Abstract: A detector unit is provided which receives envelope signals related to a predetermined number N of channels to detect a channel showing a greatest or smallest level of the envelope signal among the N channels and outputs data indicative of the detected channel and the level of its envelope signal. When the total number M of the channels is larger than N, a plurality of the detector units are provided, the envelope signals of the number M of the channels are divided into groups numbering not more than N, and the groups are distributed to the respective detector units so that the channel of which level of the envelope signal is the greatest or smallest is detected in each of the detector units. The levels of the envelope signals of the channels detected by the respective detector units are compared with each other, and one detector unit connected with the channel of the greatest or smallest level of the envelope signal is identified.

Abstract: A soft pedal effect applying apparatus is utilized in an electronic musical instrument in order to apply a soft pedal effect to a musical tone to be generated when a soft pedal is operated, wherein this soft pedal effect is set quite similar to that of a non-electronic musical instrument such as a grand piano. Before operating the soft pedal, a generated musical tone has a reference tone volume and a reference tone color which are determined based on a touch operation intensity applied to a depressed key in a keyboard. By operating the soft pedal, a tone volume of the generated musical tone is softened due to the soft pedal effect by slightly lowering the tone volume by the predetermined tone volume attenuation value, wherein this lowered tone volume can be clearly discriminated from the reference tone volume. Such attenuation value can be arbitrarily varied in response to the tone volume level.

Abstract: An electronic musical instrument capable of reporting a sound level and a tempo to be set. When a particular sound level or a particular tempo is selected and set, a click having a particular pitch matching the sound level or the tempo is generated to allow the user to recognize the sound level or the tempo on the basis of the pitch of the click. The instrument has a right and a left loudspeaker and, when the sound level is high or the tempo is fast, produces louder sound from one of the loudspeakers while, when the sound level is low or the tempo is slow, producing louder sound from the other loudspeaker.

Abstract: An electronic musical instrument is disclosed as including a tone pitch-assigning device which assigns pitches to musical tones which are to be generated by the instrument; a plurality of manually operable members; a control message-producing device that automatically produces musical tone-controlling messages which respectively correspond to operation of the manually operable members; and a musical tone-generating device which automatically generates a plurality of musical tones for each of the musical pitches assigned by the tone pitch-assigning device. The tone volumes of the musical tones are controlled based upon the tone-controlling messages so that the musical tone-generating device generates musical tones with tone volumes which may change in time, which may maintain a constant volume, or which may be attenuated, depending upon certain predetermined conditions.

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.

Abstract: An electronic musical instrument includes a converting device for converting performance information into musical tone control data to generate a musical tone based on conversion data, a storage device for storing the performance information, and an analyzing device for analyzing the performance information to convert the conversion data into adjusted musical tone control data. Accordingly, the performance information is converted into the adjusted musical tone control data based on the conversion data, so that the adjusted musical tone control data automatically generates a suitable magnitude of volume for every player.

Abstract: An electronic musical instrument can execute a musical performance with two timbres mixed together by operating a single key, for example. Of the two timbres, a master timbre is set in normal mode and is stored in a first memory, while a slave timbre is selected in tone mix mode and is stored in a second memory. Each timbre can be altered as desired. To alter the master timbre, timbre switches are operated after the mode is temporarily changed to normal mode. To alter the slave timbre, the timbre switches are operated in tone mix mode. When the tone mix mode is set, this electronic musical instrument can permit a player to easily alter tone parameters such as the volume, pitch and attack delay time of each timbre.

Abstract: A tone generation control unit has four waveform read/write channels for selectively the reading or writing data in a waveform memory. A plurality of waveform signals stored in the waveform memory are converted into analog signals to be subjected to timbre and tone volume control through voltage-controlled filters and voltage-controlled amplifiers before being fed to a mixing adder. An output signal of the mixing adder is converted into a digital signal which is stored in the waveform memory again through processing of the tone generation control unit. The stored converted output from the mixing adder is later used again as a new sound source waveform which is operated on to produce tones.

Abstract: The purpose of the present invention is to offer an electronic musical instrument which can synthesize the sound of brass instruments with fidelity and furthermore in real time. In order to achieve the above purpose, the musical sound synthesis algorithm is to utilize the tonguing information as well as the embouchure information in addition to the sound generation information, the frequency information, and the sound volume information, which have been used as the playing informations in conventional electronic musical instruments. Furthermore, by tabulating the functional relations between the above-mentioned playing informations and corresponding output waveforms, and storing them in memories, necessary waveforms for sounding the musical instrument can be obtained by only referring to those tables, thereby the speed-up, that is, the realization by hardware, can be realized and thus the sound of brass instruments can be synthesized with fidelity and in real time.

Abstract: A reproducing piano is provided which is capable of reproducing the notes of a chord or a sequence of multiple intensity notes within several groups of common intensity. This is accomplished by sorting the notes into a plurality of groups and then assigning intensity levels to the various groups so that notes within a group will be played at the same intensity. A limited number of solenoid driver circuits are multiplexed among the solenoids according to the grouping of notes, thereby providing faithful reproduction of the music, but at a lower cost than by individual control of each key.

