TablaNet: a Real-Time Online Musical Collaboration System for Indian Percussion

by Mihir Sarkar
Thesis proposal (updated), MIT Media Lab, Dec. 2006.

Distance education in music stands to benefit from real-time interactions over the Internet. For instance we can imagine an instructor living in a city teaching music to children in villages so as to enhance or help maintain their local traditions. At the same time, online music performance systems rely on real-time communication platforms over fast and robust data networks. In this context I propose to develop TablaNet, a real-time online musical collaboration system for the tabla, a pair of North Indian hand drums. I selected the tabla, not only because of my familiarity with it, but also because of its "intermediate complexity" as a percussion instrument: although tabla patterns are only based on rhythmic compositions without melodic or harmonic structure, different strokes can produce a variety of more than 10 pitched and unpitched sounds called bols, which contribute to the tabla’s expressive potential. Unlike other networked music performance projects, which attempt to optimize the audio stream in order to minimize the network latency, I plan to transmit symbolic information over the network. By listening to individual drum sounds, and automatically recognizing them at the near-end, the system will be able, based on the prior events received, to predict and synthesize rhythmic phrases with the appropriate pitch and tempo at the far-end. The system will be evaluated on quantitative grounds, such as its latency tolerance and audio quality, as well as in terms of the system’s "playability" by tabla players of various levels.

Document (PDF): 14 pages (524 KB)
Poster (JPG): 20 in × 40 in (652KB)