Nippon Gakki Seizo Kabushiki Kaisha

Yamaha Corporation

Tsuyoshi Futamase

Masanobu Chibana

Kosei Terada

Yutaka Hasegawa

Yasushi Kurakake

Shigehiko Mizuno

Mitsumi Kato

Kensuke Ide

Shuzo Karakawa

Takashi Kunii

Masatada Wachi

Hideo Yamada

Akira Nakada

Masahiro Shimizu

Naota Katada

Toshiaki Sato

Akiyoshi Ohya

Michio Kondo

A sound control apparatus is provided in a portable terminal for sounding a music tone in association with operation of the portable terminal, which is controlled by a main CPU. In the sound control apparatus, a memory memorizes music information representing a music tone and configuration information associated to a timbre of the music tone. An information acquiring section acquires the music information and the configuration information from the memory. A tone generating section is configured by the acquired configuration information to create a timbre specified by the configuration information. The tone generating section operates according to the acquired music information to generate the music tone being represented by the music information and having the specified timbre. A dedicated CPU is provided separately from the main CPU for controlling the memory, the information acquiring section and the tone generating section.

Portable telephony apparatus with music tone generator

A method generates waveform signals from a plurality of channels to sound a music tone through an electro-acoustic converter in response to sounding instruction information. The method is carried out by a receipt process of receiving the sounding instruction information containing a designated pitch effective to specify a pitch of the music tone, a determination process of determining whether or not the designated pitch is lower than a critical pitch which is predetermined in association with the electro-acoustic converter, a first generation process of generating a first waveform signal containing a fundamental tone corresponding to the designated pitch at least when the determination process determines that the designated pitch is not lower than the critical pitch, and a second generation process of generating a second waveform signal containing at least two overtones which are multiples of the fundamental tone and higher than the critical pitch, only when the determination process determines that the designated pitch is lower than the critical pitch, thereby the second waveform signal providing a pseudo low tone below the critical pitch.

Waveform signal generation method with pseudo low tone synthesis

An electronic musical instrument has a parameter setting system for setting a parameter necessary for controlling a musical characteristic which is a tone color or a musical effect such as a vibrato in a musical tone generating section. The parameter setting system comprises a memory (RAM) for storing a plurality of sets of parameters each set including, for example, a vibrato delay parameter and a vibrato speed parameter. When one of tone-color selection switches on a control panel is depressed, the set of parameters corresponding to the depressed tone-color selection switch are read and supplied to the musical tone generating section to thereby control the vibrato of the musical tone. The selected set of parameters in the RAM can be changed by the player through menu selection switches and data-up and data-down switches to desired values. The system may include a quit switch for restoring the set of parameters precedingly selected. The RAM may further store parameters for controlling another musical effect such as a tremolo. In this case, selection switches for selecting one of the vibrato and the tremolo are provided on the control panel, and parameters related to the selected musical effect are read from the RAM so that those parameters can be changed by the player.

Parameter setting system for electronic musical instrument

In a reverberation tone generating apparatus a digital memory device is used as a delay element. Amplitude data obtained by sampling an input musical tone at a predetermined period are sequentially stored in the digital memory device. The readout of the amplitude data stored before a desired delay time is equal to the readout of the data regarding the input musical tone delayed the desired delay time. By imparting the desired reverberation characteristics to the delayed amplitude data, reverberation tone of the input musical tone is produced. In a modified embodiment, an input musical tone is divided into a plurality of frequency bands and different reverberation characteristics are added to the divided input musical tones respectively. This utilization of the digital memory as the delay element prevents degrading S/N ratio even if the delay time or the reverberation time is elongated and makes it possible to easily change the reverberation time, thereby enabling to generate a reverberation tone having the same quality as a natural reverberation tone.

Reverberation tone generating apparatus

In an electronic musical instrument, a reverberation tone most suitable for a selected tone color is applied to a musical tone with the selected tone color. In a modification, the electronic musical instrument is provided with a plurality of keyboards and to musical tones to be produced corresponding to the keyboards reverberation tones are applied independently. In another modification, one of the reverberation tones has a reverberation characteristic different from the other reverberation tone.

Electronic musical instruments provided with reverberation tone

The reverberation tone generating apparatus is constituted by a combination of apparatus which generates a reverberation tone having irregular delay time and level and apparatus provided with a feedback loop for an output delayed signal and produces a reverberation tone having regular delay time and level. The combination makes it possible to produce a reverberation tone rich in naturality with circuits of a small size and economical construction.

A modulation effect device for use in an electronic musical instrument which utilizes, as a digital modulation circuit, a digital memory device for storing digitized musical tone signals. The digital memory device is accessed by modulation coefficient generating means which supplies a modulated address information to the digital memory device to read out from the memory device a musical tone signal modulated in accordance with the modulated address.

Modulation effect device for use in electronic musical instrument

A sound effect imparting device for an electronic musical instrument is capable of imparting a plurality of desired sound effect such as vibrato and reverberation effects to a digital musical tone generated from the electronic musical instrument. The device comprises a digital arithmetic operation unit constructed with a combination of adders, multipliers, delay circuits, etc., a control unit, a parameter memory and a read-out unit. By control data and parameter data which are respectively read out from the control unit and the parameter memory by means of the read-out unit, switching of the operation mode of the digital arithmetic operation unit is controlled in a time-sharing manner, whereby a plurality of sound effects are imparted to a musical tone through digital arithmetic operations.

Sound effect imparting device for an electronic musical instrument

An electronic musical instrument is of a type wherein a tone is synthesized by combining partials and of a type which utilizes a tone production assignment technology including a small number of tone generating circuits for a large number of playing keys. When a key is depressed to designate a tone to be produced in a certain tone color, generations of the partials for constituting that tone are respectively assigned to time slots of time division multiplexing channels. Upon depression of keys, frequencies and envelopes are designated partial by partial and each of such designations is separately assigned to an available one of the time slots. Thus the time slots are efficiently used for production of a large number of tones.

Electronic musical instrument

A function generator of time-dependent variable type especially suitable for use as an envelope waveshape generator of an electronic musical instrument is constituted by means for setting multi-bit digitalized information which represents time information in terms of a logarithm, dividing means for dividing the bits of the time information into upper order bits and lower order bits at a bit of a predetermined order, means for converting a portion of the information represented by the lower order bits into linear information, a timing pulse generator which produces a timing pulse having a period corresponding to a value obtained by converting a portion of the information represented by the higher order bits into a natural number, and an accumulator for accumulating the output produced by the information converting means at a period of the timing pulse thereby producing an accumulated value as the time function waveshape which varies with time at a rate corresponding to the time information.

Function generators of time-dependent variable type

The system comprises a frequency number memory device for storing information regarding the frequencies of respective tones, a keyboard switch for reading out frequency number information corresponding thereto from the memory device, an address generator including an adder for adding a predetermined number of the frequency number information thereby producing an address signal consisting of plural bits, address composers for processing the bits of the address signal and thereby composing digital tone signals constituting a saw-tooth, square and triangular waveshape, and digital-analog converters for converting the digital tone signals into analog tone signals, which are thereafter used to synthesize waveshapes of any tone.

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Hamamatsu, Japan

Tsuyoshi Futamase