Puru Samal
An ALgorithmic approach to Indian Classical Music
Indian classical music makes extensive use of quartertones and microtones, usually referred to as ‘Shruti', and is not represented by Western semitones. Performances are usually supported by a tanpura, which has a rich harmonic structure leading to the perception of several shrutis for which there are no corresponding tuned strings.
This project attempts to represent shrutis, an algorithmic computer music system, by extracting relevant features from a tanpura signal. An acoustical analysis of the tanpura signal will be conducted to identify harmonic partials that correlate well with these shrutis. Sound synthesis algorithms will be developed to drive an algorithmic composition using these harmonic partials.
Puru Samal is a sound designer, music technologist and audio programmer based in Chicago. Born in India, he spent most of his formative years exploring his curiosity behind the technologies involved in audio and music. After a brief stint at a recording studio in India, He moved to Chicago to study Music Technology and Sound Design at Columbia College. He currently spends most of his time designing auditory elements for a variety of needs, programming tools for sound synthesis/processing and conducting signal processing and sonification research. His interests lie in the fields of software design, digital signal processing, audio encoding, streaming, music information retrieval, sound synthesis, and deep learning. In his free time, he enjoys reading books, creating algorithmic sound art, playing basketball and trying out new restaurants with his partner Caitlin.