Sound constituting apparatus

• US 5,471,009 A
• Filed: 09/17/1993
• Issued: 11/28/1995
• Est. Priority Date: 09/21/1992
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Nagahara, Junnichi, Oba, Haruo
• Primary Examiner(s): Shoop, Jr., William M.
• Assistant Examiner(s): DONELS, JEFFREY
• Application Number:
  US08/122,363
• Time in Patent Office: 802 Days
• Field of Search: 84/600-603, 84/616, 84/645, 84/654, 381/51
• US Class Current: 84/645
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 1/00 Details of electrophonic musical instruments
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 1/348 Switches actuated by parts of the body other than fingers
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 2210/066 for pitch analysis as part of wider processing for musical purposes, e.g. transcription, musical performance evaluation; Pitch recognition, e.g. in polyphonic sounds; Estimation or use of missing fundamental
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 2220/351 Environmental parameters, e.g. temperature, ambient light, atmospheric pressure, humidity, used as input for musical purposes
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 2220/376 using brain waves, e.g. EEG
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 2240/056 MIDI or other note-oriented file format
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 2250/335 Sea birds, e.g. seagulls
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 2250/391 Gensound footsteps, i.e. footsteps, kicks or tap-dancing sounds
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 2250/411 Water, e.g. seashore, waves, brook, waterfall, dripping faucet
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 2250/431 Natural aerodynamic noises, e.g. wind gust sounds, rustling leaves or beating sails
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 2250/455 Gensound singing voices, i.e. generation of human voices for musical applications, vocal singing sounds or intelligible words at a desired pitch or with desired vocal effects, e.g. by phoneme synthesis
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 2250/641 Waveform sampler, i.e. music samplers; Sampled music loop processing, wherein a loop is a sample of a performance that has been edited to repeat seamlessly without clicks or artifacts
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 3/125 Extracting or recognising the pitch or fundamental frequency of the picked up signal

Abstract

A sound constituting apparatus translates a sensor output, as detected by an input detection unit, such as state changes, into electrical signals. A data extracting unit makes use of these electrical signals as an information concerning an external environment to extract the results of analyses of the information concerning the external environment as data. A sound source controlling unit outputs sound source controlling data, based on the data extracted by the data extracting unit, and translates the output signals into a modified sound by a sound producing device to eliminate time constraint. In producing the sound, at least one of physical parameters, namely the noise of the external environment, vibrations, light, temperature, humidity or atmospheric pressure, time parameters such as time, day and season and biological information parameters, such as brain waves, body temperature, pulsation, perspiration, number of breaths, is selected to detect the state or changes in the state in such external environment or living body for conversion into electrical signals. The apparatus then fetches the information concerning the external environment to translate it instantly into an output sound totally different from the original sound. In this manner, a sound totally different from the original sound is produced and outputted without employing complex theories.

Claims

1. A sound constituting apparatus in which information of phoneme elements constituting a first sound is previously stored in a storage element and is interacted with a state of an external environment or changes of said state to produce a modified sound on a real-time basis without constraint as to a play time interval, comprising:

input detection means for detecting the state of the external environment or change of said state and producing output electrical signals;

data extraction means for extracting results of analyses of the electrical signals obtained from said input detection means as data;

sound source controlling means for outputting sound source control data based on the data extracted by said data extraction means;

sound source means for outputting output sound signals by modifying the information of phoneme elements in response to said sound source control data; and

sound producing means for converting output sound signals of said sound source means into the modified sound.

2. The sound constituting apparatus of claim 1 wherein said external environment includes at least one of a second sound, vibrations, light, temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure, as physical parameters, and time, day, and season, as time parameters, and brain waves, body temperature, pulsation, perspiration and the number of breaths, as biological information parameters and detects the state and changes in state in said external environment or living body to translate the state or changes thereof into electrical signals.

3. The sound constituting apparatus of claim 1 wherein said input detection means comprises acousto-electrical converting means for detecting a noise in the external environment for translation into said electrical signals.

4. The sound constituting apparatus of claim 3 wherein said data extraction means extracts as data a sound pitch from the electrical signals converted from the noise of the external environment by said acousto-electric converting means.

5. The sound constituting apparatus of claim 3 wherein said data extraction means extracts as data sound volume information as level values from the electrical signals converted by said acousto-electrical converting means.

6. The sound constituting apparatus of claim 1 wherein said input detection means comprises an image pickup device.

7. The sound constituting apparatus of claim 6 wherein said data extraction means extracts a volume change in a picked up picture as the data.

8. The sound constituting apparatus of claim 1 wherein said sound source controlling means converts data from said data extraction means into MIDI information.

9. The sound constituting apparatus of claim 1 wherein said sound source means outputs phoneme signals responsive to pitch data of the MIDI information from said sound source controlling means in the form of signals adapted to sound volume data of said MIDI information.

10. The sound constituting apparatus of claim 1 wherein said sound source controlling means converts data from said data extraction means into control data conforming to volume data of the MIDI information.

11. The sound constituting apparatus of claim 10 wherein said sound source means comprises

sound source signal generating means for generating output sound signals responsive to the MIDI information supplied from said sound source controlling means, and

acoustic effect generating means for supplying acoustic effects to the output sound signals generated responsive to the MIDI information supplied by said sound source controlling means.