JPH0916173A - Electronic musical instrument - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: To provide the musical instrument which enables a beginner to enjoy a mechanical practice in playing a keyboard musical instrument. CONSTITUTION: The electronic musical instrument which has a keyboard is equipped with storage means 5 and 6 which store key depression pattern data consisting of information on key positions and their order, musical performance data storage means 9 and 10 which store musical performance data consisting of sound generation data sequences, pattern decision means 3 and 4 which decide whether or not detected key depression data matches data on a key to be pressed next in the key depression pattern, and semiautomatic playing means 7 and 8 which perform sound generation processing by reading sound generation data out of the musical performance data when the key depression data matches the key depression pattern.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an electronic musical instrument, and more particularly to an electronic musical instrument which can be used for key practice using a semi-automatic performance function.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Some conventional electronic musical instruments have a semi-automatic performance function in which stored performance data is played in accordance with the rhythm by hitting an arbitrary key with a predetermined rhythm. However, there has been no electronic musical instrument having a function of assisting practice for increasing the independence of the movements of the left and right fingers.

[0003]

Conventionally, in the practice of keyboard musical instruments, mechanical practice is indispensable in order to increase the independence of the movements of the left and right fingers. However, mechanical practice in keyboard instruments such as conventional electronic musical instruments cannot be said to be musical, and it is tedious, and there is a problem in that the user is tired of practice or dislikes practice. An object of the present invention is to provide an electronic musical instrument which solves the above-mentioned problems of the prior art and enables beginners to enjoy mechanical practice of keyboard musical instruments.

[0004]

According to the present invention, in an electronic musical instrument having a keyboard, storage means for storing key-depression pattern data consisting of information of key positions and order thereof and performance data consisting of a sound data sequence are provided. The stored performance data storage means, the pattern determination means for determining whether or not the detected key depression data matches the data of the key to be pressed next in the key depression pattern, and the key depression data is the key depression data. It is characterized in that it is provided with a semi-automatic performance means for sequentially reading out the tone generation data in the performance data and performing tone generation when the patterns match.

[0005]

The present invention stores key depression pattern data, judges whether the detected key depression data matches the data of the key to be pressed next in the key depression pattern, and determines that the key depression data is When it matches the key pressing pattern, the pronunciation data in the performance data is sequentially read and pronounced, so by setting an arbitrary practice key pressing pattern according to the proficiency level, and pressing the pattern in sequence, Any stored song is played. Therefore, the user can practice while having fun.

[0006]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing the configuration of an embodiment of the present invention. The key-depression detection unit 2 detects a key-depression on the keyboard 1, and if the keyboard position of the key-depression belongs to a low-pitched sound portion that is separated into left and right at a predetermined keyboard position, the low-pitched sound key determination unit 3
If it belongs to the treble part, it is output to the treble key determination part 4. The bass key pattern setting unit 5 and the treble key pattern setting unit 6 respectively store practice key depression patterns set from the panel.

The low-pitched sound key judgment unit 3 and the high-pitched sound key judgment unit 4 judge whether or not the inputted key-depression data matches the respective key-depression patterns, and if they match, the bass performance data read-out unit. 7 or the signal is sent to the high-pitched performance data reading section 8. When the low-pitched performance data reading unit 7 or the high-pitched performance data reading unit 8 receives a signal, it reads one performance data from the low-pitched performance data storage unit 9 or the high-pitched performance data storage unit 10, respectively, and assigns a sounding channel. Output to the unit 11. From this point onward, a tone generation channel is allocated and a tone signal is generated in the tone signal generator 12 as in the tone generation process of a normal electronic musical instrument.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a circuit configuration of an electronic musical instrument to which the present invention is applied. CPU21 is a ROM
A central processing unit that controls the entire electronic musical instrument based on a control program stored in 22. The ROM 22 stores a tone color parameter, a frequency information table, etc. in addition to the program. The RAM 23 is used as a work area and a buffer and also stores the panel state and the like. Further, the battery may be backed up.
The keyboard circuit 24 includes, for example, a plurality of keys each having two switches, a scanning circuit that scans the switches to capture state information, a circuit that detects a key-on or key-off event from a change in the state of the key, and the strength of key depression. It is composed of a touch detection circuit for detecting. The panel circuit 25 includes various switches such as tone color selection, effect selection, volume setting, and liquid crystal or LE.
It is composed of a display device for displaying characters and figures by D or the like.

The tone generator circuit 26 is a circuit for generating a musical tone signal by, for example, a waveform reading method, and sequentially generates musical tone waveforms at an address interval proportional to a pitch to be generated from a waveform memory 27 in which digital musical tone waveform information is stored. It has a plurality of tone generation channels that generate a tone signal by reading and multiplying the envelope signal. Actually, a plurality of tone signals can be simultaneously and independently generated by time-division multiplexing operation of one tone generation circuit. The D / A converter 28 converts the digital musical tone signal into an analog signal, and the musical tone signal amplified by the amplifier 29 is sounded by the speaker 30. The bus 31 connects each circuit in the electronic musical instrument. If necessary, a floppy disk drive circuit, a memory card interface circuit, a MIDI interface circuit, etc. may be provided.

