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Advancing Music Source Separation for Indian Classical and Semi-Classical Cinema Compositions - Dr. Balamurugan Varadarajan, Pawan G & Dhayanithi Arumugam - ADCx India 2025
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Indian cinema music is a unique fusion of classical and semi-classical elements, featuring intricate melodies, diverse instrumentation, and overlapping tones that often present challenges for source separation. Traditional source separation models, primarily trained on Western music, fail to handle the tonal overlap and instrumental bleed characteristic of Indian cinema. To address this, our team evaluates existing models, including Spleeter and Hybrid Demucs, and identifies Spleeter as the optimal solution due to its efficient U-Net-based spectrogram architecture.
Prior research has shown that retraining Spleeter on Carnatic music significantly enhances its performance, improving the Source-to-Distortion Ratio (SDR) compared to baseline models. Building on this, we propose fine-tuning Spleeter on a specialized dataset of classical and semi-classical multi-tracks, specifically tailored to the nuances of Indian cinema. This method enables the model to better capture the unique characteristics of Indian music, such as tonal overlap between instruments like the violin and vocals, and instrumental bleed from pitched percussion like the Mridangam.
The objective is to develop a specialized source separation tool capable of enhancing workflows for composers, music directors, and analysts in Indian cinema. By integrating this tool into digital audio workstations (DAWs), this project aims to elevate music production and research, offering a more accurate and perceptually refined separation process. This work sets the stage for more precise musicological analysis and creative experimentation in Indian cinema music, marking a significant step forward in the integration of AI with traditional music practices.
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Slides: https://data.audio.dev/talks/ADCxIndia/2025/advancing-music-source-separation-for-indian-classical-and-semi-classical-cinema-compositions/slides.pptx
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Dr. Balamurugan Varadarajan
Disrupting industrial problems and humanizing technology with AI, AI engineer with extensive experience in both research and product development. Specialize in cross-domain knowledge to contribute to AI technologies for scientific and industrial data as an essential member of an innovative firm. Having worked on the creation and testing of AI solutions for more than a 8 years. Possess an unbridled passion for Artificial Intelligence with comprehensive knowledge of machine learning concepts and other related technologies. Unmatched abilities to identify, understand, and translate program requirements into sustainable, advanced technical solutions through continuous improvement of Al technologies.
Pawan G
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Dhayanithi Arumugam
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Special thanks to the ADCx India Team:
Sophie Carus
Derek Heimlich
Andrew Kirk
Bobby Lombardi
Tom Poole
Ralph Richbourg
Jim Roper
Jonathan Roper
Prashant Mishra
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