Exploring the acoustic color signature paterns of Bansuri, the traditional Indian bamboo flute using principles of the Helmholtz generator and geometric signal processing techniques

The traditional Indian bamboo flute, commonly known as the Bansuri, has rich harmonic features in the acoustic color domain and has been part of South Asian classical, indigeneous, and folks traditions for as long as recorded history. In this talk, I will explore the Bansuri as a composite Helmhotz resonator and present my initial investigations on how some of the physics of the Helmholz resonator create the rich melodic sound of the Indian Bansuri. In the signal processing and data science domain, we will also present rich acoustic color features generated by traditional melodic movements in North indian classical music. In particular, the talk will cover computational techniques designed to separate the modes of acoustic propagation and sound production in the Bansuri, e.g., filtering out leakage due to mixing of modes. If time permits, I will also present how the geometric aspects of the acoustic color features may be exploited to create a fluid feature dictionary that may be harnessed with large language models (LLM)-like architecture to enable machine interpretation of Indian. classical music traditions.