient can be tested using t test. If r is the value of correlation coefcient and n be the number of pairs of observations (here successive differences), we calculate the statistic t = r (n 2)/ (1 r2 ). If the absolute value of t, i.e. ItI exceeds the table value of t at 5% level of signicance (say) and (n 2) degrees of freedom, then the value of r is signicant at 5% level otherwise insignicant. Here it is assumed that the n pairs are coming from a bivariate normal distribution. The formula for r is covariance (x, y)/ {sd(x)sd(y)} where sd =standard deviation. Covariance (x, y) can be computed easily as {Sum(xy)}/n mean(x) mean(y). sd(x) = [{Sum(x x)}/n mean(x) mean(x)] and similarly for sd(y). In the present work, we have made a melodic analysis of note sequences of Bageshree and Bhimpalashree, two North Indian ragas which use the same notes. Groups are formed by the rst author using knowledge of Indian music theory. If the reader has knowledge of Indian music, he can verify with little difculty that the note sequence in each group represents a complete and hence meaningful musical phrase or sentence.

II. E XPERIMENTAL RESULTS A. BAGESHREE Before going into the melodic analysis of the structure of this raga it is worth looking into some of its features: Raga: Bageshree Thaat: Ka Aroh (ascent): S g M D n S OR S n Dn S M, g M D n S Awaroh(descent): S n D, M PD g, M g R S Jati(another grouping of raga reecting no. of distinct notes used in ascent-descent): Aurabh-Sampoorna (5 distinct notes used in ascent, 7 in descent) Vadi Swar (most important note): M (some say D) Samvadi Swar (second most important note): S (some say g) Prakriti (nature): restful Pakad (catch): S n D, S M D n D, M g R S Nyas swars (Stay notes): g M D Time of rendition: 9 PM to 12 PM Comment: P is a weak note (alpvadi swar) in this raga. Notes that are important but different from Vadi and Samvadi are called Anuvadi. For example, if one takes D and g as Vadi-Samvadi, then S, R, M and n will be anuvadi. Notes not permitted in a raga are called vivadi. Here r, G, m, d and N are vivadi. Over the years, Indian classical music has evolved into a complex musical system. It has some main points of difference from Western music. Western music is polyphonic, which means that it depends on the resonance of multiple musical notes occurring together. In contrast, Indian classical music is essentially monophonic. Here, a melody or sequence of individual notes is developed and improvised upon, against a repetitive rhythm. In Western classical music, a performer strictly abides by a written composition. In contrast, in Indian classical music, the performer improvises the composition rendered. A Western classical concert is never performed extempore; it will be always prepared and rehearsed several days before the concert. The percussion is never as prominent as in Indian classical music. To say more, in European classical music percussion has always been placed on a sidetrack. The European system tonic never changes. This means the rst note of the scale (saptak) C or do (Sa) will always be of the same pitch. On the Indian subcontinent, the pitch of the tonic is changed according to the chosen instrument or voice, but still will be called Sa. See also [11]. Consider a sequence of notes in raga Bageshree written vertically [9]. Further details of this raga and Indian classical music can be found in [10]. Table I gives the melody groups and their signicance. Table II gives the correlation coefcient between shapes of melodies of equal length. Signicance of three and four note segments are next studied in Tables III and IV. There is not much logic in studying higher length segments although, since we did this study through programming, it could be done effortlessly. It makes sense to construct melodies of lengths four, ve or higher.

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMPUTATIONAL COGNITION (HTTP://WWW.IJCC.US), VOL. 8, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2010 TABLE III: THREE NOTE SEGMENTS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE

Sl. no.
TABLE I: MELODY GROUPS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE

Sequences -3,-2,0 0,5,3 5,3,5 3,5,3 5,3,2 3,2,0 3,5,9,

No of repetition 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

Signicance 6 6 6 6 6 6 6

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Notes D n S M g M g R S n D n D S M g M D D N S g M D n D M P D g M g R S

Number -3 -2 0 5 3 5 3 2 0 -2 -3 -2 -3 0 5 3 5 9 -3 -2 0 3 5 9 10 9 5 7 9 3 5 3 2 0

Group No. G1

Signicance 9 (occurs once)

TABLE IV: FOUR NOTE SEGMENTS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE

