Music – Instruments – Electrical musical tone generation
Reexamination Certificate
2000-08-08
2004-03-09
Fletcher, Marlon T. (Department: 2837)
Music
Instruments
Electrical musical tone generation
C084S612000, C084S616000, C084S626000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06703549
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a performance data generating apparatus and method which generate performance data with expressions applied, as well as a storage medium storing a program for executing the method, and in particular, to a performance data generating apparatus and method having an automatic parameter editing function of automatically editing, based on characteristics of supplied performance data, values of parameters for adding various expressions to the performance data, as well as a storage medium storing a program for executing the method.
2. Prior Art
Composing MIDI data only of musical note information may result in mechanical expressionless performances. To obtain performance outputs with a variety of expressions such as more natural performance, beautiful performance, vivid performance, or peculiar individualistic performance, various musical expressions or instrumental impressions have to be added as control data. Systems for adding various expressions may include a method of adding expressions through musical scores, and others. There are, however, various expressions as described above. A useful system has to be able to accommodate various expressions.
Further, with more types of expressions, a user is at a loss what expressions to add unless an automatic addition system is developed. Accordingly, addition of expressions is preferably modularized in order to realize an automatic system. It is thus appreciated that a module storing characteristics of various musical expressions as rules may be used to generate musical MIDI data.
Known performance data generating apparatuses and parameter editing apparatuses for editing the values of parameters for adding various expressions to performances reproduced from supplied performance data are listed below.
(1) Manual inputs are provided to modify the values of parameters already set for supplied performance data or add new parameters to the supplied performance data in order to add expressions (musical expressions such as natural, beautiful performance, or vivid performance) to mechanical expressionless performances reproduced from the performance data.
(2) Performance expressions (for example, crescendos and decrescendos) are automatically added to a range of supplied performance data which is designated by a user.
With the conventional performance data generating apparatus or parameter editing apparatus (1), however, the user himself must select parameters to be modified or added, and particularly if the user is a beginner, it is difficult to select parameters for adding his favorite expressions and to determine parameter values optimal for the expressions. Moreover, to manually input parameters one by one is cumbersome. Further, with the conventional performance data generating apparatus or parameter editing apparatus (2), since the range of performance data which can be designated by the user is local and partial with respect to the entire music data, performance expressions added based on the performance data belonging to this range will be necessarily simple (for example, such performance expressions only linearly increase or reduce the volume of the corresponding portion). Consequently, to add a variety of desired performance expressions, the user has to carry out similar operations many times while sequentially changing the range of performance data to which the performance expressions are to be added. As a result, the user cannot add a variety of performance expressions using simple operations. Further, since the user himself has to designate the range of performance data to which the performance expressions are to be added, he has to know what expressions to add and to which performance sections these expressions are to be added in order to provide optimal expressions for the music. This task is difficult for beginners to perform.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the present invention to provide a performance data generating apparatus and method which is capable of automatically converting original performance data providing an expressionless performance into performance data that enable a variety of musically excellent performances, by means of a novel expression adding converter using various modularized rules and procedures to add expressions based on temporal changes such as tempo and timing, as well as storage medium that stores a program for executing the method.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a performance data generating apparatus and method which enables even a beginner to add a variety of expressions to music using simple operations, as well as a storage medium that stores a program for executing the method.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a performance data generating apparatus and method which is capable of automatically editing various control parameters for a performance such as temporally changing parameters for tempo, timing, or the like, a volume parameter, and musical interval parameters for pitch and the like to enable even a beginner to add a variety of expressions to music using simple operations, as well as a storage medium that stores a program for executing the method.
In the present invention, the term “musical tone control variable” refers to a variable such as a temporal musical-tone variable, a musical musical-tone variable, or a volume musical-tone variable which is used to control musical tones. Further, the term “musical tone control information” refers to variable information such as temporal musical-tone control information (temporal parameters) on tempo, gate time, tone generation timing, or the like, musical-interval musical-tone control information (a musical interval parameter and the like), or volume control information which controls musical tones for performance. The musical tone control information is also referred to as “performance parameters” or simply “parameters”. Further, “the performance data generating apparatus” according to the present invention may act as “an automatic parameter editing apparatus” from the viewpoint of edition of the performance parameters.
According to a first feature (claims
1
,
38
and
58
) of the present invention, performance data are supplied, characteristic information is obtained from the supplied performance data, generating method information is stored which corresponds to predetermined characteristic information and representative of at least one method of generating musical tone control information, generating method information corresponding to the obtained characteristic information is obtained from the stored generating method information, the musical tone control information from the obtained characteristic information and generating method information corresponding to the obtained characteristic information is obtained, and the generated musical tone control information is added to the supplied performance data. That is, generating method information is stored beforehand, and based on the generating method information corresponding to characteristic information obtained from performance data, musical tone control information is generated and added to the performance data. In other words, according to the present invention, correspondence between predetermined characteristic information and musical tone control information for addition of expressions is set as rules in an expression adding module (an expression addition algorithm), and generating method information representing these expression addition rules is stored in a storage device beforehand. When the characteristic information is obtained from the supplied performance data, musical tone control information (various performance parameters such as the time parameters, the musical interval parameter, and the volume parameter) is generated and added to the performance data based on the generating method information corresponding to the obtained characteristic information and in accordance with the expression adding module (the expression addit
Iwamoto Toshiyuki
Iyatomi Akane
Kakishita Masahiro
Kitayama Toru
Nishimoto Tetsuo
Fletcher Marlon T.
Morrison & Foerster / LLP
Yamaha Corporation
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