JPS63118792A - Electronic musical instrument - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Summary] This bulletin contains application data before electronic filing, so abstract data is not recorded.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an electronic musical instrument that generates and outputs various musical tones.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION In recent years, digital technology has come to be used in electronic musical instruments, and improvements in operability and sound quality have been remarkable.

Regarding operability, there is a key assigner technology that controls a tone synthesizer in response to an output instruction (for example, pressing a key on a keyboard) (for example, US Pat. No. 3,610,
On the other hand, regarding sound quality, there is a musical tone synthesis technology that attempts to reproduce the complex waveform changes of a musical tone by controlling multiple sound generation channels in order to synthesize one musical tone (for example, 67-31156).

The key assigner and tone synthesizer will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 2 shows the configuration of a conventional key assigner.

In FIG. 2, 101 is an assignment control section, 102 is an assignment memory, and 103 is a pointer register.

The operation of the key assigner configured as described above will be explained below.

An assignment control unit 101 connected to M musical tone synthesizers controls turning on musical tones input from an input device such as a keyboard, for example.
The musical tone synthesizer is controlled in response to information regarding off, pitch, timbre, volume, etc.

Here, it is assumed that the contents of the pointer register 103 in the initial state indicate the first block of the assignment memory 102 consisting of M blocks. It is also assumed that all M of the first to Mth blocks of the assignment memory 102 have been initialized to indicate an OFF state.

When the content of the musical tone output instruction input is on, the assignment control unit 101 reads the content of the pointer register 103 and then increments the content of the pointer register 103 by one block. Read pointer register 103
When the content of the first block of the assignment memory 102 corresponding to the content of is OFF, the assignment control unit 101 outputs musical tone information to the i-th musical tone synthesizer, and also outputs the content of the i-th block of the assignment memo IJ 102. Rewrite to indicate on. Further, when the content of the i-th block is on, the assignment control unit 101 outputs an instruction to the i-th musical tone synthesizer to force the end of sound generation (referred to as a first dump), and then outputs a completion signal of the end of sound generation process as the first dump. 1 When input from a tone synthesizer.

The musical tone information is output to the first musical tone synthesizer, and the contents of the i-th block of the assignment memo IJ 102 are rewritten to the contents indicating ON.

When the assignment control section 101 rewrites the contents of the i-th block of the assignment memory 102, it rewrites not only the on/off information but also musical tone information. Further, when the result of incrementing the contents of the pointer register 103 indicates the (M+1)th block, it is reset to indicate the first block.

On the other hand, when the content of the musical sound output instruction input is OFF, the assignment control unit 101 searches the content of the assignment memory 1o2,
When a j-th block with the same musical tone information and indicating on is detected, an instruction is output to the j-th musical tone synthesizer to end the sound generation, and the contents of the j-th block in the assignment memory 102 are rewritten to contents indicating off.

Through the above operations, the number of musical tone synthesizers whose number M is smaller than the number of musical tones that can be instructed to output (for example, the number of keys on a keyboard) is sequentially controlled to produce sounds within the range of the number of simultaneous pronunciations M, based on the output instruction. becomes.

FIG. 3 shows the configuration of a conventional tone synthesizer.

In FIG. 3, 110 is a synthesis control unit, 111° 112
are the first and second waveform generators, 113 and 114 are the first and second envelope generators, and 115 and 116 are the first and second envelope generators.
118 is a synthesis parameter memory, and 119 is a sound generation channel.

The operation of the musical tone synthesizer configured as described above will be explained below.

The synthesis control unit 110 controls pitch, tone, volume, and on.

Synthesis information corresponding to musical tone information input such as OFF is read from the synthesis parameter memory 118, and a υ synthesized sound is output by controlling the waveform generator and envelope generator according to the read synthesis information.

That is, when musical tone information is on, the synthesis control section 110 stores the synthesis parameter memory 11 based on pitch, timbre, and volume information.
8, reads the corresponding synthesis information, and according to the synthesis information, the first and second waveform generators 11
It outputs data instructing the waveform type and cycle to be output to the first and second envelope generators 113 and 112, and outputs data instructing the envelope to be output to the first and second envelope generators 113 and 114.

The first and second waveform generators 111 and 112 repeatedly output a desired waveform at a desired period according to data input from the synthesis control section 110 instructing the type and period of the waveform to be output. On the other hand, the first and second envelope generators 113 and 114 output desired envelopes in accordance with data input from the synthesis control section 11o instructing the envelope to be output.

The waveforms output from the first and second waveform generators 111 and 112 and the first and second envelope generators 113 and 11
The envelopes output from 4 are multiplied by first and second multipliers 115 and 116, respectively, and then added by adder 117.

