Music – Instruments – Electrical musical tone generation
Reexamination Certificate
1999-11-24
2001-04-10
Witkowski, Stanley J. (Department: 2837)
Music
Instruments
Electrical musical tone generation
C084S635000, C084SDIG001
Reexamination Certificate
active
06215059
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to a method and an electronic apparatus for the creation of new arrangement of melodic and/or rhythmic parts of musical accompaniments from patterns of different styles and namely by transforming the musical morphology of at least a first style into a second style according to a pre-programmed scheme of data replacement and degree, in order to obtain one or more new intermediate styles by means of a musical procedure hereafter referred to as musical “style morphing”. For the purpose of the present invention “musical morphing” means the construction of a new arrangement or pattern of an intermediate style, by an appropriate combination of musical data pertaining to different tracks of base patterns relating to two or more base arrangements of different styles, while the morphing degree depends from the number and/or type of tracks of the base patterns combined in the new pattern of new or intermediate style.
This invention represents an improvement of the electronic apparatus for the automatic composition and reproduction of musical data, of a previous patent U.S. Pat. No. 5,679,913, which is regarded as an incorporated part of the present description, although some useful parts thereof will be resumed to better describe the present invention.
PRIOR ART
As it has already been reported in the previous patent U.S. Pat. No. 5,679,913, in an electronic musical instrument which uses an automatic apparatus capable of recording and reproducing data, the various musical pieces, being either “patterns” or tables relating to accompaniments of different musical styles, are generally written in digital form and memorized on several tracks to be subsequently reproduced in such a way that a performer is able to control them in an interactive manner and in real time.
At present, “arrangers” or similar apparatuses capable of recording and reproducing accompaniments relating to various musical styles, which can be combined together during the execution thereof, make use of a data recording and reproducing method that is substantially based on multi-track system, in which the lengths of individual tracks must be identical to one another and must be a whole multiple of a “bar” or of a same musical measure; moreover, also the “time signature” must be identical for the tracks relating to the various instrument families of each data pattern to be recorded and/or reproduced.
Therefore, with the currently known apparatuses, it is not possible to create accompaniments of different styles by collecting data from tracks having different lengths and/or time signature because, otherwise, it would not be possible to obtain a musically consistent synchronization when reading the various tracks. Systems of this kind are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,685,370.
From a subsequent patent U.S. Pat. No. 5,457,282, an automatic accompaniment apparatus is also known, by which a plurality of original accompaniment patterns, relating to various styles, may be used to compose new patterns or new arrangements by collecting together the desired pattern parts which may be combined to create a new accompaniment.
This patent U.S. Pat. No. 5,457,282 merely proposes a different system for composing accompaniment patterns, without providing the performer with any possibility of selecting musical pieces or parts thereof among the several groups of track relating to the available accompaniment patterns, or of modifying the “style” of a song and/or accompaniment in its rhythmic part in real time, while maintaining a synchronized and musically consistent performance.
The apparatus described in the previous patent U.S. Pat. No. 5,679,913 tackled this problem and the present invention stands for an improvement thereof. This patent proposes an electronic apparatus for the composition and reproduction of musical data codified in numerical form, by means of which the performer is able to freely compose and reproduce pre-stored musical patterns or patterns provided on purpose by the same performer, or by using accompaniment patterns of different styles, which can be selected, combined and reproduced in real time in a musically significant manner while being automatically performed.
The previous patent U.S. Pat. No. 5,679,913, to which the present invention is referred, describes only the technical means to carry out a style modification in a universal manner; practically the previous patent makes a transformation process possible between two styles, which are different and are not similar (for example, having different time signatures—3/4, 4/4—and different measures). In the previous patent, moreover, the possibility is described to exchange tracks between two styles without mentioning at all the consistence of the musical result, unless such operation is made by an expert musician (“collage”).
OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION
The general object of the invention is to provide a method for creating new musical styles and, in particular, new arrangements of melodic and/or rhythmic pats of musical accompaniments on the basis of pre-stored base styles, and by going through one or more musical morphing steps, which make it possible to migrate from at least one style into another one in a musically consistent and significant manner, so as to obtain a remarkable higher number of automatic accompaniments than the pre-stored ones, while keeping a same original memory size of an electronic musical apparatus. This way, new intermediate arrangements can be created between two styles, by gradually and selectively moving, through subsequent morphing steps, from a musical arrangement of a first base style into an arrangement of a second base style.
Another object of the invention is to provide a method as described above, by which it is possible to automatically change the morphing degree during the transition from a first current style into a second style, according to a pre-determined substitution or combination scheme for the musical data that can be changed by a performer each time.
Another object of the invention is to provide a method for creating arrangements of new musical styles, by suitably combining musical data of two or more musical patterns of different styles, to generate a new virtual pattern that can be stored and/or played in a musically consistent manner.
Yet another object of the invention is to provide an apparatus for creating musical arrangements by morphing musical accompaniments of different styles according to the method referred to above, such apparatus being an integral part of an electronic musical instrument.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
According to a first aspect of the invention, a method for creating arrangements of melodic and/or rhythmic parts of musical accompaniments has been provided, by musically morphing accompaniments of different base styles, in which each accompaniment comprises a musical pattern including a plurality of data tracks relating to different families of musical instruments, comprising the steps of:
storing a number of musical patterns of different base styles into a memory of an electronic apparatus suitable for the composition and playing of musical data, said apparatus comprising control means to select the musical patterns stored in said memory;
selecting a first musical pattern relating to a first base style among said plurality of musical patterns stored in said memory;
selecting a second musical pattern relating to a second base style among said plurality of stored musical patterns stored in said memory; and
creating a new accompaniment of an intermediate style by a musical morphing procedure comprising the additional step of reading data tracks of one of said selected patterns, and replacing musical data of at least one track of one of said selected patterns, to musical data of a homologous track of the other one of said selected patterns, making the musical measure number and the temporal length of the track of the said one pattern conform with the musical measure number and temporal length of the track of the other one pattern,
Bruti Luigi
Cuccu′ Demetrio
Ferrari Luigi
Rauchi Francesco
Roland Europe S.p.A.
Witkowski Stanley J.
Young & Thomson
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