JP2000148164A - Karaoke device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a karaoke device capable of displaying the residual time of a musical tune under playing or the present time position in the whole musical tune. SOLUTION: A sequencer module 102 comprises a routine for reading the tune time data from tune data prior to play of a musical tune and a timer interruption routine started at a preset fixed time interval after the start of the play to perform the read of an event data in the tune data or the supply to each part. This timer interruption routine comprises a clocking routine for counting the frequency of starting and determining the elapsed time after the start of play. A singing point display module 202 generates a singing point display data for showing a singing point on the basis of the tune time data and the elapsed time. The singing point display data is written over the image data within a VRAM 101 and displayed on a CRT 11.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

The present invention relates to a karaoke apparatus.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, karaoke apparatuses have been required to have various additional functions in addition to simply performing karaoke performances. For example, a scoring function is one of the functions added to meet such a demand.

[0003]

What is of concern for those who are enjoying karaoke and those who are waiting for their turn beside them are the remaining time of the music currently being played in karaoke. Knowing this remaining time or the current time position in the current song being sung, for example, the singer may stop singing at an appropriate point and give the microphone to another user waiting for his turn. You can also do things. Conventionally, there has been a request for such a function, but a karaoke apparatus satisfying the request has not yet been provided.

The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and provides a karaoke apparatus capable of displaying the remaining time of the currently playing music or the current time position in the entire music. It is intended to be.

[0005]

According to the present invention, there is provided a music time detecting means for detecting the music time of a music piece to be performed from music data of the music piece to be performed, and a time counting means for measuring an elapsed time from the start of the music piece. A karaoke apparatus, comprising: a singing point indicating a current temporal position in the song or a remaining time of the song based on the elapsed time and the song time. Is what you do.

[0006]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION Hereinafter, embodiments will be described to make the present invention easier to understand. Such an embodiment shows one aspect of the present invention, and does not limit the present invention, and can be arbitrarily changed within the scope of the present invention.

A. Configuration of Embodiment FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a hardware configuration of a karaoke apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

In FIG. 1, a CPU 1 is a control center of the karaoke apparatus.
The AM 3, the receiving unit 5, the operating unit 6, the HDD (hard disk device) 7, the auxiliary storage unit 8, the lyrics display processing unit 9, the image synthesizing device 10, and the tone signal generating unit 12 exchange various kinds of information. The entire karaoke apparatus is controlled. RO
M2 is storage means for storing a control program such as a loader executed by the CPU 1. RAM3 is CP
U1 is used as a main memory and as a means for storing music data used for karaoke performance.

The remote controller 4, the receiving unit 5, and the operation unit 6
This is a means provided as a man-machine interface. That is, the remote controller 5 outputs an infrared signal corresponding to a command or a song number given by the user,
The receiving unit 5 demodulates the original command, music number, and the like from the infrared signal and transmits the demodulated signal to the CPU 1. The user can also give commands, music numbers, and the like to the CPU 1 by operating the operation unit 6.

The HDD 7 and the auxiliary storage device 8 are means for storing music data. Song data is transmitted to the karaoke apparatus via communication means (not shown), and the song data is stored in a song data storage area set in the HDD 7. Also, the auxiliary storage device 8
Is composed of CD-ROM, DVD, etc.
When the free space in the music data storage area of the HDD 7 becomes insufficient, the HDD 7 plays a role of storing a part of music data instead of the HDD 7. The CPU 1 reads out the music data corresponding to the music number specified by the user from the HDD 7 or the auxiliary storage device 8 and stores it in the RAM 3.
The karaoke performance is controlled according to the music data in the karaoke.

The music data for one music is composed of performance data for controlling musical instrument performance, lyrics data for controlling lyrics display, and the like. Here, for example, the performance data is sequence data composed of a MIDI event for instructing control for forming a tone signal and the like and duration data for specifying a time interval for reading each MIDI event. The same applies to other data (such as lyrics data) constituting the music data, each of which is composed of event data and duration data. C
The PU 1 sequentially reads out event data in performance data and lyrics data according to a sequencer module to be described later during a karaoke performance. For example, a MIDI event is sent to the tone signal generator 12 and a lyrics display event in the lyrics data is displayed as lyrics. To the processing section 9, and so on, the event data is transmitted to the destination corresponding to the type of each event data. Also,
The music data in the present embodiment includes music time data indicating the time from the start to the end of the music in addition to the above information.

