Tejaswinee Kelkar

Associate Professor - IMV stab

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Email tejaswinee.kelkar@imv.uio.no

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Visiting address Sem Sælands vei 2 ZEB-bygningen 0371 Oslo

Postal address Postboks 1017 Blindern 0315 Oslo

Other affiliations Institutt for pedagogikk (Student)

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Tejaswinee Kelkar is a researcher in music and motion, and a singer. She previously worked as a data analyst at Universal Music Norway and at the RITMO center of excellence at University of Oslo. Her research interests are melodic cognition, motion-capture and musical-cultural analysis. Her research focus is on how aspects of melodic perception are illustrated through multimodality, and linguistic prosody.

She draws heavily from her experiences with learning varied musical styles, and languages, and use them to inform her research. Her areas of interest:

1. Musical embodiment: how is music more than audition, and how can evidence of this be found in bodily engagement with music. Understanding why certain, but not other forms of embodied responses afforded to certain musical frameworks, and what does that say about culturally shared sense-making and aesthetic responses for music. Shedding light on other phenomena such as language and musical pleasure.

2. Technology: using current knowledge of machine learning, music information retrieval, and statistical analysis to illuminate patterns of musical interaction. Technology provides the backbone for the empirical research conducted, and as the primary methodological tool.

My vision is to create musical and technological experiences that go to the root of musical experiences and encourage curiosity. To this end, I like to incorporate aspects of spatialization and interaction that keeps at its center, the idea of ‘play’, and humor, in musical creation.

Academic interests

Motion Capture
Musical Embodiment
Melodic Contour
Melodic Perception
Multimodal Metaphor
Hindustani Classical Music

Courses

EXFAC03-MUS - Examens Facultatum
MCT4001 - Sound and Music Programming
MCT 4053 / HFIMV9053 - Motion Capture
MCT 4012 - Research Methods, Tools, and Issues in MCT
MCT 4043 - Music Related Motion Capture

Lectures

Background

As a musician, her focus is on retelling traditional music from her experiences of migration, and mediated by machine. She is interested in understanding the use of the voice as a disembodied, and distorted object.

She trained in hindustani classical singing from a young age, and later, western classical composition. In addition to being a vocalist, she plays the harmonium and other instruments. In her free time, she loves to swim and sketch.

