Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Tomiji Munehiro

Masao Tsukamoto

Junnosuke Shigeta

Makito Kawai

A keyboard operated electronic musical instrument such as an electronic organ is disclosed which generates a musical tone signal by mixing together two different musical tone signals of different waveforms and which changes the sound of the generated musical tone by changing a the amount of mixing of the two signals. A clipping gate with a so-called sustain function is included for controlling the attenuation of an input signal as it passes to an output terminal while clipping the input signal gradually and smoothly so that the musical tone does not disappear instantly but attenuates gradually after the release of a depressed key. The input signal to the clipping gate circuit is a square wave signal, and a square wave signal derived at an output thereof is converted to a waveform other than a square wave. When the square wave signal and the non-square wave signal are used as the two different musical tone signals, an unintended change of tone is prevented by designing the system to avoid an abrupt change in the musical tone signal between a sound generated when a key is depressed and an attenuating sound generated when the key is released.

Keyboard operated electronic musical instrument

An automatic accompaniment system for use with an electronic musical instrument of a type having keyboard arrangements, which is capable of automatically sounding chords and basses in accordance with a predetermined rhythm of a selected music, the basses of which are each formed by some of tones forming each chord in the case where the right and left hands of a player are used to play the melody and an accompaniment, respectively. To this end, the system includes a counting circuit composed of a binary counter and a decoder, a high frequency pulse generator, a plurality of logical gating elements and a rhythm pulse generator. While outputs from the counting circuit correspond to respective tones of keys on the keyboard arrangement, counting of the number of high frequency pulses from the high frequency pulse generator is performed and this counting operation is stopped by the gating elements, when the outputs from the counting circuit and component tones of a chord formed coincide with each other, thereby permitting passage of tone signals from tone signal sources through the gating elements. This cycle of operation is repeated each time rhythm pulses are applied.

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Neyagawa, Japan

Tomiji Munehiro