Seeking the essence of sound

Hindustani classical vocalist Sandeep Ranade has come up with an app that uses AI technology to enable studio-quality recording.

Necessity is the mother of invention — for the Pune-based techie and Hindustani vocalist Sandeep Ranade, this did not remain a mere proverb.

When a student of his was finding it difficult to comprehend certain musical notes, it sparked an idea that eventually fructified into NaadSaadhana, which he describes as an App that enables studio-quality recording.

NaadSaadhana is a mix of the Sanskrit words for “essence of sound” and “systemic practice”. “It helps practice, perform and publish,” he said.

“One of my students sought help…she had a major problem with notes. She could not find some notes and her progress had not been okay. I found ways and means to help her and thus was born NaadSaadhana,” said the 1981-born Ranade, who is a software engineer by profession and a noted Hindustani classical vocalist, composer and teacher.

“It is an all-in-one AI-enabled studio-quality music app. Initially, it introduced tunes to support practising Indian classical singing; today, NaadSadhana has expanded to support seven different genres of music. And with the help of artificial intelligence and Core ML, the app listens even as a singer improvises a vocal line, provides instant feedback on the accuracy of notes, and generates a backing track to match, all in real time,” he explained.

NaadSadhana has neither stock riffs nor repeating loops; its 10 instruments, including virtual tanpura, tabla and harmonium, are as spontaneous as your vocals. And with features like visual biofeedback, it’s a powerful tool for the blind or hard-of-hearing people. The app features automatic harmonies on violin, piano and harmonium as well as percussion instruments like shakers and ankle bells.

Its AI is attuned not just to the complexities of each instrument, but also to the mix of the orchestra and the mood of the singer. “It’s not as simple as ‘This is the note he’s singing, so here are the chords,’” Ranade says. “There has to be context: Is he singing slower or faster? Does he sound sadder or more upbeat? That changes the chords you hear, from all the thousands possible.”

A rising star

Ranade is regarded highly for his work on the techniques, aesthetics, and philosophy of music, and has been trained under the late Padma-Vibhushan Sangeet Martand Pandit Jasraj.

In fact, he has the distinction of accompanying Pandit Jasraj as a supporting vocalist at the Sawai Gandharva Sangeet Mahotsav, the annual classical music festival held in Pune.

He has also earned praise from many musical greats including late Pandit Jasraj, late S P Balasubrahmanyam, A R Rahman, Shankar Mahadevan and others.

Musical innovation

The app has been awarded the prestigious ‘Apple Design Award’. Some of its tracks, such as ‘Na Corona Karo’ and ‘Anand Barsao’, have gone viral as has the ‘NaadYoga’, a 15-minute vocal workout. NaadSadhana was selected out of over a million apps for its innovation in music, technology and design. It is only the second Indian app to have ever won this award, and the very first one about Indian music, art and culture. Most of the other award winners were larger teams, while NaadSadhana is a one-man effort.

He was also in the winners’ list of the Mphasis Universal Design Award for 2020 by the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP).

Ranade studied computer software and engineering at the University of Pune and Johns Hopkins University and worked with tech-giants like Microsoft and Google. A few years ago, he returned to Pune to focus on music, to teach, and build a start-up.

“Training for Indian classical singing is an intense and demanding process; in the ‘ancient system’, students would live with their teachers and practise for 10 hours in a day, every day. Today, we may not have this kind of time, but we need the same sort of rigour,” says Ranade.

“If you don’t have frequent course correction, your neural pathways won’t converge to where they need to be,” he says. “I needed something that would tell students, ‘You’re just a little bit flat here, a little sharp there.’” Unable to find a solution — and despite having no background in Swift, Xcode, AI, graphic design, or designing mobile apps — he set out to build it all himself.

From there, Ranade began tweaking. He added an AI to detect what was being sung and how, but felt there was room for more. “I wanted accompaniment,” he says.

“Instruments like a swarmandal, which has 40 strings, are hard to tune and travel with. I thought, ‘What if something could play close to as well as I can, stay in tune, and fit on my phone?’”

He gave the app a test run by recording ‘Na Corona Karo’, a song about taking precautions in the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic. The track became a viral hit and was shared by A R Rahman and others. But Ranade was most moved by the reaction he got from the leaders in his field. “Musical geniuses like my late guru thought it was real human accompaniment,” he says. “They were astonished that it was software.”