Yamaha Corporation

Yasuhiko Ohba

Yuji Fujiwara

Shigeru Muramatsu

Tomoyuki Ura

Kiyoshi Kawamura

Tsutomu Sasaki

Tadaharu Kato

Rei Furukawa

Taro Kawabata

Hiroyuki Murakami

Koichi Ishizaki

Hironori Osakabe

Motoya Kondo

Masahisa Hashimoto

Teruo Akimoto

Masaaki Suzuki

An automatic player piano includes a voice recognizer and a piano controller; while a user is singing a song, the voice recognizer analyzes the voice signal representative of vocal tones so as to determine the loudness and pitch of each vocal tone, and successively sends music data codes each expressing a note-on event, key number closest to the pitch of vocal tone and a velocity and music data codes each expressing a note-off and the key number to the piano controller together with music data codes duplicated from a set of music data codes stored in the memory; and the piano controller selectively drives the black and white keys with driving signal produced on the basis of the music data codes so as to play the accompaniment of the song.

Automatic player accompanying singer on musical instrument and automatic player musical instrument

An automatic player piano is equipped with a preliminary data producer comprising an experimental routine and an editor; a motion controller forces each of the black and white keys to travel on a test trajectory at different values of key velocity so that the black or white key gives rise to rotation of hammer by means of an action unit, and a hammer sensor varies the magnitude of a hammer position signal depending upon the current hammer position; the hammer velocity is converted to a value of MIDI velocity so that a table producer correlates the values of key velocity with the values of MIDI velocity; while an automatic player is performing a music passage, the motion controller exactly determines a value of key velocity on the basis of the relation already determined by the preliminary data producer.

Preliminary data producer correlating music data with actual motion, automatic player and musical instrument

A pedaling aid is combined with an acoustic piano, and assists a physically handicapped person in performing a piece of music on the acoustic piano; the pedaling aid includes a human interface, a pedal actuator and a controller, and the pedal actuator is equipped with a locator and a coupling device; a user moves the pedal actuator in the vicinity of the acoustic piano, and couples the pedal actuator to the acoustic piano at a proper position with the assistance of the locator and coupling device; while the physically handicapped person is fingering on the acoustic piano, the human interface is kept around the head so that the physically handicapped person manipulates the human interface with the chin, mouth, teeth or tongue; since the human interface produces a signal representative of a target position, the controller makes the pedal actuator to move the pedal to the target position.

Pedaling aid for handicapped musician

A set of formation data codes, which includes action event codes and duration codes, is loaded in an automatic player piano, and a controller interprets the action event codes for driving the solenoid-operated key actuators; since the solenoid-operated key actuators slowly push the associated keys, the hammers do not reach the strings, and any piano tone is not produced; the plungers make the keys sunk to different depth so that the keys are laid on a artistic pattern; the controller sequentially changes the artistic pattern, and offers an artistic visual expression to the audience.

Musical instrument performing artistic visual expression and controlling system incorporated therein

An automatic player piano is equipped with solenoid-operated pedal actuators for driving the pedals in a playback; since a large quantity of induction is coupled to the solenoid, the driving signal is delayed due to long time constant so that the pedals behave differently from those in the original performance; a controller, which is incorporated in the automatic player, firstly determines a target mean current of the driving signal to be theoretically required for the reproduction of the pedal motion, and a temporary means current twice as much as the target mean current at the maximum; the controller supplies the driving signal at the temporary mean current to the solenoid in an early stage of each cycle, and, thereafter, recovers the driving signal to the target mean current so that the pedal motion becomes close to that in the original performance.

Automatic player musical instrument exactly reproducing performance and automatic player used therein

An automatic player piano includes keys driven for the angular motion through a hybrid feedback control loop; a controller, a key position sensor, a plunger velocity sensor and a solenoid-operated key actuator form parts of the hybrid feedback control loop for each key, and a current key position and a plunger velocity are reported to the controller; the controller determines a series of target position or a reference trajectory and a target velocity, and periodically compares a composite current position and a composite current velocity, which are determined on the basis of the current key position and current plunger velocity, with the target position and target velocity to see whether or not the key travels on the reference trajectory; if the answer is negative, the controller adjusts the driving signal to a proper duty ratio so as to force the key to travel on the reference trajectory.

Musical instrument automatically performing music passage through hybrid feedback control loop containing plural sorts of sensors

Keys, which are incorporated in an automatic player piano, are monitored with an optical transducer system. The optical transducer system includes sensor heads provided on both sides of the key trajectories, LEDs connected to predetermined sensor heads through optical fibers, LDDs connected to the other sensor heads through optical fibers and a controlling unit. A luminescence controller is connected to the LEDs for optimizing the luminescence, and bias controllers are respectively connected to the LDDs. The luminescence controller and bias controllers optimize the luminescence of emitted light and the bias level of electric signals so that the optical transducer system is free from the individuality of component parts and the deterioration.

Optical transducer system having light emitting elements and light detecting elements both regulable in output characteristics

An automatic player piano includes an acoustic piano and an electronic system for reenacting a performance on the acoustic piano; a self-diagnosis subroutine program runs on a microprocessor of the electronic system so as to diagnose solenoid-operated actuators with built-in plunger sensors and component parts of the acoustic piano such as keys, pedals, action units and hammers on the basis of pieces of plunger data, pieces of key data and pieces of hammer data; thus, the mechanical components of the piano are diagnosed as well as the electric components through the execution of the self-diagnosis subroutine program.

Musical instrument capable of diagnosing electronic and mechanical components and diagnostic system used therein

A keyboard instrument is configured such that a flat panel-like display unit such as a liquid crystal display for displaying character information and/or images is provided on an instrument main body and that speakers, a recording/reproducing unit for multi media such as sound and/or image recording media, a microphone and a 'karaoke' reproduction unit are connected to the display unit so as to improve the function of displaying a notation and/or lyric at the time of a performance, a performance function such as an ensemble performance or 'karaoke' performance, and a tuning function.

Growing community of inventors

Hamamatsu, Japan

Yasuhiko Ohba