Music – Instruments – Electrical musical tone generation
Reissue Patent
1999-07-14
2001-09-18
Witkowski, Stanley J. (Department: 2837)
Music
Instruments
Electrical musical tone generation
C084S604000, C084S622000
Reissue Patent
active
RE037367
ABSTRACT:
This is a reissue application of U.S. Ser. No.
08
/
659
,
011
filed on Jun.
4
,
1996
and issued as U.S. Pat. No.
5
,
714
,
703
.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a musical sound generator employed in computer application systems using CPU, such as electronic game machines, network karaoke apparatuses, personal computers etc., and more particularly relates to a musical sound generator capable of generating various musical sounds according to performance information.
Conventionally, in an apparatus such as a personal computer, musical sound can be reproduced by means of a specialized hardware module such as a sound source LSI and a sound source board, and by executing programs to control the installed sound source device. Recently, performance of CPU in the personal computer is remarkably improved so that the musical sound can be generated by the CPU in place of the specialized hardware module. This sort of the musical sound generation is called “software sound source” in contrast to “hardware sound source” which generates musical sound by the specific hardware. The CPU computes waveform data of musical sound according to a specific program. The quality of the sound generated by the software sound source depends upon the performance of the CPU executing the program. If the CPU has high performance, the waveform data can be computed at high speed so that a sampling frequency of the waveform data can be raised high to realize high quality musical sound generation. However, if the CPU performance is poor, it is difficult to compute the data at high speed so that the sampling frequency must be lowered. This inevitably results in poor quality of the reproduced musical sound.
From system to system, there is a wide variety in the configuration of the application systems such as the personal computer, with respect to installation of optional devices. Generally, the optional device includes a hard disk, a video card etc., in broader meaning. However, in the present invention, the optional device means an externally connectable device involved in the musical sound generation. It should be noted that the processing ability of the CPU may be different in various system configurations. Further, in a situation where an application program to generate sound and another application program to execute other jobs are simultaneously invoked in parallel, a load of the CPU may vary dependently on the running status of the programs and on the status of tasks currently executed in the system. In this fashion, the effective processing power of the CPU may vary in the same system. Thus, a user must rearrange basic setup for the sound generation whenever an environment of the system is changed, and that is very laborious. In such systems, the user cannot recognize whether the sound is not generated correctly in a current configuration setup, until any miss and skip of tone occurs at the actual reproduction of the sound. In other words, it is impossible to evaluate whether the system configuration is reasonable until the sound is actually reproduced. Further, no matter how high the CPU performance is, an external sound generation hardware may be utilized in many cases according to the user's desire in practical use of the hardware resource. In such cases, full use of the hardware sound source may cause a problem that it is impossible to generate a sound surpassing the limitation of the facility of the sound generation hardware. A variety of tones cannot be reproduced. A number of timbre kinds cannot be increased even if there is a sufficient processing power in the CPU.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The purpose of the present invention is to solve the problems descried above, and is to provide a musical sound generator capable of generating various musical sounds while retaining excellent quality of the sounds.
According to the invention, a musical sound generating apparatus creates a waveform to generate a musical sound according to performance information. The apparatus comprises first waveform generator means operable for creating a waveform, second waveform generator means operable independently from the first waveform generator means for creating a waveform, input means for providing performance information, designating means for designating at least one of the first waveform generator means and the second waveform generator means in correspondence with the provided performance information, controller means for selectively operating the designated one of the first waveform generator means and the second waveform generator means to create the waveform according to the provided performance information, and output means for generating the musical sound based on the created waveform.
Specifically, the input means comprises means for providing performance information which contains timbre information effective to specify a timbre of the musical sound and timing information effective to specify a timing of generation of the musical sound. Further, the designating means comprises means for designating one of the first waveform generator means and the second waveform generator means in correspondence with the timbre information so that the output means generates the musical sound having the specified timbre at the specified timing.
The designating means may include means operable if desired for coincidently designating both of the first waveform generator means and the second waveform generator means so that the controller means operates both of the first waveform generator means and the second waveform generator means to concurrently create waveforms in parallel manner.
The input means may comprise means for providing performance information effective to command concurrent generation of a plurality of musical sounds. Further, the designating means may comprise means for designating one of the first waveform generator means and the second waveform generator means according to a number of concurrent musical sounds specified by the performance information such that the designated one has a capacity sufficient to create a number of waveforms corresponding to the number of the musical sounds.
The designating means may further comprise means operative when the number of the concurrent musical sounds exceeds a capacity of either of the first waveform generator means and the second waveform generator means for designating both of the first waveform generator means and the second waveform generator means to ensure complete generation of the concurrent musical sounds.
The first waveform generator means may comprise an external waveform generator optionally connectable to the controller means while the second waveform generator means may comprise an internal waveform generator integrated with the controller means so that the designating means designates the internal waveform generator in place of the external waveform generator when the same is not connected to the controller means even though the external waveform generator should primarily correspond to the provided performance information.
The second waveform generator means, the input means, the designating means and the controller means may be integrated with each other to constitute a main part composed of a computer, while the first waveform generator means alone constitutes a supplementary part which is separate from the main part and which is optionally installable in the computer.
The first waveform generator means may be composed of a hardware module driven by the controller means, while the second waveform generator means may be composed of a software module installable in the controller means.
The second waveform generator means may comprise a plurality of digital waveform generators which are operable based on different algorithms to arithmetically create digital waveforms having different qualities. Further, the controller means may comprise means for selectively operating an optimal one of the digital waveform generators according to the provided performance information.
The second waveform generator means may include
Hirano Masashi
Wachi Masatada
Yamada Hideo
Morrison & Foerster
Witkowski Stanley J.
Yamaha Corporation
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