Electronic musical instrument with delay trigger function

• US 4,901,616 A
• Filed: 10/11/1988
• Issued: 02/20/1990
• Est. Priority Date: 10/14/1987
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Casio Computer Company Limited
• Original Assignee: Casio Computer Company Limited
• Inventors: Akutsu, Takahashi, Matsubara, Akinori
• Primary Examiner(s): Witkowski, Stanley J.
• Application Number:
  US07/256,740
• Time in Patent Office: 497 Days
• Field of Search: 84/1.01, 84/1.03, 84/1.11-1.13, 84/1.19-1.23, 84/1.28, 84/115, 84/462, 84/DIG. 29
• US Class Current: 84/602
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 1/0091 Means for obtaining special acoustic effects combined with modulation G10H1/043
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 1/183 Channel-assigning means for polyphonic instruments

Abstract

In playing a music, the present electronic musical instrument stores a code for a performance event and data of generation time length until a presently-specified performance event is regenerated, in a sequencer memory. For each playback access to this sequencer memory, a performance event is excecuted upon elapse of a time corresponding to the generation time interval data of the performance event read out from the memory. For instance, a musical tone which is generated by depression of a key on a keyboard, is generated again with the designated pitch after a given time.

Claims

1. An electronic musical instrument, comprising:

tone data output means for outputting tone data including at least pitch data corresponding to a manual performance;

tone generating means for generating musical tones based on said outputted tone data;

sequencer memory means for storing the tone data from said tone data outputting means;

recording address pointer means for incrementing an address of said sequencer memory means every time a recording access is performed to said sequencer memory means;

recording timer means for measuring time interval data of serially obtained tone data;

recording processing means for sequentially storing the tone data and the time interval data from the recording timer means at an address of the sequencer memory means pointed by said recording address pointer means;

playback address pointer means for incrementing an address of said sequencer memory means every time a playback access is performed to said sequencer memory means;

delay time storing means for storing predetermined delay time data; and

sequence playback processing means for commencing to store the tone data and time interval data into said sequencer memory means by said recording processing means, and after a lapse of a time period corresponding to the delay time stored in said delay time storing means, for controlling said playback address pointer means to read out the tone data from said sequencer memory means for every time interval of said time data and to output the read out tone data to said tone generating means so as to generate a musical tone corresponding to the output tone data.

2. The musical instrument according to claim 1, further comprising means responsive to a determination that there remains no performance event to be executed by said sequence playback processing means, for setting back values of said recording address pointer means and said playback address pointer means to a position indicating a head address of said sequencer memory means.

3. An electronic musical instrument, comprising:

tone data output means for outputting tone data including at least pitch data corresponding to a manual performance;

tone generating means for generating musical tones based on said outputted tone data;

sequencer memory means for storing the tone data from said tone data outputting means;

recording address pointer means for incrementing an address of said sequencer memory means every time a recording access is performed to said sequencer memory means;

recording timer means for measuring time interval data of serially obtained tone data;

recording processing means for sequentially storing the tone data and the time interval data from the recording timer means at an address of the sequencer memory means pointed by said recording address pointer means;

playback address pointer means for incrementing an address of said sequencer memory means every time a playback access is performed to said sequencer memory means;

delay time storing means for storing a plurality of delay time data which are different from each other; and

sequence playback processing means for commencing to store the tone data and time interval data into said sequencer memory means by said recording processing means, and after a lapse of a time period corresponding to a delay time stored in said delay time storing means, for controlling said playback address pointer means corresponding to the lapse of time of the delay time data to read out the tone data from said sequencer memory means for every time interval of said time data and to output the read out tone data to said tone generating means so as to generate a musical tone corresponding to the output tone data.

4. An electronic musical instrument according to claim 3, wherein said sequence playback processing means include means for respectively setting timbres of tones reproduced by a plurality of said playback address pointer means for each of said playback address pointer means.

5. An electronic musical instrument, comprising:

tone data output means for outputting tone data including at least pitch data corresponding to a manual performance;

tone generating means for generating musical tones based on said outputted tone data;

sequencer memory means for storing the tone data from said tone data outputting means;

recording address pointer means for incrementing an address of said sequencer memory means every time a recording access is performed to said sequencer memory means;

recording timer means for measuring time interval data of serially obtained tone data;

recording processing means for sequentially storing the tone data and the time interval data from the recording timer means at an address of the sequencer memory means pointed by said recording address pointer means;

playback address pointer means for incrementing an address of said sequencer memory means every time a playback access is performed to said sequencer memory means;

delay time storing means for storing predetermined delay time data; and

sequence playback processing means for commencing to store the tone data and time interval data into said sequencer memory means by said recording processing means, and after a lapse of a time period corresponding to the delay time stored in said delay time storing means, for controlling said playback address pointer means to read out the tone data from said sequencer memory means for every time interval of said time data and to output the read out tone data to said tone generating means so as to generate a musical tone corresponding to the output tone data; and

address pointer control means for controlling, when said recording address pointer means or said playback address pointer means become in excess of a final address of said sequencer memory means, to return a corresponding address pointer means to point representing a starting point of said sequencer memory means.

6. The musical instrument according to claim 5, wherein said address pointer control means forcibly increments said playback address pointer means when an address indicated by said recording address pointer means is within a given range with respect to an address indicated by said playback address pointer means.

7. The musical instrument according to claim 5, wherein when an address indicated by said recording address pointer means is within a given range with respect to an address indicated by said playback address pointer means, said address pointer control means causes said sequence playback processing means to forcibly execute a performance event stored at said address indicated by said playback address pointer means and then increments said playback address pointer means.

8. The musical instrument according to claim 7, wherein said sequence playback processing means forcibly executes said performance event only when said performance event is a key-OFF event.

9. The musical instrument according to claim 5, wherein:

said playback timer means is provided for detecting an elapse of said time interval; and

when an address indicated by said recording address pointer means is within a given range with respect to an address indicated by said playback address pointer means, said address pointer control means forcibly increments said playback address pointer means and adds a time between performance events skipped by the forced increment thereof to that time for a next performance event which is being measured by said recording timer means.