Music – Instruments – Electrical musical tone generation
Reexamination Certificate
2001-03-23
2003-01-14
Fletcher, Marlon T. (Department: 2837)
Music
Instruments
Electrical musical tone generation
C084S610000, C084S613000, C084S649000, C084S650000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06506969
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to an automatic music generation procedure and system. It applies, in particular, to the broadcasting of background music, to teaching media, to telephone on-hold music, to electronic games, to toys, to music synthesizers, to computers, to camcorders, to alarm devices, to musical telecommunication and, more generally, to the illustration of sounds and to the creation of music.
The music generation procedures and systems currently known use a library of stored musical sequences which serve as a basis for manipulating automatic random assemblies. These systems have three main types of drawback:
firstly, the musical variety resulting from the manipulation of existing musical sequences is necessarily very limited;
secondly, the manipulation of parameters is limited to the interpretation of the assembly of sequences: tempo, volume, transposition, instrumentation; and
finally, the memory space used by the “templates” (musical sequences) is generally very large (several megabytes).
These drawbacks limit the applications of the currently known music generation systems to the non-professional illustration of sounds and to didactic music.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention intends to remedy these drawbacks. For this purpose, the subject of the present invention, according to a first aspect, is an automatic music generation procedure, characterized in that it comprises:
an operation of defining musical moments during which at least four notes are capable of being played;
an operation of defining two families of note pitches, for each musical moment, the second family of note pitches having at least one note pitch which is not in the first family;
an operation of forming at least one succession of notes having at least two notes, each succession of notes being called a musical phrase, in which succession, based on a phrase of at least three notes, each note whose pitch belongs exclusively to the second family is surrounded exclusively by notes of the first family; and
an operation of outputting a signal representative of each note pitch of each said succession.
By virtue of these arrangements, the succession of note pitches has both a very rich variety, since the number of successions that can be generated in this way is several thousands, and harmonic coherence, since the polyphony generated is governed by constraints.
According to particular characteristics during the operation of defining two families of note pitches, for each musical moment, the first family is defined as a set of note pitches belonging to the current harmonic chord duplicated from octave to octave.
According to further particular characteristics, during the operation of defining two families of note pitches, the second family includes at least the pitches, of a scale whose mode has been defined, which are not in the first family.
By virtue of these arrangements, the definition of the families is easy and the alternation of notes of the two families is harmonious.
According to further particular characteristics, during the operation of forming at least one succession of notes having at least two notes, each musical phrase is defined as a set of notes the starting times of which are not mutually separated, in pairs, by more than a predetermined duration.
By virtue of these arrangements, a musical phrase consists, for example, of notes the starting times of which are not separated by more than three semiquavers (or sixteenth notes).
According to further particular characteristics, the music generation procedure furthermore includes an operation of inputting values representative of physical quantities and in that at least one of the operations of defining musical moments, by definition of two families of note pitches, formed from at least one succession of notes, is based on the value of at least one value of a physical quantity.
By virtue of these arrangements, the musical piece may be put into relationship with a physical event, such as an image, a movement, a shape, a sound, a keyed input, phases of a game whose physical quantity is representative, etc.
According to a second aspect, the subject of the invention is an automatic music generation system, characterized in that it comprises:
a means of defining musical moments during which at least four notes are capable of being played;
a means of defining two families of note pitches, for each musical moment, the second family of note pitches having at least one note pitch which is not in the first family;
a means of forming at least one succession of notes having at least two notes, each succession of notes being called a musical phrase, in which succession, for each moment, each note whose pitch belongs exclusively to the second family is surrounded exclusively by notes of the first family; and
a means of outputting a signal representative of each note pitch of each said succession.
The subject of the present invention, according to a third aspect, is a music generation procedure, characterized in that it comprises:
an operation of processing information representative of a physical quantity during which at least one value of a parameter called a “control parameter” is generated;
an operation of associating each control parameter with at least one parameter called a “music generation parameter” each corresponding to at least one note to be played during a musical piece; and
a music generation operation using each music generation parameter to generate a musical piece.
By virtue of these arrangements, not only may a note depend on a physical quantity, as in a musical instrument, but a music generation parameter relating to at least one note to be played depends on a physical quantity.
According to particular characteristics, the music generation operation comprises, successively:
an operation of automatically determining a musical structure composed of moments comprising bars (or mesures), each bar having times and each time having note start locations;
an operation of automatically determining densities, probabilities of the start of a note to be played, these being associated with each location; and
an operation of automatically determining rhythmic cadences according to densities.
According to particular characteristics, the music generation operation comprises:
an operation of automatically determining harmonic chords which are associated with each location;
an operation of automatically determining families of note pitches according to the rhythmic chord which is associated with a location; and
an operation of automatically selecting a note pitch associated with each location corresponding to the start of a note to be played, according to said families and to rules of predetermined composition.
According to further particular characteristics, the music generation operation comprises:
an operation of automatically selecting orchestral instruments;
an operation of automatically determining a tempo;
an operation of automatically determining the overall tonality of the piece;
an operation of automatically determining an intensity for each location corresponding to the start of a note to be played;
an operation of automatically determining the duration of each note to be played;
an operation of automatically determining rhythmic cadences of arpeggios; and/or
an operation of automatically determining rhythmic cadences of accompaniment chords.
According to particular characteristics, during the music generation operation each density depends on said tempo (speed of performing the piece).
According to a fourth aspect, the subject of the invention is a music generation procedure which takes into account a family of descriptors, each descriptor relating to several possible start locations of notes to be played in a musical piece, said procedure comprising, for each descriptor, an operation of selecting a value, characterized in that, for at least some of said descriptors, said value depends on at least one physical quantity.
According to a fifth aspect, the subject of the present invention is a music gen
Fletcher Marlon T.
Kiel Paul P.
Medal Sarl
Tripoli Joseph S.
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