Patents by Inventor Akio Imamura

Akio Imamura has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 4424732
    Abstract: An electronic musical instrument includes an upper, lower and pedal key boards and a solo keyboard, key switches and associated circuits for producing key codes of the depressed keys, and musical tone signal generators which generate musical tone signals in accordnace with the key codes. A priority selection circuit is provided for selecting a single key code from among a plurality of concurrent key codes with respect to plural keyboards in accordance with a predetermined order of priority, and a musical signal is generated by a predetermined generating system for producing a musical tone signal generator in accordance with the selected key code. Thus, a special intermanual coupler effect is realized.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 10, 1982
    Date of Patent: January 10, 1984
    Assignee: Nippon Gakki Seizo Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Akio Imamura, Yasuji Uchiyama, Akira Nakada
  • Patent number: 4358980
    Abstract: In an electronic musical instrument, a plurality of component elements of a musical tone are designated by a respective plurality of manual setting elements and preset in a preset memory device. A person operating the device can select a musical tone to be produced based on the component element preset in the preset memory device or the component elements formed by the manual setting elements or any combination of such preset and manually set component elements. A visual display is used to display the amount of operation of the manual setting elements.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 14, 1980
    Date of Patent: November 16, 1982
    Assignee: Nippon Gakki Seizo K.K.
    Inventor: Akio Imamura
  • Patent number: 4339978
    Abstract: An electronic musical instrument capable of providing automatic bass and chord accompaniments, either in accordance with a program prepared by the player or in immediate response to the depressing of a minimum number of keys on lower and pedal keyboards. The programmed accompaniments proceed sequentially (in steps) with successive measures of accompaniment data being read from a memory. By making some of these measures blank in introducing the accompaniment data into the memory, therefore, the player can play desired bass and chord accompaniments by direct key depression during the blank measures. In an alternative embodiment the production of the programmed accompaniments is automatically inhibited during the production of key-responsive accompaniments, thereby enabling the player to override the programmed accompaniments at any time.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 7, 1980
    Date of Patent: July 20, 1982
    Assignee: Nippon Gakki Seizo Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventor: Akio Imamura
  • Patent number: 4326441
    Abstract: An automatic performance device comprises a pattern memory for storing a plurality of performance patterns and a sequence memory for storing a pattern progression. The pattern progression is programable and is written in the sequence memory. The performance patterns are selected one by one from the pattern memory according to the pattern progression. Each selected performance pattern is read out according to a tempo pulse. An automatic performance is carried out on the basis of the read-out performance pattern.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 15, 1980
    Date of Patent: April 27, 1982
    Assignee: Nippon Gakki Seizo Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Akio Imamura, Akiyoshi Oya
  • Patent number: 4315451
    Abstract: An electronic musical instrument is of a key assigner type including a key coder and a channel processor, and is equipped with an automatic bass/chord performance faculty. The key coder includes a root note memory and a chord type memory, whereas the channel processor includes a key code memory and a key-on memory. The instrument is provided with a chord note memory function rendering switch and a bass note memory function rendering switch. When the chord note memory function rendering switch is turned on, the key-on memory is not cleared after release of the keys for conducting a automatic performance of chord tones. When the bass note memory function rendering switch is turned on, the root note memory and the chord type memory are not cleared after release of the keys for conducting an automatic performance of bass tones.Thus a bass-note memorized automatic accompaniment performance and a chord-note memorized automatic accompaniment performance are independently selectable.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 22, 1980
    Date of Patent: February 16, 1982
    Assignee: Nippon Gakki Seizo Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Yasuji Uchiyama, Akira Nakada, Akio Imamura
  • Patent number: 4297934
    Abstract: A display device for an automatic rhythm performance apparatus comprises a common display unit which selectively displays tempo and rhythm advancement of the automatic rhythm performance. For this purpose, the device has a selector for selecting the display contents so that the display of tempo is performed by numerical value before the rhythm starts, and the display of the rhythm advancement is performed by the number of measures, the number of beats and a demarcating mark between them after the rhythm starts.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 22, 1980
    Date of Patent: November 3, 1981
    Assignee: Nippon Gakki Seizo Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Akio Imamura, Akiyoshi Oya
  • Patent number: 4292873
    Abstract: An electronic musical instrument comprises a key on-off memory for storing the on-off state of the respective keys, and at a time counter for counting the lapse of time after release of the respective keys. The time counter inhibits generation of the musical tone signal corresponding to the key when the conditions that predetermined time is elapsed after the key release and that the key-off state is stored in the memory are satisfied. This inhibition is separately conducted with respect to the keys. Thus, it can remarkably prevent noise when the tone should not be produced.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 10, 1979
