Harmonix Music Systems, Inc.

Dan Schmidt

Eran B Egozy

Alexander Rigopulos

Greg LoPiccolo

Jonathon Bell

Robert M Kay

Daniel Charles Teasdale

Ryan Lesser

Joshua Randall

Michael James

Chris Foster

Band members use their own performance during a song to reinstate a band member who has failed during the course of the song. Once a band member has failed, options are given to other members of the band who have achieved a predetermined bonus or performance level to save the fallen band member. Once saved, the failed member returns to normal play of the song. In this manner, failure still has the consequence of removing a player from a song at least temporarily, and perhaps permanently if bandmates are unable or unwilling to save the fallen member. However, by providing the option of reinstatement, band members can prevent their friends from long stretches of inactivity following a failure. This may have the added benefit of encouraging band members to perform strongly in order to be able to save their friends.

Systems and methods for reinstating a player within a rhythm-action game

A method for providing real-time musical interaction among a plurality of players connected via a network includes the steps of analyzing local player's musical performance to extract emulation data that represents the musical performance; transmitting emulation data to remote players over a network; receiving emulation data from remote players over the network; and using the emulation data to emulate the remote player's musical performance by locally generating approximations of the performances.

Method and apparatus for facilitating group musical interaction over a network

A method for displaying musical data in three dimensions includes displaying musical data along a spatial path that does not lie within the image plane of a display. Graphical symbols corresponding to the musical data may be displayed on graphical surfaces aligned with the spatial path. The graphical surfaces form, in some embodiments, a tunnel through which the time axis associated with the musical data runs. The musical data may be manipulated to provide the viewer with the appearance of motion along the time axis associated with the musical data. In some embodiments, the viewer is represented by a virtual camera in the three-dimensional environment and the virtual camera is &ldquo;moved&rdquo; to provide the appearance of motion. A corresponding apparatus is also discussed.

Method and apparatus for displaying musical data in a three dimensional environment

Described are a system and method for achieving near real-time musical collaboration by a group of users using computers connected by a network. Each computer system plays a stream of musical data to each user. The musical data stream played to each user corresponds to the musical collaboration produced by the users. The playing of the musical data streams is staggered such that each user is located at a different time in the musical collaboration than every other user. This staggering separates any two users by a temporal offset that exceeds the maximum time required to transmit musical data from one user to another user over the network. Each user is allowed to modify the portion of the musical data stream that is currently being played to that user. Such musical data modifications are transmitted to other users over the network to become incorporated into the musical data streams played to those other users. Because the musical data streams are staggered by a temporal offset that exceeds the maximum latency of the network, those other users to receive the musical data modifications with sufficient time to incorporate them into the locally played musical data streams.

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Cambridge, MA, United States of America

Dan Schmidt