The HDD 7 stores a system program and an application program in addition to the music data described above. When the power of the karaoke apparatus is turned on, the CPU 1 transfers these programs to the RAM 3 in accordance with the loader in the ROM 2 described above.
The control of the entire karaoke apparatus is performed by executing the program in the karaoke apparatus.

The application program includes a singing point display module and the like in addition to the sequencer module described above. Here, the sequencer module loads karaoke data corresponding to the tune number specified by the user into the RAM 3, sequentially reads out event data in the tune data, and sends the event data to the tone signal generation unit 12 or the like. This is a control program for performing control. The singing point display module is a program for generating singing point display data indicating which position of the current song the singer is singing. The song time data in the song data described above is used to generate the singing point display data. The singing point display module is executed by the CPU 1 only when a command to perform singing point display is input from the remote controller 4 or the like.

The lyric display processing section 9 is means for generating lyric image data in accordance with a lyric display event in the lyric data read by the CPU 1. Image synthesis device 1
Numeral 0 is means for synthesizing image data obtained by pasting the image data of the lyrics with the image data of the background image. The image data of the synthesized image obtained from the image synthesis device 10 is C
Displayed on RT11. Further, when there is a singing point display instruction from the user, the image synthesizing unit 10 receives singing point display data, which will be described later, from the CPU 1 and further overwrites the synthesized image.

The tone signal generator 12 is means for generating a tone signal in accordance with a MIDI event read from the RAM 3 by the CPU 1. The mixer 13 is a means for mixing the musical tone signal and the singing voice signal obtained by the microphone 14 and outputting the result. The output signal of the mixer 13 is amplified by the amplifier 15 and output from the speaker 16.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing the functional configuration of the karaoke apparatus according to the embodiment described above. In FIG. 2, VRAM 101 and video signal generation unit 1
02 is provided in the image synthesizing device 10 in FIG. Here, the VRAM 101 is storage means for storing image data for one screen to be displayed on the CRT 11. The image synthesizing device 10 generates image data of the synthesized image by writing each image data of the background image and the lyrics into the VRAM 101. The video signal generation unit 102 synchronizes the VRAM
The image data in 101 is sequentially read line by line, and C
This is a means for supplying to RT11. The application program 200, the sequencer module 201, and the singing point module 202 are programs executed by the CPU 1 as described with reference to FIG.

Here, the sequencer module 201
A routine for fetching song time data from song data in the RAM 3 prior to the start of playing a song, and starting at a predetermined fixed time interval after the start of the song to read out event data in the song data and supply it to each unit. Includes a timer interrupt routine to perform. The timer interrupt routine includes a time counting routine for counting the number of times of activation and obtaining the elapsed time after the start of the performance from the count result. In addition, the singing point display module 20
Reference numeral 2 denotes a module that generates image data representing singing points (singing point display data) based on the song time data and elapsed time obtained by executing the sequencer module 201, and transfers the data to the image synthesizing apparatus 10.
The singing point display module 202 is also executed by the CPU 1 at regular intervals, similarly to the timer interrupt routine. The singing point display data obtained by the singing point display module 202 is overwritten on the image data in the VRAM 101 by the image synthesizing device 10.

B. Next, the operation of the present embodiment will be described. In FIG. 1, when a song number and a karaoke performance start command are given by the remote controller 4, the CPU 1 stores song data corresponding to the song number from the HDD 7 or the auxiliary storage device 8 according to the above-described sequencer module 201 (FIG. 2). R
Load to AM3. Then, the CPU 1 reads out the song time data from the song data in the RAM 3 according to the sequencer module 201. Thereafter, the CPU 1 executes a timer interrupt routine in the sequencer module 201 at regular time intervals, thereby reading out the event data in the music data in the RAM 3 and supplying the data to each unit. As a result, a karaoke performance is performed by the tone signal generation unit 12, and the lyrics image processing unit 9 generates image data of the lyrics and displays the image data on the CRT 11.

On the other hand, each time the timer interrupt routine is executed, the number of executions is counted, and the elapsed time after the performance is started is obtained from the count value, and is passed to the singing point display module 202. CPU
1 generates singing point display data from the song time data and the elapsed time according to the singing point display module 202. More specifically, the elapsed time is divided by the song time data, and image data representing the result of the division in an analog manner is generated and transferred to the image synthesizing apparatus 10 as singing point display data. As a result,
The singing point is displayed on the CRT 11. The generation of the singing point display data and the display on the CRT 11 are repeatedly performed at a fixed time interval. Therefore, the user can see how the singing point sequentially shifts from the start timing to the end timing of the music on the CRT 11.