Sl. no. G1 G2 9 (occurs once) 1 2 3

Sequences 0,5,3,5 3,5,3,2 5,3,2,0

No of repetition 2 2 2

Signicance 8 8 8

B. BHIMPALASHREE Before going into the melodic analysis of the structure of this raga it is worth looking into some of its features: Raga: Bhimpalashree Thaat: Ka Aroh: n S g M, P, n, S Awaroh: S n D P M g R S Jati: Aurabh-Sampoorna Vadi Swar: M Samvadi Swar: S Prakriti: restful Pakad: n S M, Mg, PM, g, M g R S Stay notes (nyas swars): g M P n Time of rendition: 1PM-3 PM Consider a sequence of notes in raga Bhimpalashree written vertically [9]. For more on this raga, see [10]. Table V gives the melody groups and their signicance. Table VI gives the correlation coefcient between shapes of melodies of equal length. Tables VII and VIII depict the signicance of 3 and 4 note segments, respectively. Finally, we make a comparative analysis of the two ragas in Table IX-XIII. We next compare the number of occurrences of the notes in the two ragas (Tables X and XII) and their transition probability matrices (Tables XI and XIII). Analysis of melody lengths: This is an aspect left out in [2]. Here are some basic statistical summary measures of the melody lengths of the note sequences of the two ragas.These results are of interest from a statistical perspective. Recall that for Bageshree,there are only 5 melody groups G1-G5 of lengths 9, 9, 8, 4 and 4 respectively. For Bhimpalashree, there are 6 melody groups H1-H6 of lengths 6, 9, 9, 9,6 and 6, respectively.

G2 G3 8 (occurs once)

G3 G4 42=8

G4 G5 4 (occurs once)

G5

TABLE II: CORRELATION COEFFICIENT BETWEEN SHAPES OF MELODIES OF EQUAL LENGTH

Sl. no. 1 2 3

Groups G1 and G2 G4 and G5 G3 and {G4+G5}

Covariance -1.2656 0.8889 -0.9184

Correlation Coefcient -0.2207 0.5000 -0.2239

CHAKRABORTY, KRISHNAPRIYA, LOVELEEN, CHAUHAN, SOLANKI & MAHTO, MELODY REVISITED: TIPS FROM INDIAN MUSIC THEORY TABLE V: MELODY GROUPS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE

33

TABLE VI: CORRELATION COEFFICIENT BETWEEN SHAPES OF MELODIES OF EQUAL LENGTH

Notes n S M g M P M P M g M g R n S M g P M P g M P N D P M P g M P N S R N S S N D P M P M g M g R S

Number -2 0 5 3 5 7 5 7 5 3 5 3 2 -2 0 5 3 7 5 7 3 5 7 10 9 7 5 7 3 5 7 10 12 14 10 0 12 10 9 7 5 7 5 3 5 3 2 0

Group H1

Length 6 (occurs once)

Signicance 6 Sl.no. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Groups H1 and H5 H1 and H6 H5 and H6 H2 and H3 H2 and H4 H3 and H4 Covariance 0.80000 2.60000 -0.20000 -0.37500 0.89062 2.50000 Correlation Coefcient 0.231869 0.753576 0.083333 -0.071873 0.152182 0.387619

H1 H2 9 (occurs once) 9

TABLE VII: SIGNIFICANCE OF THREE NOTE SEGMENTS

Sl.no. 1 2 3 4 5 H2 segment segment H3 9 (occurs once) 9 02(occurs 6 times) 12 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Sequences -2,0,5 0,5,3 5,3,5 3,5,7 5,7,5 7,5,7 7,5,3 3,5,3 5,3,2 5,7,3 7,3,5 5,7,10 10,9,7 9,7,5

No. of Repetitions 2 2 3 3 3 4 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

Signicance 6 6 9 9 9 12 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6

H3

H4

9 (9occurs once)

H4 H5 6 (occurs once) 6

Bageshree Mean melody length= 6.8 Variance= 2 = 5.36 Standard deviation= 2.32 Coefcient of variation = 0.34 3rd order central moment 3 = 4.176 [calculated by taking the mean of (observation mean)3 ] 4th order central moment 4 = 34.3712 [calculated by taking the mean of (observation mean)4 ] 1 = 2 /3 = 0.1132 2 3 2 = 4 /2 = 1.936 2 Bhimpalashree Mean melody length=7.5 Variance=2.25 Standard deviation=1.5 Coecient of Variation=0.2 3 = 0 4 = 5.0625 1 = 0 2 = 1

