Electronic greeting card with a custom audio mix

Details Electronic greeting card with a custom audio mix Electronic greeting card with a custom audio mix

1999-12-02

2001-09-11

Witkowski, Stanley J. (Department: 2837)

Music

Instruments

Electrical musical tone generation

C040S124030, C040S455000, C434S30700R

Reexamination Certificate

active

06288319

ABSTRACT:

FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to electronic greeting cards having sound, and, more particularly, to an electronic greeting card having a custom, karaoke-style audio mix which is deliverable over a computer network.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Computer software applications presently exist that permit a user to lay down multiple pre-recorded audio tracks and mix these tracks into a custom recording. An exampie of this type of software is “Internet Audio Mix” by Acoustica, which allows a user to mix multiple pre-recorded audio tracks from a wide variety of formats and sampling rates, record their own audio tracks, and mix their own audio tracks with the pre-recorded tracks. Internet Audio Mix also allows a user to output the mixed audio tracks in WAVE and REALAUDIO formats that can be transmitted over the Internet.
However, Internet Audio Mix has some drawbacks. First, it is a stand-alone application that only runs in a Microsoft WINDOWS operating environment. Second, it has no interface to allow recordings to be retrieved and saved through the World Wide Web. The files that Internet Audio Mix imports and exports are all stored locally on the user's computer.
Electronic greeting cards that are deliverable over the Internet also presently exist, in a variety of formats, including those with animation and pre-recorded audio. These types of cards come from companies such as American Greetings (www.americangreetings.com) and Blue Mountain Arts (www.bluemountainarts.com). However, there is no electronic greeting card that permits a user to add a custom audio track to the card.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention fills the gap left by the prior art, by allowing a user to create an electronic greeting card with a custom audio track, generally in the form of the sender's voice mixed with a pre-recorded audio track (i.e., a karaoke-style mix). The present invention is designed with a client/server architecture, such as that commonly used for transmitting World Wide Web pages over the Internet. The pre-recorded audio tracks are stored on the server side and are delivered to the client side upon request. The user records the custom audio track on the client side. The mixing of the custom audio track with the pre-recorded audio track can occur on either the client side or the server side. If the mixing is performed on the client side, the user will have greater control over the mixing parameters, and will be able to more easily fine-tune the mix to their liking. In order to ensure the widest compatibility across a variety of computing platforms, both the client-side components and the server-side components are preferably written in a language such as the JAVA programming language.
A method for creating an electronic greeting card with a custom audio mix over a computer network according to the present invention includes the steps of selecting a pre-recorded song from a song database; downloading the pre-recorded song from to song database, via a server computer, to a client computer over the computer network; recording a vocal track on the client computer while simultaneously playing back the pre-recorded song on the client computer; mixing the vocal track with the pre-recorded song, thereby creating a custom audio mix; saving the custom audio mix on the server computer; assembling the audio mix into an electronic greeting card format; and delivering the electronic greeting card to a recipient via the computer network.
Because the present invention uses a karaoke-style implementation to create the electronic greeting card, the same process can be used to create a computer network-based karaoke system. In such circumstances, the process can be stopped after the pre-recorded song and the vocal track are mixed. A method for creating a karaoke mix over a computer network includes the steps of selecting a pre-recorded song from a song database; downloading the pre-recorded song from the song database, via a server computer, to a client computer over the computer network; recording a vocal track on the client computer while simultaneously playing back the pre-recorded song on the client computer; mixing the vocal track with the pre-recorded song, thereby creating a karaoke mix; and playing back the karaoke mix.


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