  In North Indian Classical Music, raga forms the basic structure over which
individual improvisations is performed by an artist based on his/her
creativity. The Alap is the opening section of a typical Hindustani Music (HM)
performance, where the raga is introduced and the paths of its development are
revealed using all the notes used in that particular raga and allowed
transitions between them with proper distribution over time. In India,
corresponding to each raga, several emotional flavors are listed, namely erotic
love, pathetic, devotional, comic, horrific, repugnant, heroic, fantastic,
furious, peaceful. The detection of emotional cues from Hindustani Classical
music is a demanding task due to the inherent ambiguity present in the
different ragas, which makes it difficult to identify any particular emotion
from a certain raga. In this study we took the help of a high resolution
mathematical microscope (MFDFA or Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis)
to procure information about the inherent complexities and time series
fluctuations that constitute an acoustic signal. With the help of this
technique, 3 min alap portion of six conventional ragas of Hindustani classical
music namely, Darbari Kanada, Yaman, Mian ki Malhar, Durga, Jay Jayanti and
Hamswadhani played in three different musical instruments were analyzed. The
results are discussed in detail.
