Music – Accessories – Teaching devices
Reexamination Certificate
2000-03-27
2001-06-12
Donels, Jeffrey (Department: 2837)
Music
Accessories
Teaching devices
C084S456000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06245981
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to the field of music, more specifically to playing or tuning musical instruments or singing music, and more specifically still to changing (i.e. transposing) musical scores or instrument tunings from one key to another.
Transposing a musical score involves shifting all the notes in the score up or down one or more half steps on the twelve-tone chromatic scale. This is done most often to allow a singer to sing a song that was not written in his or her vocal range. It is also often done to allow a musician to play a song in a key in which he or she is more proficient on a particular musical instrument, or to play an instrument in which the musical tone designated “A” does not correspond to the standard “A” frequency of 440 Hz. Transposing can be done mentally by counting up or down from each note a given number of half-steps, by mechanical slide rules that shift two chromatic scales opposite one another, or by electronic or digital devices in which one key is the input and the transposed values are the output. The present invention is of the mechanical slide variety of transposers.
In a twelve-tone circular reed pitch instrument, each of the twelve tones of the chromatic scale from middle C upward through B can be played by blowing air through any of twelve openings on the periphery of a circular array. In a thirteen-tone reed pitch instrument, an additional high C note is added after B as a convenience. These pitch instruments typically take the form of a small wheel held together by a screw through an axial hole.
The note values on a circular pitch instrument are typically printed or embossed as indicia on one face of the wheel next to each peripheral opening at some arbitrary radius from the center.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
This provisional patent application discloses a circular slide rule transposer in combination with a circular (chromatic) pitch instrument. A circular slide having a radius less than the radius R of the indicia on the face of the pitch instrument, and bearing twelve evenly-spaced indicia of its own inside its periphery, is affixed concentrically to a twelve- or thirteen-tone pitch instrument in which the twelve or thirteen air openings and their indicia are also evenly spaced. Combined with a twelve-tone pitch instrument, the slide can be rotated coaxially by hand relative to the wheel so that each indicium on the slide adjoins a corresponding indicium the on the wheel. If a note X on the slide is placed adjacent to a note Y on the wheel, any other note on the slide will be adjacent its transpose on the wheel. Thus, for example, in transposing a piece in the key of G to the key of B-flat, A transposes to C, D transposes to F, etc. It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a means, in conjunction with a twelve-tone circular pitch instrument, for mechanically transposing notes and keys, and add this means to said pitch instrument with minimal encumbrance and added expense.
If a thirteen-tone pitch instrument is used as the wheel, the markings on the pitch instrument itself must be modified in accordance with the present invention to allow it to cooperate with the aforementioned twelve indicia slide in transposing keys. It is therefore a further object of this invention to provide a means, in conjunction with a thirteen-tone circular pitch instrument, for mechanically transposing notes and keys, and add this means to said pitch instrument with minimal encumbrance and added expense.
The principal invention herein described, therefore, comprises the slide and its indicia and markings, and other markings needed to be applied to the pitch instrument, which markings in cooperating with each other enable musical keys to be transposed.
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