FIGS. 3A to 3C show display examples of the singing point. First, in the example shown in FIG. 3A, the singing point is displayed by displaying the relative length of the elapsed time with respect to the entire music time by a bar graph. In the figure, START indicates the start timing of the music, END indicates the end timing of the music, and bar 10
1 represents the elapsed time. In the example shown in FIG. 3B, the current singing point in the entire music is displayed by the cursor 102. In the example shown in FIG. 3 (c), the whole music time is made into one circle, and this is made into a part 103 corresponding to the elapsed time and a part 104 corresponding to the remaining time.
The point during singing is displayed by displaying a pie chart divided into. According to the present embodiment, since the singing point is displayed in this manner, the user of the karaoke can easily grasp how much time is left for the music.

C. 3. Modifications Although the embodiment of the present invention has been described above, the embodiment is merely an example, and various modifications can be made to the embodiment without departing from the spirit of the invention. For example, the following modifications can be considered.

<Modification 1> In this modification, information indicating the temporal position of a portion corresponding to a so-called rust is included in the music data, and the position of the rust is displayed together with the singing point. FIG. 4 shows a display example in this case. In FIG. 4, a triangle mark display 105 beside a bar display corresponding to the music time is a display of a singing point, and 106
Is the display of the rust part. According to this modification, the singer knows in advance that he will proceed to the chorus part, so that he can sing the chorus part well.

<Modification 2> In this modification, a bar corresponding to the music time is displayed, and the display color of a portion corresponding to the singing section in the bar display is changed to another color. The singing point is displayed by, for example, a triangle mark beside the bar display as in the first modification. According to this modification, the singer can confirm that he or she enters the singing section. In the bar display, the rust portion may be displayed in another color.

<Modification 3> In this modification, the first song,
No.2, the break of ~ is displayed together with the singing point.
In this case, for example, the remaining time until the end of the first track, the end time until the end of the second track, or the remaining time until the end of the music may be displayed.

<Modification 4> In this modification, a temporal change of the pitch or loudness of the singing part is displayed on a CRT as a line graph with the horizontal axis as time, and the singing is performed on the same time axis. Display points. FIG. 5 shows a display example in this case, wherein 107 is a line graph of the temporal change of the sound volume, 108 is a line graph of the temporal change of the pitch, and 109 is the singing point. According to this modification, the singer can make preparations such as adjusting his breath before a section in which continuous singing with a loud voice starts, for example.

<Modification 5> In the karaoke room, there are two CRs, each of which includes a CRT for a singer to view lyrics and a CRT behind the singer for a person other than the singer to view.
Many have T. In the case of such a karaoke room, for example, both a microphone used by a singer and a remote controller for reserving a tune are provided with a button switch for instructing singing point display, and the singing point display is provided by the microphone switch. When the instruction is given, a singing point is displayed on the CRT viewed by the singer,
When an instruction to display the singing point is given by a switch of the remote controller, the singing point may be displayed on the CRT behind the singer. According to this modification, the singer and the person other than the singer can check the remaining time of the music without noticing each other.

<Modification 6> The user of the karaoke room is
As the scheduled exit time approaches, you will want to know how many more songs you can sing. The present modification responds to such a user request. In the present modified example, when setting the scheduled exit time at the time of accepting entry to the karaoke room, the expected exit time is notified from the reception to the karaoke device in the karaoke room and stored in the HDD 7 (see FIG. 1). In the karaoke apparatus according to the present modification, the CPU 1 determines the currently playing music based on the current time obtained from the built-in clock circuit, the remaining time of the currently playing music, and the music time of each reserved music. And the scheduled end time of each song being reserved.
Then, the CPU 1 displays the scheduled end time and the title of each music on the CRT 11 in the order of reservation. Here, for a song whose scheduled end time is earlier than the scheduled exit time stored in the HDD 7, the song name and the scheduled end time are displayed in blue, for example, and the song whose scheduled end time is later than the scheduled exit time is displayed. Is displayed in red, for example. If the scheduled end time of the last reserved song is earlier than the scheduled exit time, a time between both times is obtained, and this time is also displayed on the CRT 11.

According to this modification, the user can easily know how many more songs can be sung before leaving the room.
Also, if the end time of the last song you booked is before the scheduled exit time, you can also know the time between both times, in which case you can easily determine how many more songs you can reserve Can be.

