Music – Instruments – Electrical musical tone generation
Reexamination Certificate
1999-09-24
2003-06-10
Donels, Jeffrey (Department: 2837)
Music
Instruments
Electrical musical tone generation
Reexamination Certificate
active
06576828
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic composition apparatus and a method for automatically composing a piece of music according to various conditions relating to music, and a storage medium that stores a program to be executed for automatically composing a piece of music.
2. Prior Art
A known automatic composition apparatus for automatically composing a piece of music according to various conditions relating to music is disclosed in, for example, laid-open Japanese Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 9-50278 and corresponding U.S. Pat. No. 5,736,663.
The automatic composition apparatus disclosed in the above-identified publication is adapted to analyze and extract musical features of an already-composed piece of music, and store the results of the analyzing and extracting process as a music template in a performance data memory. The known apparatus enables the user to suitably modify a music template selected from various music templates stored in the memory, thereby to automatically compose a piece of music based on the template that has been modified.
The data contained in the music template include those related to the rhythm of each phrase, including “density pattern (density)”, “the presence of a rest at the head of a phrase (phrase head delay designation”, “passage to be contrasted or imitated (contrast/imitation)”, “the presence of syncopation (designation of syncopation)” and so on. A beat priority setting table that determines the order of priority in which notes are allocated is created on the basis of the above data, and the tone generation timing of each syllable, namely, a rhythm pattern, is determined according to the beat priority setting table, and the number of syllables contained in the measure in question.
In the known automatic composition apparatus as described above, however, the rhythm pattern is determined based on the beat priority setting table that is uniformly determined according to data relating to the rhythm of each phrase indicated in the musical template, and therefore similar rhythm patterns are highly likely to be generated if similar characteristics are set in the musical template.
In order to modify the rhythm pattern, it is necessary to set the value of each of the above-indicated data, i.e., “density pattern (density)”, “the presence of a rest at the head of a phrase (phrase head delay designation”, “passage to be contrasted or imitated (contrast/imitation)”, “the presence of syncopation (designation of syncopation)” and so on, with respect to each of all phrases, thus requiring the user to perform cumbersome setting operations.
Furthermore, a considerably complicated algorithm is used for analyzing and extracting musical characteristics of an already-composed piece of music so as to produce a musical template, which requires an increased programming time and increased programming capacity, resulting in an increased manufacturing cost.
Moreover, the known automatic composition apparatus is not able to generate a rhythm pattern for a pickup measure (a measure that has a leading part thereof included in the previous measure), and thus fails to meet the user's demand for creating an rhythm pattern(s) for a piece of music containing a pickup measure(s).
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is therefore the first object of the present invention to provide automatic composition apparatus and method capable of modifying a rhythm pattern to provide a wide variety of rhythm patterns only through simple setting, and a storage medium that accomplishes this function.
The second object of the present invention is to provide automatic composition apparatus and method, and storage medium that are able to easily extract musical features of an already-composed piece of music, for example, when a piece of music is composed.
The third object of the present invention is to provide automatic composition apparatus and method, and storage medium capable of generating a rhythm pattern(s) for a piece of music including a singular measure(s) such as a pickup measure(s).
To accomplish the first object, the present invention provides an automatic composition apparatus comprising a rhythm pattern database comprising a plurality of rhythm patterns and characteristic data indicating characteristics of each of the rhythm patterns, a setting device that establishes characteristics of a rhythm pattern of a piece of music to be composed, and a selecting device that retrieves the characteristic data that match the characteristics established by the setting device, from the rhythm pattern database, and selects one of the rhythm patterns that corresponds to the retrieved characteristic data.
To accomplish the first object, the present invention provides an automatic composition method comprising the steps of providing a rhythm pattern database comprising a plurality of rhythm patterns and characteristic data indicating characteristics of each of the rhythm patterns, establishing characteristics of a rhythm pattern of a piece of music to be composed, retrieving the characteristic data that match the established characteristics from the rhythm pattern database, and selecting one of the rhythm patterns that corresponds to the retrieved characteristic data.
To accomplish the first object, the present invention provides a storage medium storing program that is executable by a computer, comprising a setting module that establishes characteristics of a rhythm pattern of a piece of music to be composed and, a selecting module that retrieves characteristic data that match the characteristics established by the setting module, from a rhythm pattern database comprising a plurality of rhythm patterns and characteristic data indicating characteristics of each of the rhythm patterns, and selects one of the rhythm patterns that corresponds to the retrieved characteristic data.
With the apparatus, method, and storage medium constructed as described above, characteristic data that match the set characteristics are retrieved from the rhythm pattern database, and a rhythm pattern corresponding to the retrieved characteristic data is selected. Accordingly, different rhythm patterns having the same characteristics can be easily obtained.
To accomplish the first object, the present invention provides an automatic composition apparatus comprising a setting device that establishes composition conditions to be applied to a whole piece of music to be composed, and an allocating device that allocates the composition conditions established by the setting device to each of sectional elements that constitute the piece of music.
To accomplish the first object, the present invention provides an automatic composition method comprising the steps of establishing composition conditions to be applied to a whole piece of music to be composed, and allocating the established composition conditions to each of sectional elements that constitute the piece of music.
To accomplish the first object, the present invention provides a storage medium storing program that is executable by a computer, comprising a setting module that establishes composition conditions to be applied to a whole piece of music to be composed, and an allocating module that allocates the composition conditions established by the setting device to each of sectional elements that constitute the piece of music.
Here, the sectional element may represent, for example, a passage, a phrase, or a measure, and the composition conditions for the whole piece of music are allocated to, or, distributed among the respective passages, phrases or measures.
With the above arrangement, the composition conditions set for the whole piece of music are allocated to the sectional elements that constitute the piece of music, and therefore a rhythm pattern having different characteristics may be obtained by changing only the characteristics of the whole piece of music, thus assuring an improved efficiency with which the user operates the apparatus.
More preferably, the characteristics of each of the rhythm patterns comp
Aoki Eiichiro
Sugiura Toshio
Donels Jeffrey
Rossi & Associates
Yamaha Corporation
LandOfFree
Automatic composition apparatus and method using rhythm... does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Automatic composition apparatus and method using rhythm..., we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Automatic composition apparatus and method using rhythm... will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-3152546