/ Research & Publications / The Music of Minds and Machines
Can the aesthetic experience of an Indian musical performance be formalized and replicated on a computer? That was the question that animated and sustained the years of research that led to the eventual development of the Generative Theory of Indian Music. The fruits of this long labor also include two Artificially Intelligent (AI) systems viz. AI-Raga and AI-Tala and few other smart systems. Though rooted in the ancient treatises, the theory takes a novel and foundational approach towards Indian Music.
The Theory attempts to unearth the harmonic bases of the Indian musical tradition and codifies them into the ‘Laws of Musical Intelligence’. These along with some fundamental axioms combine and conjugate to spawn the fundamental scales and modes of Hindustani Music. The Theory then delves into the formation of the Ragas and their evolution which rather surprisingly has a computational dimension. It also explores the various factors involved in phrase generation, rendering, Vistara and performance of a Bandish. The latter part of the book is dedicated to the theory of rhythm or Tala. A Gana-Varga based classification system for Ragas and Talas is also developed and exposited.
It is to be hoped that this book sparks interest in those with a passion to uncover the logical foundations of art in general and music in particular. To that end, the author wishes the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth.
It gives me immense pleasure to present you a copy of the book titled `The Music of Minds and Machines: A Deep Dive into the Generative Theory of Indian Music’ for your reference/ digital archive. FLAME University, Pune India, has graciously published it recently.
I would be happy to receive your comments and observations to take the discussion forward on Indian Music.
You can down load the PDF from the following link:
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Dr. Vinod Vidwans
Professor,
Department of Design, Art and Performance,
FLAME University,
Pune, India
Email: vinodvidwans@gmail.com