Music – Instruments – Electrical musical tone generation
Reexamination Certificate
1999-12-29
2002-04-23
Fletcher, Marlon T. (Department: 2837)
Music
Instruments
Electrical musical tone generation
C084S622000, C084S626000, C084S634000, C084S610000, C084S611000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06376760
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to a parameter setting technique for use in music performance apparatus, such as electronic musical instruments, which can carry out a wide variety of music performances by variably setting various parameters, and more particularly a technique which is capable of setting, via a very simple setting operation, parameters suited for any given performance style selected.
Electronic musical instrument known today are capable of synthesizing a wide variety of tones that cannot be expressed by natural musical instruments, not to mention human voices. In these electronic musical instruments, there is a need to set various parameters in order to generate desired tones. The simplest form of conventionally-known electronic musical instrument, such as a piano, electric piano or organ, is provided with tone color setting keys so that the color (timbre) of each tone to be generated by the musical instrument can be varied to a desired one by activating a selected one of the tone-color setting keys. It has also been known to preset settings of a plurality of draw-bar and feet operators so as to selectively realize a desired tone color. However, along with the progressive advance in the electronic musical instrument technology, an increasing number of electronic musical instruments have been constructed to provide, in addition to the tone color selection, various effect sounds and additional performances, such as accompaniment and percussion performances, in response to a performance operation by a human player or user. However, each time any one of such additional performances is to be executed, it is necessary for the player or user to manually set performance parameters, pertaining to the additional performance, one by one. Further, whereas it had been conventional to include tone color data in the header portion or the like of automatic performance data, the tone color data is applied solely to the automatic performance data in question.
For example, in a situation where settings are to be made in an electronic musical instrument such that the electronic musical instrument is used for a piano performance, a chord part (i.e., left-hand accompaniment part) is performed via an automatic performance apparatus and a melody part (i.e., right-hand performance part) is performed by a user's manual operation on a keyboard, the following setting operation has to be made. First, one of multiple different sets of automatic performance data (i.e., data corresponding to the left-hand performance part) which is to be performed has to be selected by means of an automatic-performance-data selecting switch or the like. Then, a predetermined switch has to be operated to set a synchronization start such that the selected set of automatic performance data starts being performed in synchronism with a start of the manual performance on the keyboard. After that, a tone color to be sounded by the keyboard performance is selectively set via a manual tone-color selecting switch in accordance with tone colors set for the individual performance parts of the selected automatic performance data set. In the past, the necessary settings has to be made in the electronic musical instruments through such a series of cumbersome operation. In normal cases, each set of automatic performance data comprises a plurality of performance parts (or a plurality of tracks), so that when only a predetermined one of the performance parts is to be automatically performed, there would arise another need to make additional settings, by use of a display panel or the like, to mute or silence every other performance part that is not to be automatically performed.
Further, because there has been a tendency for the present-day electronic musical instruments to be equipped with highly sophisticated functions to provide so-called “high-performance electronic musical instruments”, an increasing number of varieties of performance parameter have to be set and the user himself (herself) must be throughly familiar with suitable performance parameters and a suitable way of setting these performance parameters in order to generate tones appropriately as desired. Even in cases where the user is already familiar with the suitable performance parameters and the suitable way of setting these performance parameters and when setting are to be made for the entire electronic musical instrument corresponding to or approximating a user-desired natural musical instrument, it would be necessary for the user to take the trouble to make the necessary settings one by one and the cumbersomeness of the setting operation would be the same as normally encountered by the less sophisticated prior techniques. Particularly, such a difficult and cumbersome setting operation is a significant problem for beginners who have never experienced the performance-parameter setting operation, and thus these beginners would feel quite a difficulty in setting the electronic musical instrument for the first time and would often be given a negative impression that high-performance electronic musical instruments are very difficult to handle.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
In view of the foregoing, it is an object of the present invention to provide a music performance apparatus which is capable of making various settings for manual and automatic performances suited for a variety of instrument styles.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a music performance apparatus which allows even a beginner to readily set, through a very simple operation, performance parameters suited for various performance styles in a high-performance electronic musical instrument, or a setting apparatus and method for use in such a music performance apparatus.
In order to accomplish the above-mentioned objects, the present invention provides a music performance apparatus which comprises: a manual performance operator; an instrument style selector that is used to select a desired instrument style; a memory that stores a plurality of performance data sets; a performance style selector that is used to select a desired one of the performance data sets; and a processor coupled at least with the instrument style selector, the memory and the performance style selector. The processor is adapted to: make selectable, via the performance style selector, some of the performance data sets which correspond to the instrument style selected via the instrument style selector; read out, from the memory, one of the performance data sets made selectable by the processor which has been selected via the performance style selector; execute an automatic performance on the basis of the performance data set read out from the memory; and control a tone based on a manual performance executed via the manual performance operator, with a tonal characteristic corresponding to the instrument style selected via the instrument style selector.
According to the present invention arranged in the above-mentioned manner, in response to user's selection of a desired instrument style such as a piano style, the processor makes selectable only some of the memory-stored performance data sets which belong to the selected instrument style. Then, a desired one of the performance data sets, having been thus made selectable by the processor, is selected and read out from the memory to execute an automatic performance. On the other hand, a tonal characteristic for a manual performance is set to the one corresponding to the selected instrument style. In this way, selection of the automatic performance suited for the desired instrument style and setting of the tonal characteristic for the manual performance can be made with utmost ease. As a consequence, in executing an ensemble of manual and automatic performances, even a beginner can readily select and set various necessary musical factors, such as a tone color and performance pattern, in an appropriate manner.
The manual performance operator in the present invention may comprise a keyboard including a plurality of keys, and the
Asahi Yasuhiko
Tozuka Akira
Fletcher Marlon T.
Morrison & Foerster / LLP
Yamaha Corproration
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