FIG. 3 is a top view showing a part of the panel of the electronic musical instrument. In this figure, only the part necessary for setting the key depression pattern is shown. For example, a high key setting screen of the third page (key pressing pattern setting screen of the treble part) is displayed on the display 40 composed of liquid crystal or the like. The page number and page contents are displayed at the top,
The page display is switched by pressing the "Page +" or "Page-" switch on the upper right of the panel. A key-depression pattern is displayed on the lower part of the display 40, and the key-depression pattern is input and corrected by the cursor keys on the right side.

For example, the current key depression pattern is "C",
If two keys of "G" are input and you want to input "E" at the third, left and right cursor keys 50 or 5
Press 1 to blink the third input position 44. Then, the up / down cursor key 48 or 49 is pressed to display a desired note name, for example, "E". The key depression pattern of the low tone part is similarly set on another page. Note that the number of key presses in the pattern is arbitrary, and the method of specifying the key press position is
It may be a note name (Doremi ... Or CDE ...) of a specific octave in each of the treble part and the bass part, or may be designated by a key number.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram showing the structure of various data. FIG. 4A shows the structure of the key pattern data. The key pattern pointer and the four key position data 0 to 3 can be stored for the bass key and the treble key, respectively. There is. The key position pointer indicates the position of the key position data to be compared next. Each of the four key position data stores a key number corresponding to a key pressing pattern set from the panel, and 0 is written in the unset position.

FIG. 4 (b) shows the structure of performance data, and each performance data is composed of, for example, a 4-byte data unit. The first byte is a status byte and indicates the type of the data unit. For example, 9 starts sounding (key on), 8
Is a tone generation end (key off), 12 is a tone color designation, and 0 is invalid data (do nothing). When the C flag of the most significant bit is 1, it indicates that the next tone generation data should be processed at the same time.

The second byte pitch (tone color) data is
Key number data is stored in the case of tone generation start data, and if it is 60, for example, it represents C3. Further, in the case of tone color designation data, a tone color number is stored. At the 3rd byte, in the case of sound generation start data, key pressing strength data is stored. Tone color series data is stored in the 4th byte, which corresponds to channel data in a MIDI signal, for example. A tone color number is designated for each of the plurality of tone color sequences by tone color designation data. In the case of sound generation start data, sound generation is started with a tone color having a tone color number preset in the specified tone color sequence. . As the performance data, for example, melody performance data of an arbitrary song is stored for high notes, and accompaniment performance data of the song is stored for low notes.

FIG. 5 is a flow chart showing the main processing of the CPU 20. When the power of the electronic musical instrument is turned on,
In step S1, the data in the tone generator circuit and RAM are initialized. In step S2, it is determined whether or not there is a panel event, that is, a change in the state of various switches on the panel. If the result is affirmative, the corresponding panel event process is performed in step S3. This processing also includes the above-described key depression pattern setting processing for the high-pitched sound portion and the low-pitched sound portion.

In step S4, the key scan result is received from the keyboard circuit 24, and in step 5, it is determined whether or not a key event, that is, a key-on or a key-off has occurred. When the result is affirmative, the process proceeds to step S6. In step S6, it is determined whether or not the event is key-on. If the result is affirmative, the process proceeds to step S8, but if not, the process proceeds to step S7. In step S7, the tone-off channel, that is, the tone-generating channel that has been tone-generated corresponding to the key-off key is shifted to the release phase, and if the tone is sufficiently attenuated, the channel is opened. In step S8, it is determined whether or not the key-on data is in the bass key area, and if the result is negative, the process proceeds to step S11, but if the result is affirmative, step S11 is performed.
Move to 9. In step S9, it is determined whether or not the key-on data matches the low tone side key depression pattern.

FIG. 6 is a flow chart showing the pattern matching judgment processing in step S9 or step S11 of FIG. In step S20, FIG.
The key position pointer of the corresponding tone range in the key pattern data of (a) is read. In step S21, the key position data indicated by the pointer is read. For example, if the key position pointer is 1, the start address of the key position data +
The data at the first address, that is, the key position 1 data is read.
In step S22, it is determined whether or not the key number of the key-on data and the read key position data match. If the result is negative, the process moves to terminal "N", but if affirmative, step S23 Move to. In step S23, the key position pointer is updated to the next position. That is, if the key position data at the next position is 0 or the pointer is the maximum value (for example, 3), the pointer is reset to 0, and if not, 1 is added to the pointer.

Returning to FIG. 5, if the determination result of step S9 is affirmative, the process proceeds to step S10. Step S
At 10, low tone performance data tone generation processing is performed.
In this process, first, a performance data unit indicated by a performance data pointer (not shown) is read out, and a corresponding process is performed based on the status information of the performance data. For example, if the data unit is sound generation data, sound generation processing is performed according to the pitch, key pressing strength, and tone color sequence specified in the data, and a tone signal is generated. When the C flag in the data unit is 1, the subsequent data unit is also processed until C becomes 0. Then, the performance data pointer is updated to indicate the next data unit. In the semi-automatic performance, the key-depression key number and the tone pitch differ from those in the normal performance. Therefore, a key-assign table for storing both the key-depression key number and the tone-production key number is provided for the semi-automatic performance.

