Equal Temperament and Just Intonation Feature Based Analysis of Indian Music

Abstract

It is a well-known fact that most western music is based on equal temperament, but Indian music is based on just intonation. However, the west has always been in the lead in creating electronic music processing tools like keyboards and software like Ableton Live. These instruments and programmes made by the west and intended mainly for Western music are increasingly used in Indian film music and a lot of fusion music (Equal temperament).A quantitative assessment is required to determine how severe the compromise is when using this software or instruments for Indian music production. We discovered that, despite numerous papers stating the distinction between the two types of scales (just intonation and equal temperament), there isn’t a single thorough study that carries out trials and documents the honour. We are conducting this study for the first time. In this piece, we experiment with numerous Indian instrumental and vocal compositions to compare equal temperament with merely intonated scales. We discovered that the compromise is minimal when the music is mostly instrumental but significant when it is vocal. We also identified intriguing patterns in the musical notes (of Indian music) that were “closer” to the equivalent equal temperament notes than just intonated notes by examining the frequency values. For this study’s sake, we evaluate plain notes exclusively; we do not examine musical notes containing the words “gamakam” or “meend.” Since only plain notes are discussed in this text, Carnatic and Hindustani music can benefit from them. Finally, we make the dataset available to the general public to encourage more research in this area.