H5 H6 6 (occurs once) 6

Interpretation: While the mean melody length of Bhimpalashree is higher, its standard deviation is lower. Conse The signicance 12 of the segment {M g} suggests how a small segment can be crucial in a raga. However, due to incompleteness, it should not be considered as more important than a complete melody. This highest recorded r is insignicant at 5% level (calculated ItI=1.985564 < table t = 3.18) This is dened as standard deviation/mean

H6

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMPUTATIONAL COGNITION (HTTP://WWW.IJCC.US), VOL. 8, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2010 TABLE VIII: SIGNIFICANCE OF FOUR NOTE SEGMENTS TABLE X: COUNT OF NOTES IN BAGESHREE

Sl.no. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Sequences -2,0,5,3 7,5,7,5 5,7,5,3 7,5,3,5 5,3,5,3 3,5,3,2 7,5,7,3 5,7,3,5 7,3,5,7 3,5,7,10 10,9,7,5 9,7,5,7

No. of Repetitions 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

Signicance 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 S R g S 0 1 0 0 0 1/8 2/5 R 0 0 2/6 0 0 0 0 g

Notes S R g M P D n

Repetitions 5 2 6 7 1 8 5

TABLE XI: THE TRANSITION PROBABILITY MATRIX IN BAGESHREE

M 2/4 0 4/6 0 0 1/8 0

P 0 0 0 1/7 0 0 0

D 0 0 0 2/7 1 1/8 3/5

N
1/4

1/4 0 0 4/7 0 1/8 0

0 0 0 0 4/8 0

TABLE IX: BHIMPALASHREE & BAGESHREE: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

M P D n

Sl no.

Bhimpalashree melody group H2 H2 H3 H3 H4 H4

Bageshree melody group G1 G2 G1 G2 G1 G2

Covariance

Correlation Coefcient -0.3868 0.0690 -0.4136 0.1742 0.0412 0.2353

1 2 3 4 5 6

-2.0156 0.3593 -2.3750 1.0000 0.2656 1.5156

III. D ISCUSSION None of the melody pairs in Table IX have a high correlation coefcient. It is clear that the melodic shapes of the two ragas using the same notes are quite different. The different note combinations in the melody groups in Tables I and V indicate the different melodic structures of the two ragas. These note combinations help in identifying the ragas. From Indian music theory, we already know that these two ragas are quite different even though they belong to the same Ka thaat. Their transition probability matrices also differ accordingly (Tables XI and XIII). In particular, the note combination {M, P, n, S} is important in Bhimpalashree while {M, D, n, S} is important in Bageshree. Another marked difference is that P is a stay note in Bhimpalashree and hence important although not vadi or samvadi (as mentioned earlier, such a note is called anuvadi) while it is a weak note (alpvadi) in Bageshree. This is clear from Tables X and XII. Remember that P is vadi in raga Ka where it is the most important note and vivadi in
Plot of Melody lengths for Bhimpalashree
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quently, its coefcient of variation is also lower than that of Bageshree. This means the melody lengths are being maintained more consistently in Bhimpalashree than in Bageshree. The distribution of melody lengths is negatively skewed for Bageshree (3 is negative) but symmetric in Bhimpalashree provided sequence of the melody lengths is ignored and only frequency is taken (6 and 9 both occur thrice; this makes 3 = 0). We also took sequence into consideration and a plot of the melody lengths of the two ragas shows interesting patterns of contrast and similarity (Fig. 1 and 2). Since, 2 < 3 for both the distributions, hence the corresponding frequency curves are both platykurtic.
Plot of melody lengths for Bageshree
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Melody length

Melody length 0 1 2 3 Melody Group number 4 5 6

0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Melody Group Number

Fig. 1: Plot of melody lengths of Bageshree as they appear in the sequence.

Fig. 2: Plot of melody lengths of Bhimpalashree as they appear in the sequence.

CHAKRABORTY, KRISHNAPRIYA, LOVELEEN, CHAUHAN, SOLANKI & MAHTO, MELODY REVISITED: TIPS FROM INDIAN MUSIC THEORY TABLE XII: COUNT OF NOTES IN BHIMPALASHREE

