This book, designed for an international audience, offers a comprehensive glossary of music terms with a focus on Indian music, which traces its roots to the Vedas. Using a wealth of compositions, it explores the statistical approach to analysing the styles of the Trinity of Carnatic music. Key topics such as notes, ragas, talas, ornamentation, and the limitations in analysing gamakas are included. The study methods are clearly outlined, shedding light on sonant-consonance relationships and explaining why Shannon's entropy is neither a style nor raga characteristic. The text discusses periodicity in variograms and the hole effect due to variations / sangathis. It demonstrates that Indian music, adhering to the Markov property, is neither entirely deterministic nor random. New methods are introduced to quantify determinism and define convolute scales' ascent and descent, including substitutability analysis. This is a pioneering work with "originality", a good reference book opening up new avenues for research in comparative music.
Dr Murthy has an outstanding academic record, holding a BSc (Hons) and MSc, and receiving three awards. He earned three postgraduate diplomas and three doctoral degrees in geology, geostatistics, and musicology. He was awarded prestigious scholarships by the Austrian and French governments for further studies.Professionally a geologist, Dr Murthy is also a passionate musicologist specialising in Carnatic and comparative music. With a strong background in physics, mathematics, and statistics, he possesses a critical analytical mind. He led a Music Association at Donimalai, Karnataka State, India and was an executive member of Visakha Music Academy in Visakhapatnam, India.He has participated in national seminars and international symposiums on musicology and contributed papers. He has also travelled widely, attending concerts and operas across Europe. He conducted original research and published over 12 articles on musicology in journals of international repute, including the Journal of Music Academy, Chennai, Shanmukha of Mumbai, Sangeet Natak, Delhi, India.
