Music – Instruments – Electrical musical tone generation
Reexamination Certificate
2002-03-01
2003-11-25
Fletcher, Marlon T. (Department: 2837)
Music
Instruments
Electrical musical tone generation
C084S609000, C084S622000, C084S649000, C084S653000, C084S659000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06653545
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to a system for electronic music performance. More particular still, the invention relates to a system for permitting participants to collaborate in the performance of music, i.e. to jam, where any performer may be remote from any others.
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
Not Applicable
STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT
Not Applicable
REFERENCE TO COMPUTER PROGRAM LISTING APPENDICES
The following two appendices are comprised of the respectively listed files, all of which are included on the compact disc filed with this application, and incorporated herein by reference:
APPENDIX A—exemplary application implemented in
Java Studio
, by Microsoft Corporation, using calls to
SERIALIO
, a serial interface class library by Solutions Consulting, Inc., of Santa Barbara, Calif. and the ActiveX
Seer Music Player
by Seer Systems of Los Altos, Calif..
About.Java
10/16/2001
3,850 bytes
DialUpInfo.java
10/16/2001
7,892 bytes
eJamming.Java
10/18/2001
48,699 bytes
eJanModem.java
10/17/2001
11,750 bytes
InstrumentPicker.java
10/16/2001
10,087 bytes
seer.Java
10/17/2001
11,615 bytes
APPENDIX B—exemplary application implemented in
Visual Basic
, by Microsoft Corporation, using calls to their DirectX version 8.1 API, specifically the DirectPlay and DirectMusic components.
DplayCon.FRM
12/04/2001
41,527 bytes
Picker.FRM
12/03/2001
6,629 bytes
Studio.FRM
01/07/2002
69,087 bytes
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
In earlier times, a musical education was considered essential. Today, researchers such as Raucher, Shaw and Ky at the University of California, Irvine, study the
Mozart Effect
(
Nature
, vol. 365, pg. 611), and are finding that musical training enhances brain power, especially in spatial reasoning. Congresswoman Louise Slaughter further observed, supporting a rededication to music and art training, that “Those who create do not destroy.” Nonetheless, music has been deleted from most elementary and high school curricula and dropped from many extracurricular programs. Private music lessons are expensive and many individuals lack the interest that book learning alone would require.
Personal computers and video game machines are found in most households. A growing fraction of these machines are able to interconnect using modems or the Internet.
Software has long been available to allow a computer to become a musical instrument and to provide music theory instruction.
Practica Musica
(1987), by Ars Nova Software, Kirkland, Wash. is an example of such. This program was sometimes bundled with a plastic keyboard overlay that would temporarily convert a computer keyboard into a miniature white-and-black-keys piano keyboard.
A drawback of such music programs is that they only admit one person at a time. It is desirable to allow students to receive music education using their computers, but to allow multiple students to play together. Further, by allowing the multiple students to be at remote locations (e.g. each in their own home), geography and transportation cost and time cease to be a barrier. Such a capability would allow an online community of music students to interact and collaborate. One should anticipate the formation of “Virtual Garage Bands” and the creation of songs by composers and lyricists who have never met in person.
Historically, computer games only operated for a single player at a time, or for multiple players only at a single location, sharing a single computer. However, there is now a burgeoning market for multi-player games. Individuals with computers or video game machines at separate locations can connect via phone lines or the Internet and cooperate or compete in a computer game. One example of such a game is
MechWarrior
(1995) by Activision, which allows players' computers to connect via phone lines. Another example is
EverQuest
(2001) by Sony Digital Entertainment, where many hundreds of players, each with a computer, connect via the Internet, to a game server owned and operated by the publisher, to play in the same game.
A key difficulty in designing multi-player computer games is the communication latency that occurs between the players' computers. This results in a computerized version of the children's argument, “I tagged you first.” “No you didn't, I tagged you first.” Two separated computers each accept their own (local) user's input. The computers then communicate those inputs to each other, and finally use both users' inputs to perform a game calculation. However, unless latency (delay) in the communication channel is managed in some way, each computer gives its local user a reaction-time advantage because the other (remote) user is always penalized by the communication channel delay. Eventually, this can result in a disagreement between the two computers—“I tagged you first.”
A number of methodologies, each having various virtues and drawbacks, have been developed to solve the communication latency issue for multi-player gaming.
Matheson, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,570,930 teaches a method for synchronizing two computer games. Applicable only to games having discretely calculated “generations”, Matheson provides that each generation is numbered, and each generation calculation uses the users' inputs gathered during the prior generation. Matheson's generations may, at best, each be {fraction (1/30)} of a second long, i.e. at the game's video update rate. However, generations can become arbitrarily long if one or another user's input is not communicated in a timely manner, or needs to be retransmitted. Unfortunately, such a behavior is not conducive to musical performance.
Hochstein, et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 5,292,125, unlike Matheson, shows a technique for continuous play, not requiring Matheson's “generations”. Hochstein measures the roundtrip communications transport time between two game stations. Subsequently, each user's input to their local game station is delayed by half the round trip time, but is transmitted to their opponent's station immediately. This meets a “fair game” criteria that Hochstein proposes, by which neither player enjoys a speed advantage over the other.
While the “generation-less” technique is more conducive to musical performance, Hochstein does not address three issues. First, Hochstein does not account for unreliability of the communication channel. Second, simultaneity of players' input is necessary but not sufficient to ensure that game stations remain synchronized. There is the asynchrony of the game station's main loop which will cause divergence in the game state. Matheson understood this. Third, the “fair game” criteria calls for system performance to be degraded to the lowest common denominator. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,350,176, Hochstein, et al. provides synchronization codes which addresses only the first of these. In doing so, he has nearly reverted to Matheson's generations. Bakoglu, et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 5,685,775 provide an alternative synchronization, but at the expense of incurring the entire roundtrip communication transport delay, rather than only a portion.
O'Callaghan is the first to provide the “fair game” criteria for more than two remote stations. Under his U.S. Pat. No. 5,820,463, a collection of two or more stations algorithmically selects a master. All inputs from all stations are sent to the master station, and all are subsequently sent out to each of the other stations for processing. Key drawbacks here, are just as above: performance is degraded to the least common denominator, and a latency of the full roundtrip communication transport delay is incurred.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,067,566, Moline teaches a method whereby a live musical performance, preferably encoded as well known Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) commands, can be sent over a network to many stations. The live performance can be selectively recorded or mixed with other pre-recorded tracks. The mechanism is a timestamp that is attached to each mu
Glueckman Alan Jay
Kantor Gail Susan
Redmann William Gibbens
eJamming, Inc.
Fletcher Marlon T.
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