With the above operation, the output waveforms of the first and second multipliers 115 and 116, which vary in time independently from each other, are
7, the result is a synthesized output as a single musical sound waveform that fluctuates over time.

In addition, in the above-mentioned musical tone synthesizer, the first and second two
There are musical tone synthesizers that have a system, that is, two sounding channels, but also have a larger number of sounding channels.

Problems to be Solved by the Invention However, in the above configuration, when the maximum number of simultaneous sounds is M, that is, the number of synthesizers is M, each tone synthesizer must have N sound generation channels. For example, MN sound generation channels must be prepared. In other words, there is a problem in that a large number of MN sound generation channels must be prepared in either case when it is desired to increase the maximum number of sound generation M or when it is desired to improve the sound quality.

In view of the above-mentioned problems, the present invention aims to efficiently use a limited number of sound generation channels with a simple configuration, and further provides an electronic musical instrument that can freely and efficiently control the number of simultaneous sounds and sound quality. It provides:

Means for Solving the Problems In order to achieve this object, the electronic musical instrument of the present invention has a control section that inputs musical tone information, and a control section that is related to the number of sound generation channels to be used corresponding to the musical tone information input to the control section. A synthesis parameter memory that supplies synthesis information including data to the control section, a sound generation channel group consisting of a plurality of sound generation channels that produce sound according to the control of the control section, and a memory for the control section to read and write in order to know the status of each sound generation channel. An assignment memory, a monitor memory for the control section to read and write the status of the musical tone being output, and first and second pointer registers that indicate addresses for the control section to read and write from and to the monitor memory. configured.

Effect of the Invention With this configuration, the control section reads synthesis information including data regarding the number Li of tone generation channels used for synthesis from the synthesis parameter memory in response to inputted musical tone information, and also reads synthesis information for each tone generation channel from the assignment memory. Read the state and capture the sound in the off sounding channel, that is, the empty channel.

Li) When K, that is, when the required number of sound generation channels Li is larger than the current number of free channels, the control section selects all the sound generation channels Lj registered in the monitor memory indicated by the second pointer register. An empty channel (K+Lj) that is turned off and Lj≦(K+Lj)
, and instructs Li tone generation channels necessary for the musical tone to be generated to turn on the tone generation.

As a result of the above operations, each musical tone is synthesized using the number of sounding channels corresponding to the number of sounding channels used for sounding, which is written in advance in the synthesis parameter memory for each musical tone.

EXAMPLE Hereinafter, an example of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

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

In FIG. 1, 1 is a control unit, 2 is a synthesis parameter memory, 3 is an assignment memory, 4 is a sound generation channel group, 6 is an adder, 6 is a monitor memory, and 7° and 8 are first and second pointer registers, respectively. , 1° to 12 are the first to Mth, respectively.
The operation of the electronic musical instrument configured as described above will be explained below.

First, when musical tone information such as timbre, pitch, volume, etc. regarding a musical tone to be output is input, the control section 1 reads synthesis information corresponding to the musical tone information from the synthesis parameter memory 2. Here, it is assumed that the composition information stored in advance in the composition parameter memory 2 has contents as shown in Table 1, for example.

(Left below) Table 1: Synthesis information consisting of the number of pronunciation channels Li to be used from musical sound information such as timbre, pitch, volume, etc. and pronunciation information such as waveforms or envelopes to be emitted by each of the Li channels. You can get it.

Next, the control unit 1 determines whether or not the first to Mth sound generation channels are generating sound, that is, whether each sound generation channel is on or off by reading the data in the assignment memory 3, and determines whether the sound generation channels that are off are , that is, the number K of free channels is obtained. Here, it is assumed that the information regarding on/off of each sound generation channel stored in the assignment memory 3 has contents as shown in Table 2, for example.

Table 2 When Li≦, the control unit 1 sequentially outputs Li pieces of pronunciation information and pitch information read from the synthesis parameter memory 2 to the off sounding channel, turns it on, and assigns it to the off sounding channel. The relevant sound channel (
Write data indicating that Li pieces) are on.

Further, the control unit 1 sets the address in the monitor memory θ indicated by the first pointer register 7 to indicate that each of the Li sounding channels to be used is on and each of the (M-Li) unused sounding channels is off. After writing data indicating a certain fact, the contents of the first pointer register 7 are incremented. When the incremented result indicates the (M-1-1)th address, the contents of the first pointer register γ are reset to indicate the first address. Here, the information regarding the assignment status of each output musical tone stored in the monitor memory 6 can be obtained from, for example, the
3 Table As shown above, the monitor memory 6 indicates the order in which each output musical tone was generated and the sound generation channel used for each musical tone.

