Electronic musical instrument having a coupler effect

Abstract

An electronic musical instrument is of a type wherein musical tone waveforms are stored in a memory as their sampled amplitudes and sequentially and repetitively read out to constitute tone waveforms. A key depression brings forth key code in a digital representation. This key code is used for reading out frequency information from a frequency information memory. The frequency informaton is accumulated to make an address signal for reading out the waveform memory. The read out waveform is reproduced as a musical tone through a tone-color and volume control circuit. This tone-color and volume control circuit is controlled keyboard by keyboard. The key code produced upon depression of the key contains a signal representing the kind of the keyboard to which the depressed key belongs. This signal is applied to a conversion circuit and converted to a signal representative of a different kind of keyboard. The output signal of the conversion circuit operates the tone-color and volume control circuit in a manner corresponding to the keyboard designated by the converted signal while the original signal representing the kind of the keyboard of the depressed key is applied directly to the tone-color and volume control circuit to operate it in a manner corresponding to the keybord of the depressed key. The manner of conversion of the signal representing the keyboard can be selected as desired. There is disclosed an example of a coupler effect between the upper and lower keyboard which can be produced by converting a signal for the upper keyboard to a signal for the lower keyboard while directly using the upper keyboard signal. Also disclosed is an example of a coupler effect between the lower keyboard and the pedal keyboard produced by converting a signal for the lower keyboard to a signal for the pedal keyboard while directly using the lower keyboard signal.