Beyond Notation: A Digital Platform for Transcribing and Analyzing Oral Melodic Traditions

This paper describes the Interactive Digital Transcription and Analysis Platform (IDTAP): The IDTAP is a web-based application designed to enable users to digitally transcribe, archive, share, and analyze audio recordings of oral melodic traditions. The platform’s underlying music-theoretical premises and corresponding data architecture have initially been developed to align with the idiomatic features of Hindustani music (i.e., North Indian classical music). These features necessitate a flexible array of pitch-contour curves; adjustable tuning systems that allow for the representation of a range of microtonal configurations found in both historical and contemporary practice; expressive microtonal pitch inflections between tuning system pitches; and a highly precise rhythmic representation that captures subtle micro-timing nuances, expressive tempo variations, and both metric and non-metric rhythmic structures exactly as performed. The IDTAP’s archive, transcription editor, and analysis suite jointly are designed for future expansion to include a range of musical traditions, opening multiple sound collections and archives to digital preservation, pedagogy, and appreciation, as well as statistical, quantitative, and interpretive analysis. The platform and corresponding data architecture equips scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds to apply the power of twenty-first-century computational methodologies and large datasets to humanistic and creative endeavors.