Yamaha Corporation

Nippon Gakki Seizo Kabushiki Kaisha

Hideo Yamada

Masashi Hirano

Masatada Wachi

Masahiro Shimizu

Tsuyoshi Futamase

Masanobu Chibana

An electronic musical instrument, which is configured to simulate one or more instruments, provides a sound source, a display unit and a control portion. Herein, under control of the control portion, the display unit displays the predetermined graphic pattern corresponding to the tone-generation mechanism, i.e., tone-generation algorithm of an instrument to be simulated. The sound source contains a drive portion, a tone-generation portion and a resonance-radiation portion, each of which further contains a digital signal processor (DSP). All of these portions function to create a digitized musical tone signal corresponding to a simulated sound of the instrument by combining operation data outputted from the DSPs. By controlling the display unit, it is possible to arbitrarily vary the contents of the displayed tone-generation algorithm, so that the performer can easily and freely perform a music on this electronic musical instrument.

Electronic musical instrument

A musical sound generating apparatus creates a waveform to generate a musical sound according to performance information. In the apparatus, a first waveform generator is operable for creating a waveform. A second waveform generator is operable independently from the first waveform generator for creating a waveform. An input device provides performance information. A designating device designates at least one of the first waveform generator and the second waveform generator in correspondence with the provided performance information. A controller selectively operates the designated one of the first waveform generator and the second waveform generator to create the waveform according to the provided performance information. An output device generates the musical sound based on the created waveform. The second waveform generator, the input device, the designating device and the controller are integrated with each other to constitute a main part composed of a computer, while the first waveform generator alone constitutes a supplementary part which is separate from the main part and which is optionally installable in the computer.

Computerized music system having software and hardware sound sources

In a sound source apparatus, a display unit displays a block diagram containing various functional blocks which represent corresponding elementary functions selectively usable for synthesis of a desired musical tone. A secondary memory provisionally stores a pair of an effective elementary program and an ineffective elementary program for each functional block such that the effective elementary program is designed to effectuate the corresponding elementary function while the ineffective elementary program is designed to ineffectuate the corresponding elementary function. An editor unit graphically treats the displayed block diagram so that each functional block is selected if the corresponding elementary function is necessary for the synthesis of the desired musical tone and is otherwise nonselected if the corresponding elementary function is unnecessary for the synthesis of the desired musical tone to thereby edit an algorithm which defines an arithmetic procedure for the synthesis of the desired musical tone. An assembler unit retrieves from the secondary memory an effective elementary program for each selected functional block so as to enable the corresponding elementary function, and retrieves an ineffective elementary program for each nonselected functional block so as to disable the corresponding elementary function to thereby assemble the retrieved ones of the effective and ineffective elementary programs into a complete program according to the edited algorithm. A primary memory stores the complete program. A generator unit is connected to the primary memory for executing the edited arithmetic procedure according to the stored complete program to thereby generate the desired musical tone.

Computerized sound source programmable by user's editing of tone

An electronic musical instrument of the present invention provides a tone generator which includes an exciter generating an excitation signal and a sound producer having an input apparatus which produces a musical tone signal in response to the excitation signal. The-tone generator delays the musical tone signal and feeds the musical tone signal back to the input apparatus. Furthermore, the electronic musical instrument provides a memory which stores a plurality of sound production algorithms and an assignment designating apparatus which designates one of the plurality of sound production algorithms and assigns the designated sound production algorithm to the musical tone generator. Moreover, the tone generator further includes the operation apparatus which performs the assigned sound production algorithm on the musical tone signal. In addition, the electronic musical instrument provides the extractor which extracts the musical tone signal.

Electronic musical instrument having pre-assigned microprogram

A musical tone generating apparatus, to be applied to an electronic musical instrument, provides at least a plurality of channels and a tone-color memory. Each channel contains one tone generator and two or more buffers. The number of the buffers provided in a plurality of channels is set smaller than the number of tone colors stored in the tone-color memory. Each of the buffers stores one tone color, so that the tone generator creates a musical tone signal responsive to the tone color stored in the buffer in accordance with musical tone information given from an external device such as a keyboard. The tone colors to be used in a tune to be performed can be freely assigned to the buffers in advance. Herein, all of the buffers are classified into two or more groups in accordance with a buffer-grouping priority, so that in a plurality of channels, when a musical-tone generation is assigned to a channel, one buffer given a higher priority is selected prior to another buffer. In a case where an automatic performance is played based on musical tone information read from a memory, the tone-color assignment to the buffers is determined responsive to a maximum number of the musical tones to be simultaneously produced with respect to each of the tone colors corresponding to the musical tone information. When a new musical-tone generation is designated, one of the channels is automatically selected in accordance with the buffer-grouping priority.

Musical tone generating apparatus

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.

Electronic musical instrument which automatically adjusts a performance

An electronic musical instrument capable of changing a slope portion of a filter characteristic continuously from start to completion of production of a musical tone. The inventive electronic musical instrument changes a filter slope in a frequency region above or below a cut-off frequency with lapse of time and, in order to achieve such change in the filter slope, changes a slope factor continuously from start to completion of production of the tone. The instrument is also capable of changing the cut-off frequency. An example of a low-pass filter is shown in which a desired form of a successively changing filter slope can be obtained by employing four slope factor values and three values representing a speed of change of the slope factors as well as three cut-off frequency values and two values representing a speed of change of the cut-off frequencies.

Electronic musical instrument having an electronic filter with time

An electronic musical instrument wherein instantaneous amplitude values of respective harmonics of a musical tone waveform are individually provided in accordance with a numerical value corresponding to the frequency of the depressed key for the musical tone, each of harmonic amplitude coefficients setting relative amplitudes of the respective harmonics is multiplied with corresponding one of the instantaneous amplitude values and the multiplication products are aligned with respect to time thereby to obtain a musical tone of a desired tone color, i.e. of a desired frequency spectrum construction. The harmonic amplitude coefficients are given as values corresponding to a multipeak spectrum construction. The harmonic amplitude coefficients are provided by a filter having a multipeak characteristic. This filter produces harmonic amplitude coefficients which change in accordance with the order of the harmonics and/or time and has a multipeak filter characteristic such that the origin of the frequency is shifted with lapse of time or the bandwidth of a single peak changes in accordance with the order of the harmonics or lapse of time.

Growing community of inventors

Hamamatsu, Japan

Hideo Yamada