Metrical Strength and Contradiction in Turkish Makam Music

In this paper we investigate how note onsets in Turkish Makam music compositions are distributed, and in how far this distribution supports or contradicts the metrical structure of the pieces, the usul. We use MIDI data to derive the distributions in the form of onset histograms, and compare them with metrical weights that are applied to describe the usul in theory. We compute correlation and syncopation values to estimate the degrees of support and contradiction, respectively. While the concept of syncopation is rarely mentioned in the context of this music, we can gain interesting insight into the structure of a piece using such a measure. We show that metrical contradiction is systematically applied in some metrical structures. We will compare the differences between Western music and Turkish Makam music regarding metrical support and contradiction. Such a study can help avoiding pitfalls in later attempts to perform audio processing tasks such as beat tracking or rhythmic similarity measurements.