JPS5913658Y2 - Pitch bend device for electronic musical instruments - Google Patents

Description

[Detailed explanation of the invention] This invention is a voltage-controlled variable frequency oscillator (hereinafter referred to as vC
The present invention relates to a pitch bend device that variably adjusts the frequency pitch of a sound source signal in an electronic musical instrument whose sound source circuit is configured with a sound source circuit (abbreviated as O).

In electronic musical instruments, an electronic sound source signal is generated in response to a key operation, and this sound source signal is shaped into various tones.
It is also envelope-controlled and supplied to a speaker, so that it is produced as a performance sound.

The sound source circuit that generates the sound source signal of this electronic instrument may be configured based on a sound source oscillator with a specified oscillation frequency, but for example, a vCO may be used as the sound source oscillator and the sound source signal frequency can be freely set by voltage control. The idea was to make this possible, and it has been realized as a music synthesizer.

When a vCO is used in a sound source circuit, the pitch of the sound source signal can be changed over time from the time of key operation, for example, using a voltage signal whose voltage value changes over time, and a sound source signal with a wide variety can be generated and controlled. This has a great effect on improving the performance expressiveness of electronic musical instruments.

In such electronic musical instruments that use a VCO in the sound source circuit, a voltage signal corresponding to the operating key is supplied to the VCO as an oscillation control signal, but this voltage signal can be adjusted up or down in relation to the pitch of the operating key. By adjusting the frequency pitch of the sound source signal, the frequency pitch of the sound source signal can be changed.

For example, a variable resistance circuit is used as the adjustment element for the voltage signal, and by variably adjusting the adjustment operator of the variable resistance circuit while the key is pressed, within the range of one key operation, By changing the pitch of the performance sound, it is possible to express special performance sound effects.

This kind of control of pitch up and down is called pitch bend in electronic musical instruments, but the range in which the pitch changes up and down is specified by a variable resistance circuit, and the maximum amount of change is fixed. Become.

The maximum amount of change can be set, for example, to about 1200 cents (one octave) above and below the reference value.

However, if you want to use a pitch bend device to change the pitch by about 500 cents above or below the reference value during actual performance, the operator of the variable resistance circuit must be adjusted to exactly 500 cents.
It is difficult to set the control to a position that is shifted by cents, and it is difficult to easily and reliably execute a pitch changing operation during a performance, resulting in an unfavorable state in terms of performance effect.

This idea was made in view of the above points, and the maximum range in which the pitch can be changed is arbitrarily set,
It is an object of the present invention to provide a pitch bend device for an electronic musical instrument that allows the pitch of a performance sound to be effectively changed up or down using a variable operator even during a performance.
A settable voltage range is selected and set by a changeover switch, and a voltage value in the selected voltage range is selected by a variable resistance circuit to control the pitch change with respect to the reference frequency of the oscillation sound source signal of the VCO constituting the sound source circuit. This is what I did.

An embodiment of this invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows its configuration. Reference numeral 11 is a resistive voltage divider circuit, and this resistive voltage divider circuit 11 has a
Connect multiple resistors of Ω, ... in series to 810.8,
A standard +15V power supply is supplied to one end, and the other end is grounded, and tap terminals are taken out from the connection points of the plurality of resistors, respectively, and the divided output voltage signals of (1) to (7) are taken out. will be obtained.

The voltage signals v1 to v3 obtained from this resistance voltage divider circuit 11 are applied to the fixed terminals a and l of the first changeover switch 12a.
), c, respectively, and voltage signals v5 to V7 are supplied to fixed terminals C' to a' of the second changeover switch 12b, respectively. The changeover switch device 12 is configured to be interlocked so that terminals a and a', terminals a and b', and c and C' are set to be closed in a corresponding manner.

And the first and second changeover switches 12a, 12b
The output signals from the respective movable terminals are sent to the variable resistor 14 via buffer OP amplifiers 13a and 13b, respectively.
An output signal of V4, which is an intermediate reference value of the resistance voltage divider circuit 11, is supplied to the midpoint of the variable resistor 14 via a buffer OP amplifier 13C.

