JPH0643869A - Electronic keyboard instrument - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To change the tone color in accordance with execution of legato or staccato by controlling the tone color by the timing of turning-off of a key and the timing of release of a finger from the key. CONSTITUTION:A conductive thin film 31 is formed on the surface of a key 30 and is connected to a high gain amplifier 32, and the output of this amplifier 32 is inputted to a discriminating circuit 33. When player's finger touches the conductive thin film 31, ham noise is inputted to the amplifier 32 and is amplified. A discriminating circuit 33 discriminates the presence or the absence of ham noise to detect whether the finger touches the film or not. The execution of legato or staccato is detected by the time from turning-off of the key 30 to release of the finger from the key 30, and a lingering tone is controlled in accordance with this execution.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an electronic keyboard instrument such as an electronic piano or a keyboard synthesizer, and more particularly to improvement of its expressive power.

[0002]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Music performance is not limited to simply generating musical tones at pitches as instructed by the score,
Not only the tone of each note, but also the delicate level (volume), pitch (pitch) fluctuations, and the processing of the decay of the disappearing musical sound, the beautiful performance can be achieved only by paying attention to the details of the musical sound. Therefore, the musical instrument must be capable of accepting such an intention of the performer and generating a musical sound reflecting it.

[0003]

2. Description of the Related Art At present, electronic keyboard musical instruments represented by electronic pianos and keyboard-type synthesizers are widely used. The keyboard of this kind of electronic keyboard musical instrument is generally provided with a switch for detecting ON / OFF of each key and a sensor for detecting a keying strength (initial strength). By detecting the key that is turned on, the pitch is determined, and by detecting the initial intensity, the tone generation level, the level displacement characteristic (envelope), etc. are determined. Also,
Some electronic keyboard musical instruments detect the pressure strength (aftertouch) during key-on to control the effects such as level and vibrato (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 62-62).
(See Japanese Patent No. 187393). Further, there is one in which a sensor for detecting the contact area or the contact position on the surface of the key is provided and the characteristic of the musical tone signal is controlled according to the contact area or the contact position detected by the sensor.

[0004]

As described above, in the conventional keyboard, it is possible to detect the on / off of the key, the initial strength at the time of key-on, and the after-touch during key-on and reflect them in the musical sound. The contact state between the finger and the keyboard immediately after key off could not be detected.

Further, in an actual piano (acoustic piano), the timbre when a key is struck is not determined solely by the keystroke strength or the keystroke speed, but is subtle depending on how the key is struck and how the finger is released from the key. Changes to. For example, when you tap a finger with your finger on it,
The tone color (especially the thickness of the tone) is different even when the keystroke strength is the same as when the finger is dropped from above the key and the key is tapped. In addition, the afterglow of turning off the key that was on differs from turning off so that it flips up. This has not been fully clarified acoustically, but facts have been empirically proven by actual performance. However, conventional electronic keyboard instruments could not reproduce such characteristics of acoustic pianos.

In view of such conventional problems, the present invention has
An object of the present invention is to provide an electronic keyboard instrument that controls the characteristics of a musical sound by detecting the timing at which a finger is released from a key.

[0007]

According to the present invention, there is provided a keyboard comprising a plurality of keys, a first detecting means provided for each key of the keyboard and detecting ON / OFF of each key, and the first detecting means. In an electronic keyboard musical instrument provided with a musical tone generating means for generating a musical tone signal in response to ON / OFF of each key detected by the detecting means, provided on the surface of each key of the keyboard, and a finger touching each key. Depending on the timing of detecting that the key is off by the first detecting means and the timing of detecting that the finger is released from the key by the second detecting means. And a tone control means for controlling the characteristic of the tone signal generated by the tone signal generating means after the key is turned off.

[0008]

In the electronic keyboard instrument of the present invention, the first detecting means detects ON / OFF of each key, and the second detecting means detects contact / deviation of a finger with respect to each key. The characteristic of the musical tone generated by the musical tone generating means after the key is turned off is controlled according to the timing at which the first detecting means detects the key off and the timing at which the second detecting means detects the deviation of the finger. This allows
For example, the length of the afterglow of a musical sound can be controlled.