Patel-Grosz, Pritty; Katz, Jonah; Grosz, Patrick Georg; Kelkar, Tejaswinee & Jensenius, Alexander Refsum (2022). From music to dance: The inheritance of semantic inferences. Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics. ISSN 1769-7158. 14, p. 219–238.
Patel-Grosz, Pritty; Grosz, Patrick Georg; Kelkar, Tejaswinee & Jensenius, Alexander Refsum (2022). Steps towards a semantics of dance. Journal of Semantics. ISSN 0167-5133. 39(4), p. 693–748. doi: 10.1093/jos/ffac009. Full text in Research Archive
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2021). Body Data for Music Information Retrieval Tasks . In Wieczorkowska, Alicja & Tsumoto, Shusaku (Ed.), Recommender Systems for Medicine and Music . Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021. ISSN 978-3-030-66448-0. p. 153–165. doi: https:/doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66450-3_10.
Laeng, Bruno; Kuyateh, Sarjo & Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2021). Substituting facial movements in singers changes the sounds of musical intervals. Scientific Reports. ISSN 2045-2322. 11(1). doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-01797-z. Full text in Research Archive
Kelkar, Tejaswinee & Gerry, Lynda Joy (2019). Resonance improviser: A system for transmitting the embodied sensations of vocalization between two people during improvisation. Proceedings of the SMC Conferences. ISSN 2518-3672. p. 495–496.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee; Roy, Udit & Jensenius, Alexander Refsum (2018). Evaluating a collection of Sound-Tracing Data of Melodic Phrases. In Gómez, Emilia; Hu, Xiao; Humphrey, Eric & Benetos, Emmanouil (Ed.), Proceedings of the 19th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference. Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique. ISSN 978-2-9540351-2-3. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Melodic contour, the ‘shape’ of a melody, is a common way to visualize and remember a musical piece. The purpose of this paper is to explore the building blocks of a future ‘gesture-based’ melody retrieval system. We present a dataset containing 16 melodic phrases from four musical styles and with a large range of contour variability. This is accompanied by full-body motion capture data of 26 participants performing sound-tracing to the melodies. The dataset is analyzed using canonical correlation analysis (CCA), and its neural network variant (Deep CCA), to understand how melodic contours and sound tracings relate to each other. The analyses reveal non-linear relationships between sound and motion. The link between pitch and verticality does not appear strong enough for complex melodies. We also find that descending melodic contours have the least correlation with tracing.
Patel-Grosz, Pritty; Grosz, Patrick Georg; Kelkar, Tejaswinee & Jensenius, Alexander Refsum (2018). Coreference and disjoint reference in the semantics of narrative dance. In Sauerland, Uli & Solt, Stephanie (Ed.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 22, vol. 2, ZASPiL 61. Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS). p. 199–216.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee & Jensenius, Alexander Refsum (2018). Analyzing Free-Hand Sound-Tracings of Melodic Phrases . Applied Sciences. ISSN 2076-3417. 8(1), p. 1–21. doi: 10.3390/app8010135. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
In this paper, we report on a free-hand motion capture study in which 32 participants ‘traced’ 16 melodic vocal phrases with their hands in the air in two experimental conditions. Melodic contours are often thought of as correlated with vertical movement (up and down) in time, and this was also our initial expectation. We did find an arch shape for most of the tracings, although this did not correspond directly to the melodic contours. Furthermore, representation of pitch in the vertical dimension was but one of a diverse range of movement strategies used to trace the melodies. Six different mapping strategies were observed, and these strategies have been quantified and statistically tested. The conclusion is that metaphorical representation is much more common than a ‘graph-like’ rendering for such a melodic sound-tracing task. Other findings include a clear gender difference for some of the tracing strategies and an unexpected representation of melodies in terms of a small object for some of the Hindustani music examples. The data also show a tendency of participants moving within a shared ‘social box’.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee & Jensenius, Alexander Refsum (2017). Representation Strategies in Two-handed Melodic Sound-Tracing. In Gillies, Marco (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Movement Computing. ACM Publications. ISSN 978-1-4503-5209-3. doi: 10.1145/3077981.3078050. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper describes an experiment in which the subjects performed a sound-tracing task to vocal melodies. They could move freely in the air with two hands, and their motion was captured using an infrared, marker-based system. We present a typology of distinct strategies used by the recruited participants to represent their perception of the melodies. These strategies appear as ways to represent time and space through the finite motion possibilities of two hands moving freely in space. We observe these strategies and present their typology through qualitative analysis. Then we numerically verify the consistency of these strategies by conducting tests of significance between labeled and random samples.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee & Jensenius, Alexander Refsum (2017). Exploring melody and motion features in “sound-tracings”. In Lokki, Tapio; Pätynen, Jukka & Välimäki, Vesa (Ed.), Proceedings of the 14th Sound and Music Computing Conference 2017. Aalto University. ISSN 978-952-60-3729-5. p. 98–103. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Pitch and spatial height are often associated when describing music. In this paper we present results from a sound tracing study in which we investigate such sound–motion relationships. The subjects were asked to move as if they were creating the melodies they heard, and their motion was captured with an infra-red, marker-based camera system. The analysis is focused on calculating feature vectors typically used for melodic contour analysis. We use these features to compare melodic contour typologies with motion contour typologies. This is based on using proposed feature sets that were made for melodic contour similarity measurement. We apply these features to both the melodies and the motion contours to establish whether there is a correspondence between the two, and find the features that match the most. We find a relationship between vertical motion and pitch contour when evaluated through features rather than simply comparing contours.