Abstract: Initial touch data or after touch data is obtained by operating a play input unit, such as keys or strings. A musical tone whose timbre or volume changes by the touch data is obtained. A tone generator has a plurality of sound source lines. Desired waveform data is selected by the touch data for each line. Only one type of the selected waveform data that is segmented at a touch split point is outputted for each line. The musical tone may be detuned by finely staggering the reference frequency, for each line. An envelope waveform may be applied to the musical tone for each line.

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.

Abstract: Disclosed is a system of sound generating units for generating musical sounds according to a sequential order in electronic musical instruments such as instruments comprising a keyboard, an electronic drum apparatus, a rhythm machine or an automatic performing or accompanying apparatus. Consecutive note-on messages are processed to identify musical tones generated by the same notes, whereafter the same tones are superposed. This enables a well balanced generation of sounds between the sound generating units as the units generate sounds in a circulative sequence in response to performance controlling messages that are received by the units, according to a preferential order. The system of the present invention further provides a good reproduction of volume changes in composite musical tones, which changes are due to attenuation caused by a new note-on message that alters the volume of a musical tone as such tone is generated in response to a previous note-on message.

Abstract: A musical tone control apparatus includes at least one grip device having the shape which can be held by player's hand. This grip device further includes plural push switches each having a piezoelectric element whose resistance is varied in response to depressing pressure applied thereto. Based on a combination of depressed push switches and its depressing pressures, an externally provided musical tone generating apparatus is controlled such that tone pitch, tone color, tone volume, touch response or the like of musical tone will be controlled. In addition, an angle detector for detecting a swing movement of a player's arm can be further provided. Thus, the detected swing movement of the player's arm can be additionally used for controlling the musical tone.

Abstract: A tone signal applied from outside is sampled by a tone sampling device and the sampled waveshape data is written into a memory. During this writing operation and in parallel with the writing operation, a zero crossing point of the waveshape in terms of the sample data of the tone signal is detected. A final address detection circuit stores, each time a zero cross has been detected, a write address of the waveshape sample data with respect to the memory. Address data which is stored in the final address detection circuit when the writing of the waveshape sample data in the memory has been completed is detected as a final address of the sampled waveshape data. The waveshape data in the memory is read out either in a forward direction in a reverse direction using this final address as a start point or an end point and a tone signal corresponding to the sampled waveshape data is sounded. Such address constituting the start point or end point of reading, i.e.

Abstract: An automatic musical performance apparatus comprising two groups of tracks: one for storing pattern data of musical performance, the other for storing level data that modify the volume of tones produced on the basis of the pattern data, so that tone volume of each track can be altered while listening to the tone being reproduced. Tone volume varies depending on volume control and key-velocity. One of these can be selected to be modified by the level data, thus causing different effect on tone volume control. There are three kinds of level data: track, group, and total. Track level data modify each track data in the pattern data, each set of group level data modifies track data belonging to the same group, and the total level data uniformly modifies all track data. Using group level data facilitates the setting of level data. The pattern data can include a number track data having different loop length and rhythm style, thus enabling the automatic performance of polyrhythm style.

Abstract: An envelope shape generator generates envelope shape data for controlling a tone signal in the form of data in decibel representation. In performing a rapid attenuation control called "forcing damp" during attenuation of the envelope shape data generated by the envelope shape generator, the envelope shape data in decibel representation is rapidly attenuated with such a characteristic that inclination of attenuation becomes increasingly steeper. This is advantageous because inclination of a rapidly attenuating portion is modified to a substantially uniform inclination when the envelope shape data is converted to data in linear representation. There are also provided a detection circuit for detecting that the level of the envelope shape has dropped below a predetermined level corresponding to a minimum level at which a tone waveshape can be effectively represented and a circuit for rapidly attenuating the envelope shape in response to this detection. This contributes to elimination of noise.

Abstract: In a musical tone waveform producing apparatus having an operating device for receiving an instruction from a user, a waveform memory, a waveform control circuit for reading out tone-color waveform data from the waveform memory, an envelope memory, an envelope control circuit for reading out the envelope data from the envelope memory, and a multiplier for producing a resultant waveform, tone-color waveform data formed of a number of waveform data blocks each having an attenuation flag is prestored in the waveform memory and the attenuation flag is received by the envelope control circuit to produce attenuated envelope data while the attenuation flag is valid and to output the envelope data read out of the envelope memory while the attenuation flag is invalid. As a result, the resultant waveform has no undesirable noise component caused by the following tone-color waveform data.

Abstract: This eliminates the possibility of the generation of quantizing noise in a small amplitude portion of the waveform when it is compressed to an 8-bit quantized form. The present invention is effective when a percussive or like musical tone, provided in the form of a 16-bit quantized digital form is compressed to the 8-bit quantized form.

Abstract: In preparing a musical tone by synthesizing tone waveforms from a plurality of tone waveform generators, touch response data representing parameters such as key depressing speed or string picking force is generated from a touch response data preparing unit. The obtained touch response data can be used to affect the musical tone. Touch curves can be independently designated to these tone waveform generators with a manually operating unit. A weighting device for modifying a touch curve by selecting loudness level and sensitivity is provided so that various touch curves can be attained from a single touch curve for weighting the musical tone.