Vibrato Or Tremolo Patents (Class 84/629)
  • Patent number: 5212334
    Abstract: A tone generation system includes one or more digital waveguide networks coupled to one or more junctions, one of which receives a control signal for controlling tone generation. The control signal initiates and interacts with a wave signal propagating through the waveguide networks to form a tone signal. A non-linear junction may be employed which receives a signal from a waveguide, converts it in accordance with a non-linear function based upon the value of the control signal and provides it back to the waveguide. A tone signal whose pitch is determined by the wave transmission characteristics of the waveguide network is thereby produced.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 16, 1990
    Date of Patent: May 18, 1993
    Assignee: Yamaha Corporation
    Inventor: Julius O. Smith, III
  • Patent number: 5208415
    Abstract: A fluctuation generator for use in an electronic musical instrument comprises uniform random generator for generating a random number having a uniform probability distribution, and a function circuit, which receives the random number from the uniform random generator and produces a random number MOD having a probability distribution according to a predetermined function. The function circuit may be constituted by a ROM. The fluctuation generator generates a tone signal in accordance with the random number MOD from the function circuit.According to this fluctuation generator, the uniform random generator generates a random number having a uniform probability distribution, and sends it to the function circuit. The function circuit generates a random number in accordance with a function having a predetermined input/output characteristic to thereby generate a random number having a probability distribution close to the natural distribution (for example, a random number with the normalized distribution).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 28, 1991
    Date of Patent: May 4, 1993
    Assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Kawai Gakki Seisakusho
    Inventor: Yasushi Sato
  • Patent number: 5136916
    Abstract: An electroic musical instrument of the present invention is provided with a damper control as well as tone generation instructin device and tone generation device. While the damper control is operated, the tone generation device continues tone generation even if the stop thereof is instructed by the tone generation instruction device. Moreover there is provided pitch control device adapted to change the pitch of the tone currently generated while the damper control is operated.Accordingly, when the damper control is operated, the resulting musical tones can be enhanced in their variety, distinct from normal tone generation. This allows an electronic musical instrument, for example, to generate such sounds as when the damper pedal is stamped with a piano.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 18, 1991
    Date of Patent: August 11, 1992
    Assignee: Yamaha Corporation
    Inventor: Takeo Shibukawa
  • Patent number: 5074184
    Abstract: A controllable electronic musical instrument is disclosed as including tone pitch-assigning devices for assigning pitches to musical tones to be generated, manually operable members for producing detectable signals indicative of a touching of such members for operation thereof, a control message-producing device which is responsive to symbols from the manually operable members for producing musical tone-controlling messages that have magnitudes which automatically change in time, and a musical tone-generating device for generating musical tones based on musical tone-controlling messages produced by the control message-producing device, and based on a pitch assigned by the tone pitch-assigning devices. The tone pitch-assigning devices and the manually operable members may be provided as keys on a keyboard.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 12, 1989
    Date of Patent: December 24, 1991
    Assignee: Roland Corporation
    Inventor: Tadao Kikumoto
  • Patent number: 5060270
    Abstract: A reverberation circuit comprises an amplifier, attenuation circuit, a feedback component, and a delay circuit. The amplifier, delay circuit, and feedback component form a feedback loop. The amplifier amplifies an input signal supplied to an input terminal and outputs an amplified signal to the delay circuit. The output of the delay circuit is fed through a feedback component back to the amplifier. The feedback component controllably varies the feedback amount of the delayed signal to the amplifier in accordance with the desired depth of reverberation. An attenuation circuit is placed in the feedback loop, or before or after the feedback loop. The attenuation circuit selectively attenuates the level of specific frequency component of a signal passing therethrough whose frequency may be different depending on the depth of reverberation or feedback amount.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 19, 1990
    Date of Patent: October 22, 1991
    Assignee: Pioneer Electronic Corporation
    Inventor: Ryuichi Shinoda
  • Patent number: 5050216
    Abstract: An input waveform signal is converted in an A/D converter into a digital signal to be written in a waveform memory under control of a tone generation control unit. The written digital signal is read out from the waveform memory with a designated delay time. The input waveform signal and the digital signal read out from the waveform memory are converted in a D/A converter into analog signals which are fed through VCFs and VCAs so as to be sounded. Further, in the above arrangement the timbre and tone volume controls are done independently for the individual waveform read/write channels through VCFs 12a to 12d and VCAs 13a to 13d. Thus, it is possible to obtain a further effected sound.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 26, 1990
    Date of Patent: September 17, 1991
    Assignee: Casio Computer Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Kohtaro Hanzawa, Shigenori Morikawa, Kazuhisa Nakamura
  • Patent number: 5036541
    Abstract: A modulation effect device is implemented by utilizing a fact that a phase or frequency of an output signal from a digital filter can be varied by varying a filter-coefficient according to a lapse of time. A musical tone signal inputted into the digital filter is phase-or frequency-modulated in accordance with the variation of the filter coefficient, thereby imparting such modulation effect as vibrato, chorus or ensemble (symphonic chorus) to the musical tone signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 19, 1988
    Date of Patent: July 30, 1991
    Assignee: Yamaha Corporation
    Inventor: Mitsumi Kato
  • Patent number: 5027690
