Vadifanalyser

Vadifanalyser is a software tool designed for musical analysis in Hindustani classical music. It focuses on identifying and analyzing the vadi (the most important note in a raga) and the samvadi (the second most important note), as well as related tonal structures within a performance. The tool is intended for musicologists, educators, and performers to study raga character, performance practice, and historical variations.

Overview and capabilities: Vadifanalyser processes audio input to estimate tonal pitch trajectories, perform key and scale inference, and align musical events with ragas. It uses pitch-tracking algorithms, spectral features, and probabilistic models to detect candidate vadi and samvadi notes and generate annotated outputs, such as frame-level tags or score-like representations. The outputs may include confidence scores and visualizations to aid interpretation.

Implementation and formats: The software can be deployed as a standalone application or as a library integrated into other tools via APIs. It supports common audio formats (WAV, MP3) and can export annotations in standard formats (JSON, TextGrid) suitable for further analysis or archival work. Some implementations offer optional user input to refine detections based on performer or gharana conventions.

Limitations and considerations: Accuracy depends on recording quality, tempo, ornamentation (gamaks), and polyphonic textures. Microtonal inflections common in Hindustani performance may require specialized tuning handling. Vadifanalyser typically provides confidence scores and may recommend manual verification for critical analyses.

Applications: Used in musicological research, pedagogy, archival annotation, and performance analysis. It supports comparative studies across ragas and gharanas, and can assist educators and students in understanding the role of vadi and samvadi within musical practice.

See also: Hindustani classical music, vadi, samvadi, raga, music information retrieval, pitch tracking.