That is, the slider of the variable resistor 14 outputs a divided voltage signal within the voltage range corresponding to the set positions of the first and second changeover switches 12a and 12b, as shown in the figure. first and second changeover switches 12a;
When 12b is introduced into a and a', Vl and v7
A voltage signal between the two positions is selected and output according to the position of the slider of the variable resistor 14.

The output voltage signal from the slider of the variable resistor 14 is supplied to the keyboard circuit 16 via the buffer OP amplifier 15.

The keyboard circuit 16 connects a plurality of resistors having a resistance value r in series, connects the voltage signal from the OP amplifier 15 to one end of the resistor, takes out a tap terminal at each connection point of the plurality of resistors, and connects the resistor to one end. The resistance value of each point is R1 and then R1
The circuit includes a divided voltage generating circuit 17 that is grounded through a resistor, and a voltage signal whose voltage value sequentially changes exponentially is output from each of its tap terminals.

Each tap terminal of this voltage generating circuit 17 is connected to a changeover type key switch S1. S2. Connect to the normally open side fixed terminal of ....

Key switch Sl, S2. . . . are set in series so as to sequentially connect a normally closed side fixed terminal and a movable terminal, and from the tap terminal of the voltage generating circuit 17 corresponding to the key switch that is switched and driven in response to the key operation. It outputs the obtained voltage signal, that is, a pitch signal corresponding to the pitch of the operated key, and this pitch signal is supplied to the sample hold circuit 18 and also to the key-on detection circuit 19.

The key-on detection circuit 19 is generated in response to a pitch signal generated when a key is operated and pressed, and starts up when a key is operated. A signal whose rising state is sustained is generated.

The sample and hold circuit 18 is constituted by, for example, a gate circuit such as an FET to which a voltage signal is supplied, and a capacitor that stores the voltage signal that has passed through this gate circuit. The gate of the gate circuit is set to be opened by the rising keying signal.

That is, while the key is being operated, a voltage signal from the keyboard circuit 17 is detected and stored, and this stored voltage signal is output as a pitch signal KV.

Note that the key switch S□ in the keyboard circuit 16.

In S29..., for example, if multiple keys are operated at the same time and multiple key switches are switched at the same time,
It includes a treble priority selection circuit that selectively outputs the pitch signal on the highest treble side.

Then, the pitch signal kV from the sample and hold circuit 18 is
is supplied to the VCO 20 to oscillate a sound source signal with a pitch frequency corresponding to this kV. type variable gain amplifier 22 (hereinafter referred to as VC
(abbreviated as A), the amplitude envelope is set so that the sound system 23 including the speaker produces a performance sound.

The above VCF21. Envelope voltage signals from envelope generators 24 and 25 are supplied as control signals to the VCAs 22, respectively, and the keying signal KON is supplied to the envelope generators 24 and 25.

For example, it generates an envelope waveform that rises and then decays with the key operation, and controls the frequency characteristics of the VCF 21 and the amplification gain of the VCA 22, changing the timbre of the musical tone and adjusting the musical sound level with the key operation. It changes over time and opens and closes in response to the change in temperature.

That is, in the electronic musical instrument configured as described above, by the switching operation of the key switch accompanying the key operation, a pitch signal corresponding to the pitch of the operated key is obtained from the voltage generating circuit 17, and this tone is A performance sound corresponding to the high signal is generated.

In this case, the reference voltage supplied to the voltage generating circuit 16 is set by the variable resistor 14 via the OP amplifier 15, and the operator who drives the slider of the variable resistor 14 is operated. As a result, the pitch of the performance sound can be variably controlled.

Specifically, when the changeover switch device 12 is in the state shown in the figure, the reference voltage supplied to the voltage generation circuit 17 is continuously variably set from vl to ■7 using the variable resistor 14, and the reference voltage determined by ■4 is set. The pitch can be greatly varied by raising and lowering the value, allowing pitch bend control up to one octave.