    Abstract: An electronic musical instrument having a keyboard, includes a plurality of keys, a plurality of musical tone signal generation systems, a touch detector for producing touch data representing a key touch accompanied by a key depression, a panel operation unit for setting a touch sensitivity representing a sensitivity with respect to a key touch for each of the musical tone signal generation systems, and a register unit for modifying the touch data in accordance with the touch sensitivity corresponding to each of the musical tone signal generation systems. Different tone groups are assigned to the musical tone signal generation systems, and a musical tone signal which has a tone color belonging to the corresponding musical tone group and a pitch corresponding to a key depression is produced from each of the musical tone signal generation systems. Each musical tone group includes at least two tone colors having a common attribute.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 17, 1989
    Date of Patent: July 2, 1991
    Assignee: Nippon Gakki Seizo Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Masatada Wachi, Naota Katada, Kosei Terada, Takeshi Adachi, Takaaki Mutoh
  • Patent number: 5010799
    Abstract: An electronic keyboard instrument has a plurality of key displacement sensors disposed in relation to respective keys of a keyboard. Each sensor detects a continuously variable key displacement induced by the key operation to provide an analog signal indicative of the displacement. An analog-to-digital converter digitizes the analog signal at a predetermined sampling rate to derive a stream of digital samples of key displacement. A control, which operates based on a predetermined tone control algorithm receives and analyzes the stream of digital samples. According to the analysis, tone parameters such as envelope and vibrato are produced for controlling the characteristics of a tone, so that a tone having a very dynamic key touch response is developed. In a preferred embodiment, there are provided a plurality of tone control algorithms adapted to process the stream of key displacement samples in manners different from one another.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 19, 1990
    Date of Patent: April 30, 1991
    Assignee: Casio Computer Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Kikuji Tanaka, Kohtaro Hanzawa
  • Patent number: 4957030
    Abstract: An electronic musical instrument capable of effecting vibratos with any of tones which may be produced by pressing down the keys of a keyboard. A key constant memory stores key constants each being assigned to a different tone, while a vibrato constant memory stores vibrato constants each being assigned to a different tone. The keyboard is provided with an exclusive switch for effecting vibratos. When this exclusive switch is pressed, a counter which counts clock pulses feeds its output to an adder/subtractor in the form of an addition/subtraction switchover signal and an addition/subtraction execution control signal. In response, the adder/subtractor periodically and alternately performs addition and subtraction with the key constant and vibrato constant associated with a key being pressed down.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 23, 1989
    Date of Patent: September 18, 1990
    Assignee: Kawai Musical Instruments Mfg. Co., Ltd.
    Inventor: Isao Suzuki
  • Patent number: 4920851
    Abstract: The automatic musical tone generating apparatus for generating musical tones with slur effect includes a pitch information storing device, a read-out device for reading out pitch information at a predetermined tempo from the pitch information storing device, a tone signal generating device for producing tone signals having pitches corresponding to the pitch information read out by the read-out device, a slur information storing device, a slur effect impartment detecting device for detecting, on the basis of the slur information stored in the slur information storing device, whether or not the slur effect is to be imparted to the musical tones corresponding to the read out pitch information, and a pitch information altering device for altering, when the slur effect impartment is detected, the read out pitch information to a pitch information gradually approaching to the pitch of the musical tone to be produced next and out-putting the altered pitch information to the tone signal generating device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 20, 1988
    Date of Patent: May 1, 1990
    Assignee: Yamaha Corporation
    Inventor: Yasunao Abe
  • Patent number: 4915007
    Abstract: An electronic musical instrument has a parameter setting system for setting a parameter necessary for controlling a musical characteristic which is a tone color or a musical effect such as a vibrato in a musical tone generating section. The parameter setting system comprises a memory (RAM) for storing a plurality of sets of parameters each set including, for example, a vibrato delay parameter and a vibrato speed parameter. When one of tone-color selection switches on a control panel is depressed, the set of parameters corresponding to the depressed tone-color selection switch are read and supplied to the musical tone generating section to thereby control the vibrato of the musical tone. The selected set of parameters in the RAM can be changed by the player through menu selection switches and data-up and data-down switches to desired values. The system may include a quit switch for restoring the set of parameters precedingly selected.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 11, 1987
    Date of Patent: April 10, 1990
    Assignee: Yamaha Corporation
    Inventors: Masatada Wachi, Kosei Terada, Naota Katada, Tsuyoshi Futamase, Toshiaki Sato
  • Patent number: 4907484
    Abstract: At least two sets of filter coefficients corresponding to different filter characteristics are interpolated by using a control signal for controlling tone color as a parameter of interpolation. Filter coefficients obtained by the interpolation are supplied to a digital filter to determine its filter characteristics and an input tone signal is modified in accordance with the filter characteristics thus determined. Filter characteristics of diverse variation as compared with the number of prepared filter coefficients can thereby be realized. Further, timewise change of filter characteristics can be realized by changing a parameter of interpolation with lapse of time or changing two sets of filter coefficients to be interpolated with lapse of time. Designation of filter coefficients can be made by designating coordinate data of coordinates having at least two axes.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 30, 1987
    Date of Patent: March 13, 1990
    Assignee: Yamaha Corporation
    Inventors: Hideo Suzuki, Yoshio Fujita, Hirotaka Kuribayashi