Signal-Based Characterisation of Stylistic Variation Across Tabla Gharanas

Author(s)	Mr. Nishant Patil
Country	Singapore
Abstract	The gharana system of North Indian classical music represents one of the most formalised traditions of stylistic transmission in the world, yet remains almost entirely unexamined from a computational perspective. A corpus-based, signal-level investigation of stylistic variation across four tabla gharanas (Delhi, Lucknow, Benares, and Punjab) is presented, using onset-derived and spectral features extracted from solo concert recordings. Four acoustically robust metrics are proposed and evaluated: the Normalised Pairwise Variability Index (nPVI), a normalised low-frequency energy ratio, a burst density coefficient, and the coefficient of variation of per-onset spectral centroid. Each metric is theoretically motivated by documented properties of gharana style, with predictions derived from ethnomusicological literature prior to analysis. To our knowledge, this constitutes the first signal-level computational study of tabla gharana stylistics, and a methodological framework is proposed to support future work in this domain.
Keywords	tabla, gharana, computational musicology, music information retrieval, Hindustani music, onset analysis, rhythmic style, timbral analysis
Field	Computer > Data / Information
Published In	Volume 8, Issue 4, July-August 2026
Published On	2026-07-28
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2026.v08i04.84671

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