[0009]

2 is a block diagram of an electronic keyboard instrument according to an embodiment of the present invention. The keyboard 1 has a tone range of about 4 to 5 octaves, and the sound source 15 is provided with eight channels capable of producing sounds independently. In addition to the keyboard 1, a switch group 2 including a tone color selection switch 2 and a sound system 4 such as a speaker are provided on the outer surface of the musical instrument. The operation of the musical instrument is controlled by the CPU 10, and the memory and each operating unit are connected to the CPU 10 via the bus 11. Bus 1
1 includes a touch strength detection circuit 12, a key-on detection circuit, a switch interface 14, a sound source circuit 15, a key touch detection circuit 16, a ROM 17, a RAM 18, and a timer 19.
Are connected. The touch strength detection circuit 12 and the key-on detection circuit 13 detect ON / OFF of each key (key) of the keyboard 1 and touch strength (initial strength, after-touch strength). Further, the key touch detection circuit 16 detects whether or not a finger is touching the key by the conductive thin film 31 (see FIG. 1) provided on the key surface. The switch interface 14 detects ON / OFF of each switch of the switch group 2. The sound source circuit 15 is provided with an independent 8-channel sound source, and can generate up to eight tones simultaneously based on the waveform signal received from the CPU 10.

FIG. 1 shows a block diagram of one key and the key touch detection circuit 16 which constitute the keyboard 1. A conductive thin film 31 is formed on the surface of the key 30. This conductive thin film 3
1 is formed by a conductive paint or chemical plating. This conductive thin film 31 is connected to a high gain amplifier 32,
The hum noise picked up by the conductive thin film 31 is amplified. This output is input to the determination circuit 33. The determination circuit 33 is a circuit that determines the level of the amplified hum noise and determines and outputs that there is a key touch if it is above a certain level. That is, when the player's finger touches the key, the hum noise picked up by the human body is input from the conductive thin film 31, and the noise gain increases. This is utilized to determine the key touch / key release. The conductive thin film is formed so that the white key is white and the black key is black. See also key 3
A key-on detection switch 34 is provided below 0. The key-on detection switch 34 is composed of two switch bodies, and is turned back and forth when the key is pressed. When the previous switch body turns on, it is determined to be a key on,
The initial strength is determined from the shift in the on-timing of the two switch bodies.

Memory areas shown in FIG. 3 are set in the ROM 17 and the RAM 18.

First, the ROM 17 stores a system program (M1) and tone color data (M2).
A storage area for a tone color data register M3, a key code register M4, an initial intensity register M5, a key-on flag M6, a key touch flag M7 and a timer M8 is set in M18. The timbre data register M3 is a memory area for reading the selected timbre data from the ROM 17 (M2) and making it ready for immediate transmission to the tone generator circuit 15. The key-on flag M6 is a flag for storing whether or not the key is turned on. The key code register M4 and the initial strength register M5 are registers for storing the key code and initial strength detected at the time of key-on. The contents of this register are transmitted to the tone generator circuit 15 together with the tone color data. Key touch flag M
Reference numeral 7 is a flag for storing whether or not a key is touched. The key-off timer M8 is a timer that operates for a fixed time (about 50 seconds) from key-off (key-on flag reset). If the key is released during this time, it can be determined that the staccato playing style is being used. Of the above registers, M4 to M8 are set in the same number as the keys to be keyed on and touched.

4 to 10 are flowcharts showing the operation of the CPU 10. Figure 4 is the main routine, Figure 5
10 is a subroutine.

First, in FIG. 4, when the power of this electronic keyboard instrument is turned on, initial processing such as resetting each register is executed (n1). By this processing, the performance becomes possible, and the tone color switch processing operation (n2), the key processing operation (n3), and the key touch sensor processing operation (n4) are repeatedly executed. In each operation (subroutine), a corresponding operation is performed when an on / off event of a key or a switch is detected.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing the tone color switch processing operation. This operation starts when the tone color switch is pressed, and the tone color data corresponding to the pressed tone color switch is read from the tone color data storage area M2 of the ROM 17 (n5) and set in the tone color data register M3 (n6). After this operation, it returns.

FIG. 6 shows a key-on event processing routine. This operation is executed when there is a key-on event.
First, the key code of the key turned on in n7 and its initial strength are detected and stored in the key code register M4 and the initial strength register M5. These data are transmitted to the tone generator circuit 15 together with the tone color data (n8). The key-on flag M6 is set (n9) and the process returns.

FIG. 7 shows a key-off event processing routine. When a key-off event is detected, the key-on flag M6 is first reset (n10), and the key-off data is transmitted to the tone generator circuit 15 (n11). After that, the key-off timer M8 is started (n12) and the process returns.

