Iranian Dastgah Music Recognition Based on Notes Sequence Extraction and Use of LSTM Networks

Iranian "Dastgah" music classification by computer is a very interesting yet complex and challenging topic for those who are interested in Iranian Dastgah music. The aforementioned problem is important, firstly, due to its many applications in different areas such as composing and teaching music, and secondly, because of the needs of ordinary people to computer to detect the Dastgah. This paper presents a method for recognition of the genre (Dastgah) and subgenre (sub-Dastgah) of Iranian music based on sequential note extraction, hierarchical classification, and the use of LSTM networks. In the proposed method, the music track is first classified into one of the three general categories. The first category includes only "Mahour" Dastgah, the second category includes "Shour" and "Nava", and the third category includes "Homayoun", "Segah" and "Chahargah". Then, for each category, depending on its type, a different number of classifiers are applied until one of the 6 Dastgah and 11 sub-Dastgah of Iranian music are recognized. This research is not limited to any particular style of playing or instruments, it is also not affected by neither the speed nor the techniques of player. The labeled tracks in the "Arg" database, which is created for this research, are solo. However, some of them are also played by percussion instruments (such as the Tombak) along with melodic instruments. The results show that recognition of 6 main Dastgah and 11 sub-Dastgah have been approved by an average accuracy of 74.5% and 66.35%, respectively, which is more promising compared to other few similar studies.