Li) When K, the control unit 1 assigns the sound generation channel indicating ON from the address in the monitor memory e indicated by the second pointer register 8, that is, to the earliest timing of the output musical tones currently being generated. Pronunciation channel L
j pieces of sound is detected and instructs the corresponding sound generation channel to be forcibly terminated, and also turns off all states indicated by the addresses in the monitor memory 6 that are indicated by the second pointer register 8, that is, all sound generation channels are After making the address unassigned, the contents of the second pointer register 8 are incremented.

Note that when the incremented result indicates the (M+1)th address, the contents of the second pointer register 8 are reset to indicate the first address.

When it detects that the corresponding pronunciation channel is turned off,
The control unit 1 sequentially outputs the pronunciation information and tone pitch information read from the synthesis parameter memory 2 to the (K+Lj) captured off sounding channels, turns them on, and also outputs them to the assignment memory 3. Data indicating that the corresponding sound generation channel (Li number) is on is written to the corresponding channel. Further, the control section 1 writes data indicating that each of the Li sound generation channels to be used is on to the address in the monitor memory 6 indicated by the first pointer register 7, and then writes the contents of the first pointer register 7. Increment. When the incremented result indicates the (M-)-1)th address, the first pointer register 7
Reset the contents of to point to the first address.

Here, it is assumed that the information regarding the assignment status of each output musical tone stored in the monitor memory 6 has contents as shown in Table 3, for example.

In the above, it is assumed that the sound generation channel group 4 consisting of M sound generation channels 10 to 12 operates in the same manner as in the prior art.

Through the above operations, the sound waveforms output from the M sound generation channels 10 to 12 are added by the adder 6 and output as musical sound data.

Note that even if Lj sound channels are captured, L
When id(K+Lj), it is sufficient to repeat the above-described operation for the second pointer register 8 to capture a further available sound generation channel.

As described above, according to the present embodiment, the musical tone information regarding the musical tone to be output, that is, the musical tone synthesis information corresponding to the timbre, pitch, and volume, that is, the number of sounding channels and the sounding information of each sounding channel is stored in the synthesis parameter memory. Therefore, if you are changing the number of sounding channels that are different for each musical tone as necessary to achieve the same level of musical tone synthesis, and there are not enough free channels, you can select the fastest of the musical tones currently being sounded. It is possible to realize an electronic musical instrument capable of outputting musical tones by capturing a sufficient number of free sound generation channels after muting the musical tones that have started to be output at the specified time. Furthermore, when it is desired to increase the number of simultaneous sounds, it is sufficient to simply reduce the number of sounds used for musical tones. Furthermore, since it is designed to respond to volume, it is also possible to respond to so-called touch response.

Effects of the Invention The present invention arbitrarily sets an appropriate number of sound generation channels to be used for each musical tone to be output, so that the sound quality of various musical tones can be made to the same level, and furthermore, the number of sound generation channels used for each musical tone can be set at an appropriate level. By controlling , the number of simultaneous sounds can also be changed. Furthermore, when the number of free sound generation channels is smaller than the number of used sound generation channels, the number of free sound generation channels can be secured by stopping the musical tone being output.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an electronic musical instrument according to an embodiment of the present invention, and FIGS. 2 and 3 are block diagrams of conventional electronic musical instruments. 1... Control unit, 2... Synthesis parameter memory, 3... Assignment memory, 4...
Sound generation channel group, 5... Adder, 6...
...Monitor memory, 7...First pointer register, 8...Second pointer register, 1o.
...First sounding channel, 11th... Second sounding channel, 12th... Mth sounding channel. Name of agent: Patent attorney Toshio Nakao and 1 other 8 &'

Claims (1)

[Claims] (1) a control section that inputs musical tone information; a synthesis parameter memory that supplies synthesis information including data regarding the number of sound generation channels to be used to the control section in accordance with the musical tone information input to the control section; a sound generation channel group consisting of a plurality of sound generation channels that generate sounds according to synthesis information output from the control section; an assignment memory for the control section to read or write the state of each sound generation channel; and an assignment memory for reading or writing the state of each sound generation channel; The control unit includes a monitor memory for reading or writing into the monitor memory, and first and second pointer registers indicating to the control unit an address for reading or writing to the monitor memory, and the control unit is configured to read or write to the synthesis parameter memory. outputting the synthesis information to the same number of sound generation channels as the number of used channels after capturing the same or more number of sound generation channels as the number of used sound generation channels included in the synthesis information supplied from the An electronic musical instrument featuring