Composing recorded Tabla sound to accompany musicians

The primary percussion instrument extensively used in the music of many Asian countries is Tabla. Although, this cheap instrument has high sense of pitch and can create variety of pleasant sounds, it hard to play. Consequently, there is a huge lack of percussionists. Most of the musicians like to perform with a few known players. Pitch tuning requires long time and its range is also limited. As a result, for quick switchover from one scale to another, players are to carry many sets of instruments tuned at different pitch. In this paper, we have proposed a scheme to synthesize prerecorded tabla sounds to assist soloists. The synthesized sound seems like real performed sound. The pitch, tempo and rhythm can be customized based on musician´s requirement. In addition to the performance expression of the traditional tabla interaction, it can also provide non-standard sounds and alternative musical expressions.