<Modification 7> In the modification 6, the CPU 1
Calculated the scheduled end time of the music piece being reserved and displayed it on the CRT 11, but in this modified example, the CPU 1 calculates the performance start time of each music piece reserved and the waiting time until each performance start time, and displays it on the CRT 11. . When a large number of karaoke rooms are used, the user wants to know when the performance of the music that he or she has reserved starts or how long there is a waiting time until then. According to the present modification, it is possible to meet such a user request.

<Modification 8> In the above embodiment, the singing point indicating the temporal position of the current singing with respect to the entire tune time is displayed, but in the present modification, the remaining tune of the tune currently being played is displayed. Display time. In this case, the remaining time can be easily obtained by subtracting the elapsed time after the start of the performance from the music time. The display of the remaining time can be performed in various modes, such as displaying the remaining time with a numeral, or displaying a bar having a length proportional to the remaining time. The remaining time may be represented by an hourglass image in order to increase the game feeling.

[0031]

As described above, according to the karaoke apparatus according to the present invention, the music time detecting means for detecting the music time of the music to be performed from the music data of the music to be played, and the time elapsed from the start of the performance of the music. Since the clock means for measuring the time and the display means for obtaining and displaying the singing point or the remaining time of the music indicating the current temporal position in the music from the elapsed time and the music time, This has the effect that the user can easily know how long the music being played ends.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a karaoke apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a functional configuration of the embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a display example of singing points in the embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a display example of singing points in a modified example of the embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing a display example of singing points in a modified example of the embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 ... CPU, 2 ... ROM, 3 ... RAM, 4 ... Remote control, 5 ... Receiving unit, 6 ... Operation unit, 7 ... HDD,
8 ... Auxiliary storage device 9 ... 10 Image synthesis device
11 ... CRT, 12 ... tone signal generator, 13 ... mixer, 14 ... microphone, 15 ... amplifier, 16 ... speaker, 17 ... bus.

 ────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continued on the front page (72) Inventor Daiki Oshioka 5-26 Kita-Shinagawa, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo F-term (reference) 5D077 AA22 BB03 EA35 HA07 HC09 HC10 5D108 BA04 BC13 BD02 BD12 BD13 BD20 BE06 BE10 BF20 BH10 5D378 BB02 KK12 KK16 KK44 MM24 MM34 MM35 MM37 MM38 MM52 MM63 MM64 MM66 MM93 MM97 QQ01 TT03 TT04 TT07 TT08 TT17 TT22 TT20 Z05 XXXXX

Claims (12)

[Claims] 1. A music time detecting means for detecting the music time of a music piece to be played from music data of the music piece to be performed, a time counting means for measuring an elapsed time from the start of playing the music piece, the elapsed time and the music time piece And a display means for obtaining and displaying a singing point indicating a current temporal position in the music or a remaining time of the music. 2. The karaoke apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the display unit displays a graph representing a ratio of the elapsed time to the music time. 3. The karaoke apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the display unit displays an image corresponding to the music time and an image corresponding to the singing point in the music. 4. The karaoke apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the display unit displays an image corresponding to the music time and an image corresponding to the elapsed time. 5. The music data includes information indicating a specific temporal position or section in the music, and the display means includes:
5. The karaoke apparatus according to claim 3, wherein an image representing the specific time position or section is included in an image corresponding to the music time and displayed. 6. The display means generates an image representing a temporal change in pitch or loudness of a singing part, and displays the image included in an image corresponding to the music time. The karaoke apparatus according to claim 3 or 4, wherein 7. The display device according to claim 1, wherein the display means displays the point during singing or the remaining time when a predetermined display command is given. Karaoke equipment. 8. The display means includes a plurality of display devices and a plurality of operation units corresponding to the respective display devices, and when the display command is given by a certain operation unit, the operation unit is connected to the display unit. 8. The karaoke apparatus according to claim 7, wherein the singing point or the remaining time is displayed on a corresponding display device. 9. The karaoke apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the display means displays a currently playing music and a scheduled end time of the reserved music. 10. The karaoke apparatus according to claim 9, wherein the display means displays the scheduled end time of each song separately from the scheduled start time and the scheduled end time of the karaoke room. . 11. The display device according to claim 1, wherein said display means displays a scheduled start time of the reserved music.
The karaoke apparatus according to claim 1. 12. The karaoke apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said display means displays the remaining time by a number.