Music – Instruments – Electrical musical tone generation
Reexamination Certificate
2000-10-20
2001-10-23
Witkowski, Stanley J. (Department: 2837)
Music
Instruments
Electrical musical tone generation
C084SDIG001
Reexamination Certificate
active
06307141
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Popular music increasingly employs electronic instruments and processing equipment such as synthesizers, drum machines, groove machines, samplers, and sequencers. An important advance in this technology has been a beat munging feature which is the subject of the above-referenced copcnding and commonly assigned patent applications.
These applications disclose techniques for processing a digital music file to identify the locations and the beginning of beats. Techniques for changing time signatures, adding swing, reordering the beats of a soing, and mixing beats from different songs are also disclosed.
An important aspect of electronic music-making equipment is the development of interfaces that allow musicians to interact with electronic equipment as if the equipment were a musical instrument. For example, synthesizers are controlled by piano-like keyboards and drum machines include pads that may be struck by sticks or by hand.
Another important aspect of electronic music is remixing or altering existing songs. Sequencers allow bits of songs to be reused in arbitrary ways and the above-described beat munger allows songs to be dissected by beats and the beats to be processed separately.
Accordingly, much research and creative effort is being directed to improve human interactivity with electronic equipment to allow artistic creativity and facilitate a musician friendly interaction with electronic equipment.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
According to one aspect of the invention, an interface and software is provided to facilitate real-time jumping to arbitrarily selected beats in song. The jump beats may be substituted for the beat in the song currently being played or may overlay the current beat.
In one aspect of the invention, an input device including numeric pads is coupled to a general purpose desktop computer. Software on the computer creates an indexed list of beat pointers which point to beginnings of beat segments in the digital music file. When a song is played, a beat counter keeps track of the beat which is currently being played and defines beat intervals between increments of the beat count. If a musician taps one of the numeric pads on the input device a beat pointer to the beat segment is selected and used to access a jump beat segment indicated by the selected beat pointer. This jump beat segment is then played during the current beat interval.
According to another aspect of the invention, the jump beat segment is added to the beat segment indicated by the beat counter to form a summed beat segment. The summed beat segment is then played during the current beat interval so that the jump beat segment overlays the current beat segment and both are played simultaneously.
According to another aspect of the invention, the jump beat segment replaces the current beat segment. Cross-fading is used so that the music doesn't appear to jump or be discontinuous.
According to another aspect of the invention each beat is divided into sub-beats. If a user selects a jump beat segment then the playing of the jump beat segment is delayed until the beginning of the next sub-beat.
According to another aspect of the invention, if a jump beat segment is longer than the current beat segment the jump beat segment is shortened to match the length of the current beat segment before it is played.
According to another aspect of the invention, a musician uses the input device to input a pattern of beat numbers. This pattern of beats overlays the song as played in unaltered manner.
In another embodiment of the invention, a stand alone device, similar to a drum machine, includes numeric input pads, a processor, memory for storing program code and a digital music file, and audio hardware for converting the digital music file to audio. In response to playing the numeric pads the song jumps to beats indicated by the pads.
Other features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following detailed description and appended drawings.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4694724 (1987-09-01), Kikumoto et al.
patent: 5256832 (1993-10-01), Miyake
patent: 5270477 (1993-12-01), Kawashima
patent: 5453570 (1995-09-01), Umeda et al.
patent: 5585586 (1996-12-01), Wakuda
patent: 5973255 (1999-10-01), Tanji
Dahl Luke
Laroche Jean
Creative Technology Ltd.
Townsend and Townsend / and Crew LLP
Witkowski Stanley J.
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