Electronic musical instrument having playing and parameter adjustment

Abstract

An electronic musical instrument including fret members located at predetermined spacings, a string stretched over the fret members and contactable with any of the fret members when depressed by a player, a fret-position detector for producing supersonic vibrations in the string and receiving the supersonic vibrations reflected from any of the fret members through the string, the supersonic vibrations transmitted from the fret-position detector being reflected from a fret member contacted by the string, wherein the fret member contacted by the string is detected on the basis of a threshold value and or a reference time interval determined in respect of the string responsive to the supersonic vibrations transmitted from and reflected to the fret-position detector during a parameter adjusting mode of operation. The instrument may further include a bent-string detector for detecting an amount of lateral displacement of the string on any of the fret members and producing data representative of the detected amount of displacement of the string, wherein the amount of displacement of the string detected during a playing operation is compared with data representative of the amount of displacement detected with the string maintained in a non-bent state for producing bent-string data representative of a corrected amount of displacement of the string.