View all works in Cristin

Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2023). Mira Thiruchelvam og Vestnorsk Jazzensemble: Pantone 448 C with Cumin.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee & Erdem, Cagri (2021). Two-Body Problem.
Patel-Grosz, Pritty; Katz, Jonah; Grosz, Patrick Georg; Kelkar, Tejaswinee & Jensenius, Alexander Refsum (2021). From music to dance: the inheritance of semantic inferences.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee; Wærstad, Bernt Isak; Susdorf, Marek Karol & Sørbø, Solveig (2021). Solveigs Speisa Musikk | Musikkfest 2021. [Radio]. Oslo, Radio Orakel.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2020). NTT: Noen forsker på musikk helt på ekte - Jazznytt.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2019). Spatial and Bodily Metaphors as means for Musical Sense-making.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2019). WoNoMute LittleBits Workshop.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2019). Girl Music Tech Camp . Show summary
Vi inviterer elever fra videregående skole til å lære mer om musikkteknologi. Du får muligheten til å teste ulike instrumenter og synth'er, vil lære å programmere dine egne lyder, og forstå noen av prinsippene som ligger til grunn for digital lyd og musikk. Kurset avholdes hver dag i høstferien fra kl 10-14, og vi vil gå gjennom forskjellige temaer: Lydopptak og redigering Lydanalyse Lydmekking Lydprogrammering Sammenstilling av det hele Planen er å jobbe så praktisk som mulig. Vi legger opp til jam-sessions underveis, samt mulighet for lydopptak med ulike verktøy. Den siste dagen blir det en liten konsert hvor vi setter alt sammen. I løpet av uken får du møtt andre jenter som er opptatt av musikkteknologi, og får snakket med studenter ved Institutt for musikkvitenskap. Du vil også få omvisning i studioer og lab'er og høre litt om den spennende forskningen som foregår ved instituttet.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee; Erdem, Cagri & Lan, Qichao (2019). Utopia.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2019). Improverk: Chicago Connections + Kelkar & Shrestha .
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2018). Data visualization in Python.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2018). Oslo Jazzfestivalen - ft Jazz in Khartoum ft Agbalagba Dada.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2018). Jazz in Khartoum - ft. Sudeshna Bhattacharya.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2018). Jazz in Khartoum - ft Tejaswinee Kelkar #2.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2018). MAM - Nepal / Avatar.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2018). Disembodied Voice.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2018). Python Toolboxes for Mocap Analysis.
Vinje, Petrine & Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2018). DEPOT. DEPOSITORY. RAYS EN UTSTILLING AV PETRINE VINJE.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee; Roy, Udit & Jensenius, Alexander Refsum (2018). Evaluating a collection of Sound-Tracing Data of Melodic Phrases.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2017). Jazz in Khartoum ft Tejaswinee Kelkar.
Martin, Charles Patrick; Gonzalez Sanchez, Victor Evaristo; Kelkar, Tejaswinee; Zelechowska, Agata; Berggren, Stig Johan & Hopgood, Christina [Show all 13 contributors for this article] (2017). Ensemble Metatone - Improvised Touchscreen Performance.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2017). Cliche Raga A vocal sketch + neural network look at the Thumri songform.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2017). Motifs in Melodies.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2017). Historical Performance and the Indian Musical Tradition. Show summary
The influence of musicology on the western classical performance tradition, is in no small part due to the practice of historical performance. This includes reproducing music from a different time period. The reproduction of instruments, interpretation of the way in which the instruments might have been played from text and description, analysis of intonation, the meaning of the poetry from the time period and other areas are involved in the way that performance itself is constructed and taught. The Indian musical tradition relies on a different interpretation of historical performance. Although seminal works are written about Indian music, it continues to be an oral tradition, by virtue of which music itself hasn’t been written down. Philosophy and analysis of music, though, can be found in these seminal works. Stylistic specialization in this style is thus is horizontal, rather than vertical in time –a particular form (khyal or dhrupad), or with the stylistic affliction of one gharana (school) over another is studied deeply, as opposed to specializing in different time periods. Music itself is assumed to be coming from an imagined time in ‘history’ without a date or a place. The qualities of a raga performance or other musical features can be explained by a seminal texts belonging to any time period in history although several things have changed in the pedagogy and performance of music, from use of technology for music making as well as pedagogy. Musicology in this context takes a very different position. The role of the musicologist as an interpreter of performance style in terms of horizontal influence on vocalization and modal content becomes important. This paper will talk about the nature of the interaction of the musicologist and the performer as key figures in the interpretation of the body of Indian music.
