srutilevel

Sruti level, or srutilevel, is a metric used in music technology and ethnomusicology to describe the alignment of a performance with respect to the sruti system of Indian classical music. The sruti denotes a microtonal pitch unit within an octave, and srutilevel provides a single scalar value intended to summarize intonation accuracy over a passage or performance.

Etymology: The term combines sruti with level and has appeared in scholarly discussions and software documentation since the early 21st century to facilitate quantitative analysis of pitch.

Measurement: A srutilevel score is computed by extracting the performance's pitch contour, mapping each pitch to the nearest reference sruti position in the chosen tuning framework (Hindustani or Carnatic). Each mapping yields a deviation measured in cents or fractions of a sruti. The score is normalized to a scale (for example 0 to 100), where higher scores indicate closer alignment to the reference sruti sequence. Some implementations report distributional statistics (mean deviation, standard deviation) in addition to a single srutilevel.

Applications: It is used in music education tools to provide feedback on intonation, in audition and performance analysis software, and in research comparing tuning practices across performers, gharanas, or ragas. It can also support automated pitch correction that respects microtonal targets.

Limitations: sruti systems vary between Hindustani and Carnatic music, and there is no single universally accepted reference. Microtonal renderings, ornaments, and expressive microtonal bends (gamakas) may reduce the usefulness of a single score. Relies on pitch-detection accuracy and on choice of reference tuning.

See also: sruti, intonation, pitch detection, microtone.