When actually playing an electronic musical instrument, for example, if you want to reduce the maximum range of pitch bend variation, so-called pitch bend maximum variable width, you can switch the first and second changeover switches 12a and 12b to terminals C and C'. , even if the operator of the variable resistor 14 is driven to the maximum,
The pitch fluctuation range up and down can be controlled, for example, the pitch fluctuation range can be set to ±300 cents, and the required cent deviation range can be selected and set by the changeover switch device 12 in a state that facilitates operability. It is.

In the above embodiment, the reference voltage for the keyboard circuit 16 is directly pitch-bend controlled, but this means that the voltage signal for pitch-bend control is added to the voltage signal (pitch signal) obtained in response to the key operation. It can also be implemented in the same way.

FIG. 2 shows another embodiment of this invention, in which a resistive voltage divider circuit 11 supplies power of +V1 and -V1 to both ends of the resistor voltage divider circuit 11 centered on the ground point. Positive and negative voltage signals centered on the ground potential are taken out from the changeover switches 12a and 12b, respectively, and supplied to both ends of the variable resistor 14.

In this case, the middle point of the variable resistor 14 is grounded, and a positive or negative voltage signal centered around the ground potential is taken out from the slider.

The voltage signal from the variable resistor 14 is then supplied to the adder 26 via the OP amplifier 15.

This adder 26 includes key switches S1. of the keyboard circuit 16.
S2. The divided voltage generating circuit 17 in the keyboard circuit 16 connects a plurality of resistors having a resistance value r in series, and connects a reference voltage Vref to one end of the divided voltage generating circuit 17. The other end is grounded to obtain divided voltage outputs with equal potential differences in sequence.

Then, the output voltage signal from the adder 26 is applied to the exponential amplifier 2.
At step 7, the voltage signal is converted into a voltage signal corresponding to the pitch frequency relationship of each scale, and is supplied to the sample hold circuit 18, so that the VCO 20 generates a sound source signal with a frequency corresponding to the pitch of the operating key.

Other components that are the same as those in FIG. 1 are given the same reference numerals and their explanations will be omitted.

That is, according to this embodiment, a predetermined pitch signal kV is obtained from the keyboard circuit 16, which is set as a standard corresponding to the key operation, and the variable resistor 1 is connected to the pitch signal kV.
By adding the voltage signals set in step 4, the pitch of the performance sound is variably controlled.

As described above, according to this invention, the pitch of the performance sound corresponding to one operation key can be arbitrarily controlled by operating the operator of the variable resistor, and a special performance sound effect can be expressed.

For this variable pitch control, the maximum value of the range of change can be arbitrarily selected by a changeover switch device, and therefore, by selecting and setting this range of change depending on the aspect of the music to be performed, etc. A predetermined pitch variation range can be obtained by simple control such as moving the operator to the maximum position, and the ease of operation, that is, the controllability during performance, is significantly improved.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an electronic musical instrument according to one embodiment of this invention, and FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing another embodiment of this invention. DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 11... Resistance voltage divider circuit, 12... Changeover switch device, 14... Variable resistor, 16... Keyboard circuit, 17...
... Divided voltage generation circuit, 18... Sample hold circuit, 19... Key-on detection circuit, 20... Voltage controlled variable frequency oscillator, 21... Voltage controlled variable filter, 22... Voltage Controlled variable gain amplifier, 23...
Sound system, 26...adder.

Claims (1)

[Scope of utility model registration request] When a key is operated, a pitch signal with a voltage value corresponding to the pitch of the operated key is generated, and this pitch signal is supplied as an oscillation frequency control signal to the voltage-controlled variable frequency oscillator that constitutes the sound source. An electronic musical instrument in which a frequency oscillator generates a sound source signal corresponding to the pitch of an operating key includes a variable resistance circuit that continuously variably selects and outputs a supplied voltage signal, and a variable resistance circuit that continuously variably selects and outputs a supplied voltage signal. a voltage selection circuit that selects a voltage signal of 1 by a switching device and supplies the selected voltage signal to the variable resistance circuit; and means for variably controlling the pitch signal using the voltage signal output from the resistance circuit; A pitch bending device for an electronic musical instrument, wherein the pitch of a sound source signal is variably adjusted by the variable resistance circuit within a voltage range selected by the circuit.