    Date of Patent: October 6, 1981
    Assignee: Nippon Gakki Seizo Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Takatoshi Okumura, Seiya Hamada, Akio Imamura
  • Patent number: 4287802
    Abstract: An electronic musical instrument having its keyboard divided into plural key ranges with musical tones being generated with tone colors which are different one key range from another. For achieving this object, the instrument comprises channel processors, tone generators, additional tone generators for the lowest (or highest) key in each key range, a common key coder for obtaining key data of depressed keys and a control circuit for supplying key codes delivered out of the key coder to only a channel processor of a corresponding key range. The key coder delivers out key data of depressed keys sequentially one key data at one time slot. According to the invention, the lowest (or highest) tone in a predetermined key range is generated with a tone color corresponding to the key range and also with a different tone color.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 17, 1979
    Date of Patent: September 8, 1981
    Assignee: Nippon Gakki Seizo Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Akio Imamura, Naota Katada
  • Patent number: 4282788
    Abstract: An electronic musical instrument with an automatic chord performance device is of a type in which chord tones of plural series of different tone colors in different rhythm patterns are produced. This instrument employs a memory for storing a plurality of patterns per one rhythm and for plural rhythms in order to simultaneously obtain the chord tones of plural series per one rhythm. The patterns are read from the memory as tone generation timing signals. These tone generation timing signals control the amplitudes of the envelopes of the chord tone signals. The chord tone signals thus controlled in amplitude are generated after being controlled in the tone color in each of the series.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 27, 1979
    Date of Patent: August 11, 1981
    Assignee: Nippon Gakki Seizo Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Eiichi Yamaga, Junji Iio, Toshio Takeda, Akira Nakada, Akio Imamura
  • Patent number: 4275634
    Abstract: An electronic musical instrument is of a channel assignment type and simultaneously produces a plurality of tones in automatic arpeggio performance. For that purpose, the instrument incorporates a plurality of automatic arpeggio performance channels. An automatic arpeggio performance is carried out in accordance with an arpeggio pattern. In order to simultaneously produce a plurality of automatic arpeggio tones, the instrument assigns respective arpeggio composing tones for the plural arpeggio performance channels by using an arpeggio pattern for one-tone production and a change pattern obtained by adding change information to the arpeggio pattern. Thus an automatic performance of polyphonic arpeggio is realized.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 7, 1979
    Date of Patent: June 30, 1981
    Assignee: Nippon Gakki Seizo Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Akio Imamura, Eiichi Yamaga, Akira Nakada
  • Patent number: 4263829
    Abstract: An electronic musical instrument is of a type in which a particular note tone and tones corresponding to the remaining notes among depressed keys are alternately and repeatedly produced in accordance with tone production timing signals having a predetermined period. The tone production timing signals are produced by frequency dividing tempo pulses generated from a tempo pulse oscillator. An alternate production control is conducted by gating alternately signal of the particular note tone and signals of other tones and delivering to a sound system. The period of the tone production timing signals can be controlled by a circuit which detects depression of plural keys.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 20, 1980
    Date of Patent: April 28, 1981
    Assignee: Nippon Gakki Seizo Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Makoto Kaneko, Akio Imamura
  • Patent number: 4263828
    Abstract: An electronic musical instrument having an automatic performance device includes a memory storing in addition to automatic performance data, envelope control data for controlling envelopes of automatic performance tones to be generated. The envelope control data has two logical values and is used for controlling the envelope of the tone at the decaying portion. The value "0" designates a gradual decay and the value "1" designates a quick decay. The automatic performance tones are respectively imparted with either of the gradual and the quick decay shapes suitable for the time intervals between the generated tones in the designated automatic performance pattern.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 22, 1979
    Date of Patent: April 28, 1981
    Assignee: Nippon Gakki Seizo Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Eiichiro Aoki, Akio Imamura, Norio Tomisawa
  • Patent number: 4192212
    Abstract: A keyboard electronic musical instrument comprises a note information processing device capable of processing note information required for automatic arpeggio and automatic bass performances. This note information processing device includes a generation circuit for generating a plurality of note information representing a plurality of notes to be sounded in relation to the key depression, a selection circuit for sequentially selecting a note information designating a note to be sounded from among the plurality of note information from the generation circuit in accordance with a predetermined priority order; an output circuit for delivering out the note information selected by the selection circuit, the selection at each sequence being conducted dependent on the selection at the preceding sequence.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 22, 1978
    Date of Patent: March 11, 1980
    Assignee: Nippon Gakki Seizo Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Eiichi Yamaga, Eiichiro Aoki, Akio Imamura