A Statistical Analysis of Melody Lengths in a North Indian Raga

Abstract

The length of a melody simply refers to the number of notes in it. Melody lengths also provide interesting data sets that merit statistical attention individually, apart from their role in calculating melody significance. However, their individual study has been a neglected aspect in music analysis. This paper makes amends with a case study in a north Indian raga. A 0-2 truncated Poisson model seems to characterize the melody lengths.

Keywords

• Raga
• Melody
• Melody length
• Truncated Poisson model
• statistical analysis