Music – Instruments – Electrical musical tone generation
Reexamination Certificate
2002-05-30
2004-06-15
Donels, Jeffrey (Department: 2837)
Music
Instruments
Electrical musical tone generation
Reexamination Certificate
active
06750389
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a musical performance control method, a musical performance control apparatus and a musical tone generating apparatus, which are applicable to provide an ensemble performance wherein a musical performance by an electronic tone generator and an automatic performance by a musical instrument are simultaneously provided.
2. Discussion of the Background
When an automatic piano player and an electronic tone generator are utilized to provide an ensemble performance in an automatic system, performance controls are carried out in the respective parts. To the piano performance part, musical performance information, such as key-in (event) information, is forwarded. In the electronic tone generator part, the musical performance information is forwarded as it is, and then the musical performance information is converted into such a state to be able to produce a musical tone based on data in the electronic tone generator (a state of musical tone data explained later) before being outputted.
In the automatic piano player, a musical performance is provided by striking a string with an electric and mechanical unit which moves a key, an action or a hammer in an actual piano by, e.g. a solenoid. As a result, there is a time lag between the timing when a string is struck to actually produce a musical tone since the musical performance information has been forwarded and the timing when the electronic tone generator part produces a musical tone. Even when the musical performance information has been transmitted to both of the automatic piano player and the electronic tone generator at the same timing, there has been created a problem that the production of a musical tone by the automatic piano player delays.
In order to solve the problem of the delay, it has been proposed in JP-A-5-33798 that the electronic tone generator part is provided with a delay buffer to avoid the occurrence of that sort of time lag by delaying the musical performance information to be forwarded to the part as shown in FIG.
19
.
However, the inventor of the publication has pointed out the following problems of the proposal by the publication in Japanese Patent No. 2694935, which has been proposed as improvement to the proposal by the publication. He has pointed out the problems as follows: “By the way, this arrangement needs to include a storage dedicated to a delay buffer (
300
), and a control circuit and a processing program for controlling the storage in order to provide a delay of 500 msec. That is to say, the processing program executed by the controller (
100
) is divided into two systems, creating a problem that the arrangement becomes complicated. When the processor (the controller
100
) outputs musical performance information having a high density, it becomes impossible to provide an ensemble performance in some cases because of insufficient storage capacity of the delay buffer (
300
). In other words, there is created a problem that the arrangement is poor at a reproduced musical performance.”
The problems of JP-A-5-33798 pointed out in the Japanese Patent No. 2694935 are fatal problems, which are caused by storing musical performance information, such as a MIDI, into the buffer. The buffer for storing that sort of musical performance information is configured to include a buffer ring
600
shown in
FIG. 20
for instance. The buffer
600
is configured in FIFO fashion (First In First Out). When musical performance information is inputted, the musical performance information is sequentially written in the buffer
600
according to increment of a write pointer
601
. The musical performance information is sequentially read out from the buffer
600
according to increment of a read pointer
602
in the same direction. The pointers are called a ring buffer since each of the pointers return to a first address when having reached a last address. As stated earlier, when musical performance information having a high density is inputted in the arrangement, a proper ensemble performance has been impossible in some cases since the write pointer
601
overtakes the read pointer
602
to prevent the data to be read by the read pointer
602
from being correctly processed due to overwriting of data by the write pointer
601
, or since when the ring buffer
600
is filled with data, further data are not acceptable until reading by the read pointer
602
proceeds to provide sufficient capacity. Even in the case without a ring buffer, an overflow is caused in some cases, depending on the capacity of a RAM.
The proposal by the Japanese Patent No. 2694935 needs to include a first reading unit and a second reading unit to provide automatic musical instruments having different sound production timings with control at different reading timings, creating a problem that the processing becomes complicated.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is proposed in consideration of the problems stated earlier. The invention provides a musical performance control method and a musical performance control apparatus capable of providing a proper ensemble performance with a musical performance by an electronic tone generator and an automatic performance by a musical instrument simultaneously provided even when musical performance information having a high density is inputted. The present invention also provides a musical tone generating apparatus capable of having a similar function.
The musical performance control method according to a first aspect of the present invention is characterized in that the method basically comprises providing a first automatic performance part based on musical performance information; providing a second automatic performance part as an ensemble performance; wherein the second automatic performance part is outputted as musical tone data with such a delay so as to conform to a sound production timing of the first automatic performance part.
The musical tone data according to the present invention are data that are in such a state to be able to produce a musical tone based on data outputted from an electronic tone generator or the like, i.e., in such a state that they can form an output waveform by D/A conversion so as to be outputted as they are (a state with an envelope or the like added thereto). The musical tone data are different from musical performance information comprising event information (including MIDI data etc.). Examples of the musical tone data are PCM data, sine composite waveform data and FM synthesizer generator data.
In accordance with the arrangement stated earlier, an overflow of data, which, for example, is caused by the overtaking of the pointer stated earlier, can be prevented since an object to be delayed is not musical performance information but musical tone data and since outputting is carried out merely with a delay (normally, the data are outputted after having been stored in a buffer). In the case of musical tone data, neither data are overflowed, nor acceptance of data can be stopped since the relationship of input and output of the data at a delay unit is 1:1 (the data volume to be inputted is equivalent to the data volume to be outputted). This is different from the case of musical performance information. Thus, it becomes possible to provide a proper ensemble musical performance by outputting musical tone data with a delay by a certain period of time.
In the musical performance control method according to a second aspect of the present invention, audio signal data may be included besides musical tone data. Specifically, one of automatic performance parts is outputted as including at least audio signal data with such a delay so as to conform to a sound production timing of the other automatic performance part, which provides an automatic musical performance based on musical performance information. As the musical sound of the one automatic performance part, an audio signal, which has a higher quality than the musical sound by, e.g., a MIDI tone generator can be utilized besides the musical s
Hagiwara Yutaka
Honda Hisamitsu
Iwase Masahiko
Kamada Kenji
Matsuda Toshinori
Donels Jeffrey
Kabushiki Kaisha Kawai Gakki Seisakusho
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