JPS5812596B2 - electronic musical instruments - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to an electronic musical instrument that adds chance and randomness to the generated musical tones and eliminates the monotony of the musical tones.

In general, with electronic musical instruments, the musical tones generated by the same key operation are always in the same state, so the performance sounds that are played tend to become monotonous and become boring and tiring for the listener. There was a drawback.

By the way, musical performance can be thought of as the temporal arrangement of musical tones one by one, but when playing a melody with a single note, among the musical tone parameters that determine the musical tone, for example, only the pitch changes, while the others change. If I didn't do that, each musical note would be too aligned, making it too monotonous.

In other words, to the human ear, the same stimulus except for changes in frequency continues, giving a monotonous sensation.

Furthermore, in the case of a multiple note performance, the same thing can be said because it can be seen as an addition result of a single note performance.

To solve this problem, devices have been proposed that control the timbre, volume, etc. of musical sounds using key touch signals corresponding to key touches, but these devices do not give the same response to almost the same key touch. Unless the resolution of key touch detection was high enough, it was impossible to break out of the monotonous performance sound.

Furthermore, for analog electronic musical instruments, a device has been proposed that obtains a noise envelope or a random number signal of the noise generated from a noise generator and controls musical tone parameters using this signal. etc., and became expensive.

The present invention provides an electronic musical instrument that digitally detects key touches such as key pressing speed, key pressing pressure, or depth, and controls musical sound parameters according to the digital detection signal, the lower bits of the digital detection signal. The present invention attempts to provide an electronic musical instrument that eliminates the monotony of musical tones by further controlling the musical tone parameters using the data as a control signal, thereby imparting chance and randomness to musical tones.

The present invention will now be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 shows an embodiment of an electronic musical instrument according to the present invention.

The keyboard circuit 1 includes key switches S1, S2 to Sn that turn on and off in response to key depression and release, and each of the key switches S1 to Sn is connected to give priority to treble sounds or to give priority to bass sounds.

Therefore, when one key is pressed, a signal "1" is output from the key switch corresponding to that key, and when two or more keys are pressed at the same time, for example, the signal corresponds to the highest note among the pressed keys. A signal "1" is output only from the key switch that is activated.

The outputs of the key switches S1 to Sn are applied to the tone generating circuit 2 as key data KD.

Further, the outputs of the key switches 81 to Sn are logically summed by the OR circuit 3, and this logical sum is applied to the tone generating circuit 2 as a key-on signal KON.

Musical tone generation circuit 2 receives key data KD and key-on signal KOH.
A musical tone signal corresponding to the pressed key is generated based on the key pressed, and for example, a circuit as shown in FIG. 2 can be used.

In FIG. 2, a mask pulse output from a master pulse oscillator 21 is applied to a variable frequency divider circuit 22 and frequency-divided according to key data KD, thereby forming a pulse signal having a frequency corresponding to key data KD.

This pulse signal is applied to the counter 23.

The counter 23 generates a read address signal for the waveform memory 24, and sequentially adds and counts the pulse signals applied from the variable frequency divider circuit 22, and adds the counting output to the waveform memory 24 as a read address signal.

The waveform memory 24 is comprised of a read-only memory (ROM) and stores a predetermined musical waveform signal at each address at, for example, 64 sample points.

Therefore, the waveform memory 24 outputs a digital music waveform signal having a pitch (frequency) corresponding to the key data KD.

This signal is converted into an analog signal by a digital-to-analog converter 25, timbre-controlled by a voltage-controlled filter (VCF) 26, volume-controlled by a voltage-controlled amplifier (VCA) 27 according to the key-on signal KON, and output. Ru.

The musical tone signal generated by the musical tone generating circuit 2 is applied to a voltage controlled amplifier (VcA) 4.

The voltage-controlled amplifier 4 controls the volume in response to the touch of a key and adds a so-called touch response effect.

The touch of a key is detected using the time required for the key switch, for example S2, corresponding to the highest priority key among the pressed keys to switch from the break contact b2 to the make contact a2, that is, the contact time difference.

A signal at the break contact b1 of the key switch S of the keyboard circuit 1 is applied to an AND circuit 6 via an inverter 5.

The other input terminals of the AND circuit 6 are connected to each of the key switches 8
A signal obtained by inverting the output of the OR circuit 3 obtained by calculating the logical sum of 1 to Sn, a pulse signal from an oscillator 8 that oscillates a pulse signal of a predetermined frequency, and the output of the final bit of the counter 9 are inverted by an inverter 10. A signal is added.

Assuming that the key is not pressed and the key switches 81 to Sn are all switched to the break contacts b1 to bn, the signal at the contact b1 is "1" and the output of the inverter 5 is "0'', the AND condition of the AND circuit 6 is not satisfied, and the pulse signal from the oscillator 8 is not applied to the counter 9.

When a certain key is pressed and the key switch corresponding to the highest priority key, for example S2, leaves break contact b2, contact b
, the signal becomes “O” and the output of inverter 5 becomes “1”.
becomes.