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Notes S R g M P D n

Repetitions 06 03 08 13 10 02 06

TABLE XIII: THE TRANSITION PROBABILITY MATRIX IN BHIMPALASHREE

S S R g M P D n 1/5 1/3 0 0 0 0 4/6

R 1/5 0 2/8 0 0 0 0

g 0 0 0 6/13 2/10 0 0

M 2/5 0 5/8 0 6/10 0 0

P 0 0 1/8 7/13 0 1 0

D 0 0 0 0 0 0 2/6

N 1/5 2/3 0 0 2/10 0 0

such as Solo Explorer, Wavesurfer and MATLAB etc. Based on these, weights can be assigned to these notes using music theory (Western Art music) and then one can do a melody analysis of the notes. This is what has been done in the RUBATO software. The rst use of this software in north Indian ragas is [8]. Further information on this software can be found in [13]. Anja Volk has used Rubato for lots of metrical analyses of Western classical music, see her homepage http://people.cs.uu.nl/volk Chantal Buteau has used the MeloRubette for lots of melodic analyses of Western music, see her homepage http://www.brocku.ca/mathematics/people/buteau IV. C ONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK Music analysis can be broadly divided into two categories: commonality analysis (What is common?) and diversity analysis (What is special?). The statistical analysis clearly distinguishes the two ragas Bageshree and Bhimpalasgree with special emphasis on their melodic structures despite some commonality (both ragas use the same notes and of restful nature with platykurtic distribution). Our ndings also bring out the interesting link between raga and probability theory. Since the present study does not involve time of clock, it is not possible to do metrical analysis of notes. And Indian classical music does not support harmony [6]. The problem of nding the correlation coefcient when melody groups are of unequal length has not been taken up here. If two melody groups are of length r and s where r < s (say), one suggestion could be to take all possible segments of length r from the melody of length s (if s = r + k, there will be k + 1 such segments) and then compare each segment with the shorter melody of length r. This is reserved as a rewarding future work. We make some additional concluding comments. A strong reason for not using the word meaning directly in dening melody but instead gong for completeness is because meaning is a rather obscure term and previous attempts to measure it mathematically have not been very successful; otherwise entropy could have been the science of measuring meaning in a message. It is not; it measures the amount of surprise in a message! For the benet of Western Art Music readers, we provide another example to explain our concept. In the popular Beatles number, the note sequence corresponding to the line Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away will be a melody while the note sequence corresponding to only the part Yesterday, all my troubles will be a segment. The difference is not only because one is a complete sentence and the other is not. You will feel a difference in musical completeness in addition to the difference in speech completeness by suppressing the speech part and playing them one after another in an instrument. However, a segment can also be important and one should measure the signicance of both melodies and segments as done here. According to Carol Krumhansl, Professor of Psychology at Cornell University who is well known for her works in music, we listen to music in order to fulll our expectations. In fact, we also appreciate surprises (or something that we

raga Malkauns where it is not to be used at all! The morale is that with respect to a raga, any note can be grouped either as vadi, samvadi, anuvadi, alpvadi or vivadi depending on its importance. The probability of the note is also affected accordingly. Thus P will have a zero probability in Malkauns, a low probability in Bageshree and high probabilities in Ka and Bhimpalashree etc. This should convince the reader of the deep connection between raga and probability theory. Now it is the statisticians job, if he/she is a music analyst, to measure these probabilities preferably with longer note sequences. Interestingly, even within the same ragas, the melodies analyzed do not have shapes that can be called similar. If this happened for a performance, it would be treated as a qualication depicting the variations the artist can render despite the binding rules of the raga. In other words, statistics can denitely play an appreciable role in assessing the versatility of the performer. Similarity values of G4 and G5 and the same for H1 and H6 turned out to be highest for Bageshree and Bhimpalashree respectively. Results from the other six tables are self explanatory, in the light of the denitions and concepts provided in Section I. Melody lengths are more consistently maintained in Bhimpalashree. The distribution of melody lengths is negatively skewed for Bageshree but symmetric in Bhimpalashree provided sequence of the melody lengths is ignored and only frequency is taken. Since, 2 < 3 for both the distributions, hence the corresponding frequency curves are both platykurtic (recall that the mesokurtic curve of normal distribution has 2 = 3; 2 measures kurtosis or peakedness of a distribution. If 2 > 3, the curve is called leptokurtic). Note that here we have analyzed only the melodic structures of the ragas and not that of any performance. In case of the latter, further information on the onset, duration, pitch and loudness of notes can be available using standard softwares