If the determination result in step S9 is negative, the process proceeds to step S13. In step S13, since the key depression is wrong, a warning sound is generated with a tone color such as a buzzer sound to notify the user of the mistake. The error display method may be visual display by a panel or both, in addition to the warning sound. Further, the mistake may be recognized by not producing a sound, and in this case, nothing needs to be done in step S13. Regarding the updating of the key position pointer and performance data pointer when a wrong key is pressed, it is conceivable to use a method in which neither is updated, a method in which both are updated, or a method in which only one is updated, and each method can be selected from the panel. You may comprise.

When the result of determination in step S8 is a treble key, the process proceeds to step S11, but in steps S11 and S12, the same processing as steps S9 and S10 is performed. In step S14, other processes such as MIDI process, sound effect process, and automatic performance process are performed, and the process returns to step S2 to repeat the process.

Although the embodiment has been described above, the following modifications are also possible. In the embodiment, the example in which the key pressing patterns are specified in the upper and lower areas is disclosed,
Even if only one key is specified, correct performance cannot be performed unless the specified key is pressed. Therefore, in order to change the difficulty level of practice, for only one area, as in the conventional method, there is a practice mode in which semi-automatic performance can be performed by simply pressing any key, or a mode in which complete automatic performance is performed. It may be provided, or semi-automatic performance may be performed only by pressing an arbitrary key when no key pressing pattern is set.

For a user who has improved to some extent, a practice mode may be provided in which only the one area becomes a normal performance mode in which the sound of the depressed key is produced as it is. Although an example in which the keyboard is divided into two areas and used is disclosed, the present invention can be implemented without dividing the keyboard.

The content of the performance data and the content of the key depression pattern may be completely unrelated, or, for example, the content of the bass performance data and the content of the key depression pattern may be the same. Further, since the performance data in the embodiment is different from the performance data for automatic performance only in the presence or absence of timing data, the data for automatic performance can be used for the semi-automatic performance of the present invention. However, in this case, the key-off data is unnecessary, so skip it.

[0024]

As described above, the present invention stores key pressing pattern data and determines whether the detected key pressing data matches the data of the key to be pressed next in the key pressing pattern. If it is determined that the key-depression data matches the key-depression pattern, the pronunciation data in the performance data is sequentially read and pronounced. Therefore, an arbitrary practice key-depression pattern is set according to the proficiency level, and the pattern is set. By pressing the keys in sequence, any stored music is played. Therefore, there is an effect that the user can practice while having fun.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing a configuration of an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a circuit configuration of an electronic musical instrument to which the present invention is applied.

FIG. 3 is a top view showing a part of the panel of the electronic musical instrument.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram showing a structure of various data.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing main processing of the CPU 20.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing pattern matching determination processing.

[Explanation of symbols]

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Keyboard, 2 ... Key detection part, 3 ... Bass key determination part, 4 ... Treble key determination part, 5 ... Bass key pattern setting part, 6 ... Treble key pattern setting part, 7 ... Bass performance data reading part, 8 ...
High-pitched performance data reading unit, 9 ... Low-pitched performance data storage unit, 10 ... High-pitched performance data storage unit, 11 ... Sound generation channel assignment unit, 12 ... Music signal generation unit, 21 ... CP
U, 22 ... ROM, 23 ... RAM, 24 ... Keyboard circuit, 2
5 ... Panel circuit, 26 ... Sound source circuit, 27 ... Waveform memory,
28 ... D / A converter, 29 ... Amplifier, 30 ... Speaker,
31 ... Bus

Claims (5)

[Claims] 1. In an electronic musical instrument having a keyboard, storage means for storing key-depression pattern data consisting of information on key positions and their order, and performance data storage means for storing performance data consisting of a sounding data string. A pattern determining means for determining whether or not the detected key pressing data matches the data of the key to be pressed next in the key pressing pattern; and when the key pressing data matches the key pressing pattern. Is an electronic musical instrument characterized by comprising semi-automatic performance means for sequentially reading out pronunciation data in performance data and processing the pronunciation. 2. The electronic musical instrument according to claim 1, wherein the key position, the order, and the number of keys of the key depression pattern data can be arbitrarily set by the user. 3. The electronic device according to claim 1, wherein when the key-depression data does not match the key-depression pattern, at least one of a warning sound and a warning display is issued. Musical instrument. 4. The electronic musical instrument according to claim 1, wherein the key pressing pattern data and the performance data are updated even when the key pressing data does not match the key pressing pattern. 5. An electronic musical instrument, characterized in that the keyboard is divided into a plurality of areas, and each means described in claim 1 is provided corresponding to at least one area.