FIG. 8 shows a key touch event processing routine. When a key touch event occurs, the key touch flag M7 is set (n13), pre-processing is executed (n13 '), and the process returns. The pre-processing is an operation for preparing, for example, storing in the register data that can be prepared before key-on among the data to be transmitted to the tone generator circuit 15 in order to generate a musical sound. This has the effect of eliminating the pronunciation delay.

FIG. 9 shows a key release event processing routine. When a key release event occurs, the key-off timer M8 is referred to in n14, and if the timer is in operation, it is determined that the staccato playing style is used and the data for which the release rate (attenuation rate of reverberation after key-off) should be changed is transmitted to the tone generator circuit 15. (N15 → n16). Since the staccato playing method requires sharp muffling and a subtle afterglow, it is normally shown in Figure 1.
In the staccato playing method, the reverberation waveform is switched to the reverberation waveform as shown in FIG. After this, key touch flag M7
Is reset (n17) and the process returns. If the key-off timer has already stopped when the key release event occurs, the key touch flag M7 is only reset (n17) because it is a normal (legato) rendition style, and the process returns.

FIG. 10 shows the timer interrupt operation. This operation is executed every 19 predetermined counts of the timer. First, it is determined in n18 whether or not there is an operating timer, and if not, the process directly returns. When there is a timer in operation, the timer is incremented (n19). When the time is up as a result of counting up, the timer is cleared and the operation is stopped (n20 → n21). Then return.

Further, in the above embodiment, the staccato playing method or the legato playing method is determined by the time from the key off to the key release, but the staccato / legato is judged from the area of the finger touching the key at the key off time. You can also That is, in the case of the staccato playing method, since the player feels as if he were hitting a key with the head of his finger, the contact area is inevitably small. On the other hand, in the case of the legato playing method and the tenuto playing method, the touch area is inevitably large because the player feels like pressing a key with his / her finger pad. The touch area of the finger can be easily detected by installing a matrix touch panel switch etc. on the keyboard surface. Therefore, the staccato / legato afterglow control should be performed based on the size of the finger contact area at the time of key-off. Is possible. With this method, it is possible to determine whether it is a legato playing style or a staccato playing style at the moment when the key is turned off, so that there is an advantage that the processing speed becomes faster.

[0022]

As described above, according to the present invention, the tone after key-off is controlled according to the key-off timing and the timing when the finger is released from the key. The off operation can be detected, and the musical tone control can be performed accordingly. This allows
It is possible to reproduce the characteristics of the keyboard of an acoustic piano, and it is also possible to make other unique expressions and to control musical sounds that reflect the movements of the performer's fingers.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a configuration of keys and a key touch detection circuit of an electronic keyboard instrument according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a control unit of the electronic keyboard instrument.

FIG. 3 is a partial configuration diagram of a memory of the electronic keyboard instrument.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing the operation of the CPU of the electronic keyboard instrument.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing the operation of the CPU of the electronic keyboard instrument.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing the operation of the CPU of the electronic keyboard instrument.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart showing the operation of the CPU of the electronic keyboard instrument.

FIG. 8 is a flowchart showing the operation of the CPU of the electronic keyboard instrument.

FIG. 9 is a flowchart showing the operation of the CPU of the electronic keyboard instrument.

FIG. 10 is a flowchart showing the operation of the CPU of the electronic keyboard instrument.

FIG. 11 is a diagram showing a reverberation waveform of a general musical tone and a reverberation waveform of a musical tone when a staccato playing method is used.

[Explanation of symbols]

 16-key touch detection circuit 30-key 31-conductive thin film 32-high gain amplifier 33-judgment circuit

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A keyboard comprising a plurality of keys, first detecting means provided for each key of the keyboard to detect ON / OFF of each key, and each key detected by the first detecting means. An electronic keyboard musical instrument provided with a musical tone generating means for generating a musical tone signal according to whether the key is turned on or off, the second detecting means being provided on the surface of each key of the keyboard and detecting a finger contact with each key. And the musical tone signal generating means, depending on the timing at which the first detecting means detects that the key is off and the timing at which the second detecting means detects that the finger is released from the key. An electronic keyboard instrument, comprising: a musical tone control means for controlling characteristics of a generated musical tone signal after the key is turned off.