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did not expect) brought about by a musician. The rst author adds: Although a vivadi swar is a note that is not allowable in the raga there have been occasions where a celebrated artist has used a vivadi swar deliberately at a peak time creating an electric feeling that did beautify the melody and drew immediate applauds from the enthusiastic listeners. Let us not forget that art is good when beautiful and bad when not [3] and the artist is within his/her right to seek such beautication, at times even breaking the grammar or a certain music theory. This is what is debated rather hotly as romanticism versus classicism in Indian music. I had a long discussion with Dr. Vanamala Parvatkar, a renowned vocalist of the Banaras Gharana and the former Head (vocal music), Faculty of performing Arts, Banaras Hindu University, on this. She expressed the opinion that romanticism (i) should be attempted only by experts, (ii) is more effective when extempore than when pre-planned and (iii) should be treated as a beautiful retreat from the musical grammar and in no case should this exceptional retreat be made the grammar (i.e should be attempted, if at all, only once or twice so to say in one concert). Classical music is a discipline and not a do-asyou-like activity. The use of entropy as a surprise-measurement tool in music analysis is important and we refer to Snyder [15]. Temperley [16] has measured musical expectations probabilistically using a classical Bayesian approach. Although probability cannot directly model the artists decision process [5], it is helpful from an analytical or a listeners perspective. The morale is that musical meaning should be interpreted in terms of expectations as well as unexpectations or surprises, completeness as well as incompleteness. The present paper is on completeness and incompleteness. We will supplement it with one on expectations and surprises. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT It is a pleasure to thank Professors Kamil Adiloglu, Thomas Noll and K. Obermayer for sharing their paper [2] with us. The idea of measuring the signicance of a melody in monophonic music by multiplying the length with the number of occurrences is the result of a correspondence between Adiloglu and Chakraborty [1]. The formula for polyphonic

music can be found in [2] itself and is omitted being irrelevant here. And we thank Prof. Guerino Mazzola for the references of some RUBATO uses in western music. Mazzola himself has used this software for analyzing jazz music [14] as well as ragas in both Hindustani music, namely in ragas Ka and Sindhu [8] as a collaborative work with us, and Carnatic music with Julien Junod, namely, in the seven element mela-scale Gayakapriya in the Agni Chakra scales [12]. We also thank an anonymous referee for two valuable suggestions. The rst author thanks Dr. (Ms.) Vanamala Parvatkar for her views on romanticism. R EFERENCES
[1] K. Adiloglu. private communication to S. Chakraborty. Jan. 26 2009. [2] K. Adiloglu, T. Noll, and K. Obermayer. A paradigmatic approach to extract the melodic structure of a musical piece. Journal of New Music Research, 35(3):221236, 2006. [3] P. A. Brandt. Music and the abstract mind. JMM-The Journal of Music and Meaning, 7, 2009. [4] C. Buteau. Reciprocity between presence and content functions on a motivic composition space. Tatra Mount Mathematics Publications, 23:1745, 2001. [5] S. Chakraborty. Review of the book music and probability by D. Temperley (the MIT press, 2007). ACM Computing Reviews, Mar. 04 2009. [6] S. Chakraborty. Review of the research paper Inuences of signal processing, tone proles and chord progressions on a model for estimating the musical key from audio by K. Noland and M. Sandler (Computer Music Journal, 33(1), 2009). ACM Computing Reviews, Aug. 2009. [7] S. Chakraborty, K. Krishnapriya, Loveleen, S. Chauhan, and S. S. Solanki. Analyzing the melodic structure of a north indian raga: a statistical approach. Electronic Musicological Review, XII, 2009. [8] S. Chakraborty, S. S. Solanki, S. Roy, S. S. Tripathy, and G. Mazzola. A statistical comparison of performance of two ragas (dhuns) that use the same notes. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Frontiers of Speech and Music, pages 167171, Kolkata, Feb. 20-21 2008. [9] D. Dutta. Sangeet Tattwa (Pratham Khanda). Brati Prakashani, 5th edition, 2006. In Bengali. [10] N. A. Jairazbhoy. The rags of North India: Their Structure and Evolution. Faber and Faber, London, 1971. [11] C. S. Jones. Indian classical music, tuning and ragas. http://cnx.org/content/m12459/1.6/. [12] J. Junod and G. Mazzola. From fux to ragas-morphing contrapuntal worlds. In Proceedings of the ICMC 2007, Ann Arbor, 2007. [13] G. Mazzola. The Topos of Music. Birkhauser Basel, 2002. [14] G. Mazzola. private communication to S. Chakraborty. Feb. 8 2009. [15] J. L. Snyder. Entropy as a measure of musical style: the inuence of a priori assumptions. Music Theory Spectrum, 12:121160, 1990. [16] D. Temperley. Music and Probability. The MIT Press, 2007.