SANGEET: A XML based Open Dataset for Research in Hindustani Sangeet

Abstract: It is very important to access a rich music dataset that is useful in a wide variety of applications. Currently, available datasets are mostly focused on storing vocal or instrumental recording data and ignoring the requirement of its visual representation and retrieval. This paper attempts to build an XML-based public dataset, called SANGEET, that stores comprehensive information of Hindustani Sangeet (North Indian Classical Music) compositions written by famous musicologist Pt. Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande. SANGEET preserves all the required information of any given composition including metadata, structural, notational, rhythmic, and melodic information in a standardized way for easy and efficient storage and extraction of musical information. The dataset is intended to provide the ground truth information for music information research tasks, thereby supporting several data-driven analysis from a machine learning perspective. We present the usefulness of the dataset by demonstrating its application on music information retrieval using XQuery, visualization through Omenad rendering system. Finally, we propose approaches to transform the dataset for performing statistical and machine learning tasks for a better understanding of Hindustani Sangeet. The dataset can be found at https://github.com/cmisra/Sangeet.