Jensenius, Alexander Refsum & Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2017). Improvisation for Linnstrument, voice and Mogees.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee & Jensenius, Alexander Refsum (2017). Representation Strategies in Two-handed Melodic Sound-Tracing. Show summary
This paper describes an experiment in which the subjects performed a sound-tracing task to vocal melodies. They could move freely in the air with two hands, and their motion was captured using an infrared, marker-based system. We present a typology of distinct strategies used by the recruited participants to represent their perception of the melodies. These strategies appear as ways to represent time and space through the finite motion possibilities of two hands moving freely in space. We observe these strategies and present their typology through qualitative analysis. Then we numerically verify the consistency of these strategies by conducting tests of significance between labeled and random samples.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee & Jensenius, Alexander Refsum (2017). Exploring melody and motion features in “sound-tracings”. Show summary
Pitch and spatial height are often associated when describing music. In this paper we present results from a sound tracing study in which we investigate such sound–motion relationships. The subjects were asked to move as if they were creating the melodies they heard, and their motion was captured with an infra-red, marker-based camera system. The analysis is focused on calculating feature vectors typically used for melodic contour analysis. We use these features to compare melodic contour typologies with motion contour typologies. This is based on using proposed feature sets that were made for melodic contour similarity measurement. We apply these features to both the melodies and the motion contours to establish whether there is a correspondence between the two, and find the features that match the most. We find a relationship between vertical motion and pitch contour when evaluated through features rather than simply comparing contours.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee & Jensenius, Alexander Refsum (2017). Tracing melodies: An observation study of hand movements to vocal phrases from different musical cultures.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2016). Tabla performance at Eastern Daze III.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2015). Generation of Quizzes and Solutions based on ontology - a Case for a Music Problem Generator.
Kelkar, Tejaswinee (2019). Computational Analysis of Melodic Contour and Body Movement. 07 Gruppen. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
The aim of this dissertation is to understand the role of embodiment in melodic contour perception. In other words, it studies how we move our bodies in response to music. Melodies play an important role in both speech and music. This thesis consists of two parts, the first part being a background section discussing the theoretical motivations and methods used. The second part is a collection of four articles. Each of the articles explores a dimension of melodic contour: verticality, motion metaphors, body use, and multi-feature correlational analysis. The empirical work is based on sound-tracing as an experimental paradigm. This brings together the multimodal mappings of pitched sound, gestural imagery evoked by these sounds, and defining geometries of these contours. Two sound-tracing experiments were conducted, resulting in three datasets that have been used in the analyses. In the experiments, participants listened to 16 melodies from four different genres: operatic vocalise, jazz scatting, North-Indian singing, and Sámi joik. The participants listened to each melody twice, the first time standing still, and the second time ``drawing'' the sounds in the air. Infrared motion capture was used to record the participants' body movement, and the analysis is focused primarily on the movement of their hands. The sound analysis is based on signal processing algorithms for pitch detection and methods for contour representation. Cross-correlation of the data is performed using a range of methods from statistical hypothesis testing to canonical correlation analysis. The analysis reveals that although there is a natural propensity to describe pitches in terms of the vertical dimension, the experimental data do not clearly show such an association. Average profiles of movement responses to melodies have an arch-like representation, regardless of the contour of the melody. Spatial height is associated more with relative pitch in the melodic context traced, rather than an absolute pitch scale. In addition, movement indicating metaphoric representation of sound was used more often by participants.