At this time, the switch S2 has not yet been switched to the make contact a2 side, so the output of the OR circuit 3 is "0".
The output of the inverter 7 is "1".

Also, since the content of the counter 9 is O, the signal of the last bit of the counter 9 is "0" and the output of the inverter 10 is "0".
1″.

Therefore, the AND condition of the AND circuit 6 is satisfied, the pulse signal from the oscillator 8 is applied to the counter 9, and the counter 9 starts counting.

When switch S2 switches to make contact a2, OR circuit 3
The output of inverter T is "1", so the output of inverter T is "O"
Therefore, the AND condition of AND circuit 6 no longer holds true,
The counting operation of the counter 9 ends.

That is, the counter 9 performs a counting operation only while the key switch S2 switches from the break contact b2 to the make contact a2,
The count of the counter 9 is a value corresponding to the time required for the key switch S2 to switch from the break contact b2 to the make contact a2, or in other words, a value corresponding to the pressing speed of the key.

Note that the output of the final bit of the counter 9 is connected to the inverter 10.
is added to the AND circuit 6 via the AND circuit 6. If the key is pressed down extremely slowly, the counter 9 may go around one cycle or more, making it impossible to accurately detect the pressing speed. When the number 9 reaches the full count, the AND circuit 6 is forcibly rendered inoperable.

In addition, the counter 9 indicates that when the key is not pressed, that is, all of the key switches S, ~Sn are at break contacts b1~b.
When switching to the n side, the counter 9 is reset by a signal "1" at the contact b1.

The output of the counter 9 is applied to a digital-to-analog converter 11 and converted into an analog signal corresponding to the count value of the counter 9.

Also, some of the output bits of the counter 9,
For example, if the counter 9 is a 6-bit counter, the output of the lower 3 bits from the 2nd bit to the 4th bit is taken out and stored in a read-only memory (ROM).
1 Add to 2.

Here, the signal applied to the read-only memory 12, ie, some of the lower bits of the counter 9, does not have a value corresponding to the pressing speed of the key.

Therefore, even if the performer presses the keys with the same force,
The actual key touch is slightly different each time, so that the value added to the read-only memory 12 becomes a random value that differs from time to time.

The read-only memory 12 stores an appropriate digital value corresponding to the input signal, reads out this digital value in response to a random value from some output bits of the counter 9, and converts it into a digital-to-analog converter. 13 and converted into a corresponding analog signal.

The output of the digital-analog converter 13 and the output of the digital-analog converter 11 are resistance-mixed, respectively, and are applied to the control input terminal of the voltage-controlled amplifier (CA) 4 as a signal CS.

As mentioned above, the voltage controlled amplifier 4 includes the musical tone generating circuit 2.
A musical tone signal from .

Therefore, the musical tone signal is amplitude-controlled in accordance with the signal CS, and is given a touch response effect that corresponds to the pressing speed of the key and has randomness.

The musical tone signal to which this touch response effect has been applied is applied to the sound system 14, and is produced as a musical tone.

In this way, even if the performer intends to press the keys with the same force, the actual key touch will be slightly different each time, and it is possible to obtain a musical tone with a certain degree of randomness depending on the time.

In the above embodiment, the amplitude, that is, the volume, of the musical tone signal is controlled using the signal of some output bits of the counter 9 that detects the pressing speed of the key.
As shown by the dotted line in the figure, the output of the read-only memory 12 is applied to the musical tone generating circuit 2, and this signal is sent to the voltage controlled form of the musical tone generating circuit 2 via the digital-to-analog converter 15 as shown by the dotted line in FIG. In addition to the control input terminal of the filter (VCF) 26, it is also possible to provide randomness to tone changes.

Further, some output bits of the counter 9 may be used to control a special effect device such as a vibrato effect.

Further, in the above embodiment, a case has been described in which the key pressing speed is detected using the contact time difference as a key touch, but the present invention is not limited to this, and the key pressing speed, key pressing depth, etc. It is also possible to detect a touch.

Various known touch sensors can be used to detect the key press pressure or depth, but for example, a pressure sensitive element such as a piezoelectric element that detects the key press pressure, or a touch sensor that detects the amount of light received depending on the key press depth. A photoconductive element such as CDS that can be varied can be used.

In this case, if the output of the touch sensor is an analog signal, it may be converted into a digital signal via an analog-to-digital converter.

As explained above, according to the present invention, with a simple configuration, random changes can be imparted to the volume, tone, and other special effects such as vibrato of musical tones, and the monotony of musical tones can be eliminated. .

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of an electronic musical instrument according to the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a partially detailed block diagram of the same embodiment. DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1... Keyboard circuit, 2... Musical tone generation circuit, 4... Voltage controlled amplifier, 8... Oscillator, 9... Counter, 11, 13
, 15...Digital-to-analog converter, 12...Read-only memory, 14...Sound system.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A detection device that detects key touches such as key press speed, key press pressure, or depth, and outputs a digital detection signal consisting of a plurality of bits having a value corresponding to the key touch; An electronic musical instrument comprising: a first control device that controls a signal; and a second control device that further controls the musical tone signal using data of predetermined lower bits of the digital detection signal.