Education and demonstration – Cathode ray screen display and audio means
Reexamination Certificate
2000-11-21
2003-06-24
Martin-Wallace, Valencia (Department: 3714)
Education and demonstration
Cathode ray screen display and audio means
C434S30700R, C084S47000P
Reexamination Certificate
active
06582235
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to music-piece-data display controlling apparatus and methods for displaying lyrics and chord names in accordance with tones reproduced on the basis of a selected set of music piece data, and more particularly to an improved music-piece-data display controlling apparatus and method which display lyrics, chord names and instrument-performance assisting information in accordance with progression of tones in an easy-to-read manner.
In some of the conventionally-known automatic performance apparatus such as electronic musical instruments and karaoke apparatus, background pictures (images) and lyrics of a user-selected music piece are displayed sequentially on a predetermined display screen as an automatic performance (i.e., reproduction) of a music piece proceeds on the basis of the music piece data. From Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. HEI-6-308991, for example, there has also been known an automatic performance apparatus which, for a user who wants to play a musical instrument to an automatically-performed music piece, displays, on the screen, not only lyrics of a predetermined performance section of the music piece but also chord names corresponding to the lyrics. Generally, these known automatic performance apparatus employ a music-piece-data display controlling apparatus, by which individual characters of the lyrics and chord names—the terms “character” as used herein in connection with lyrics refers to a character in the case of a song in mono-syllable language such as Japanese, or a unit word or phonetic unit in the case of a song in poly-syllable language such as English unless specified otherwise—, not to mention the background pictures, are sequentially changed in color in accordance with the progression of the automatically-performed music piece so that the user can play a desired musical instrument, such as a guitar or piano, to the automatically-performed music piece by operating the musical instrument in accordance with the sequentially-changing display color of the characters.
However, the conventionally-known music-piece-data display controlling apparatus are designed to change the display color of only the lyrics character or unit word corresponding to a current performance position (i.e., a position being currently performed) of the music piece. Thus, in a case where the chord progression and lyrics are displayed together and if a predetermined character string of the lyrics to be displayed can not be appropriately fit within a corresponding measure range of the displayed chord progression, the character of the lyrics for the current performance position of the music piece would be displayed too close to or in an overlapping relation to the character of the lyrics for a next performance position of the music piece, which thus tends to result in a hard-to-read, inappropriate display. Similar problem would occur to the displayed characters of the chord names. Particularly, for a character of the lyrics to be sung with a long vowel, two or more chords are sometimes to be displayed in corresponding relation to such a character of the lyrics. If, in such a case, the two or more chords are displayed simply in correspondence with the character to be sung with a long vowel, the chord names would be displayed in an overlapping condition and tend to be very hard to read on the screen. Namely, with the conventional music-piece-data display controlling apparatus, the individual characters of the lyrics are shown on a video display one after another simply at fixed uniform intervals as defined by the character font, and so each character of the lyrics can be displayed only within a predetermined limited width on the screen, with the result that a plurality of chords are sometimes displayed in an overlapping relation to each other.
Further, because only the lyrics and corresponding chord names are displayed on the screen for the user desiring to play the musical instrument to the performed music piece, the user can not know, from the display screen, individual timing for playing the instrument and individual pitches to be performed on the instrument, and thus the display provided via the conventional music-piece-data display controlling apparatus tends to be inconvenient and unsatisfactory.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an improved music-piece-data display controlling method and apparatus which displays lyrics or chord progression on a predetermined display screen in an easy-to-read fashion. It is another object of the present invention to provide a music-piece-data display controlling method and apparatus which allow a user to readily perform a musical instrument manually to progression of an automatic performance of a music piece by displaying individual performance timing for playing the musical instrument and tone pitches to be performed on the musical instrument in accordance with a performance progression of a music piece.
In order to accomplish the above-mentioned object, the present invention provides a music piece data display method which comprises the steps of: causing a display device to display a character string of lyrics for a predetermined performance section of a music piece in accordance with progression of a performance of the music piece; and controlling, in accordance with the progression of the performance, display of the character string of lyrics on the display device in such a manner that a character or unit word of the lyrics corresponding to a current position in the progression of the performance and a character or unit word of the lyrics corresponding to a next position in the progression of the performance are displayed in different display styles. The character string of lyrics is liable to be displayed on the display device with some adjoining characters or unit words of the lyrics overlapping each other at least partly, and thus, the controlling step performs control such that the overlapping characters or unit words of the lyrics are displayed in different display styles so as to be visually distinguished from each other.
According to the present invention, the display of the character string of lyrics on the display device is controlled, in accordance with the progression of the performance, in such a manner that a character or unit word of the lyrics corresponding to the current position in the progression of the performance and a character or unit word of the lyrics corresponding to the next position in the progression of the performance are displayed in different display styles. Thus, in a situation where the character string of lyrics is liable to be displayed on the display device with some adjoining characters or unit words of the lyrics overlapping each other at least partly, the overlapping characters or unit words of the lyrics are controlled to be displayed in different display styles for visual distinction from each other. Namely, even when the characters or unit words of the lyrics corresponding to the current and next performance positions are displayed in an overlapping condition, the inventive arrangement of displaying the characters or units word of the lyrics corresponding to current and next positions in different display styles in accordance with the performance progression allows a user to readily distinguish between the overlapping characters or unit words. Namely, even in a situation where adjoining lyrics characters are displayed in succession with a partial overlap, the different display styles of the overlapping adjoining lyrics characters allows the user to readily distinguish between the overlapping adjoining lyrics characters and thereby provides a visual display that is very easy for the user to read.
The present invention also provides a music piece data display method which comprises the steps of: causing a display device to display accompaniment information for a predetermined performance section of a music piece in accordance with progression of a performance of the music piec
Tsai Tom Jen
Wakita Masahiko
Martin-Wallace Valencia
Morrison & Foerster / LLP
Sotomayor John
Yamaha Corporation
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