Pitch Contour Synthesis of Gamaka Using Just Intonation and Fibonacci Series based Interpolation

Indian Classical Music (ICM) is rich in history and traditions. However, in the world of computational and digital music, ICM has been less explored. This attributes to the intricate patterns of the ICM genre, in which digital instruments fail to capture or generate accurately. This study investigates the scope of digitally synthesizing pitch contours for South Indian classical (Carnatic) music, particularly Gamaka swaras. This study explored the method of pitch contour generation from existing Just Intonation and Fibonacci series based discrete pitch values utilizing different interpolation techniques. The pitch contours of real and synthesized gamaka swara shows strong correlation. The perceptual pitch accuracy is quantified by obtaining the mean absolute error and the mean deviation in cents. The study concluded that cubic spline interpolation of Fibonacci series based discrete pitch contour could faithfully generate a given Gamaka pattern. The possible use cases may extend to raga synthesis, digital representation for ICM, music information retrieval, music generation, virtual instruments, etc.