JPH0727375B2 - Electronic musical instrument - Google Patents

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an electronic musical instrument that generates and outputs various musical tones.

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, digital technology has come to be used in electronic musical instruments, and there are remarkable improvements in operability and sound quality.

As for operability, there is a key assigner technology for controlling a musical sound synthesizer in response to an output instruction (for example, pressing a key on a keyboard) (for example, US Pat. No. 3,610,792), while for sound quality, There is a tone synthesis technique for reproducing a complicated waveform change of a tone by controlling a plurality of tone generation channels to synthesize one tone (for example, Japanese Patent Publication No. 57-31156).

Hereinafter, the key assigner and the tone synthesizer will be described with reference to the drawings.

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

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

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

The assignment control unit 101 connected to the M tone synthesizers is
For example, the tone synthesizer is controlled in accordance with information about on / off, pitch, tone color, volume, etc. of a tone input from an input device such as a keyboard. Where the pointer register 10
In the initial state, the content of 3 indicates the first block of the assign memory 102 composed of M blocks. Further, it is assumed that the first to Mth blocks of the assignment memory 102 are initialized to the contents indicating that all M blocks are in the off state.

When the content of the 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. When the content of the i-th block of the assignment memory 102 corresponding to the read content of the pointer register 103 is off, the assignment control unit 101 outputs the musical tone information to the i-th musical tone synthesizer, and the The content of the i block is rewritten to the content indicating ON. Further, when the content of the i-th block is ON, the assign control unit 101 outputs an instruction to compulsorily end the pronunciation (called first dump) to the i-th tone synthesizer, and then outputs the completion signal of the end-of-sounding process. When input from the i-tone synthesizer, the tone information is output to the i-th tone synthesizer, and the contents of the i-th block of the assign memory 102 are rewritten to indicate ON.

When the assignment control unit 101 rewrites the contents of the i-th block of the assignment memory 102, not only on / off but also musical tone information is rewritten. Also, 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 tone output instruction input is OFF, the assignment control unit 101 searches the content of the assign memory 102, and when the j-th block showing the same tone information and ON is detected, the j-th tone synthesizer At the same time, the end of sound generation is instructed and output, and the contents of the j-th block of the assignment memory 102 are rewritten to the contents indicating OFF.

By the above-described operation, the number M of musical sound synthesizers, which is smaller than the number of musical tones that can be output (for example, the number of keys on the keyboard), is sequentially controlled within the range of the number M of simultaneous tones, 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 and 112 are first and second waveform generators, 113 and 114 are first and second envelope generators, 115 and 116 are first and second multipliers, and 118 is a synthesis parameter. Memory, 119 is a sounding channel.

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

The synthesis control unit 110 reads synthesis information corresponding to musical tone information input such as pitch, tone color, volume, on, off, etc. from the synthesis parameter memory 118, and a waveform generator and an envelope generator according to the read synthesis information. A synthetic sound is output by controlling.

That is, when the musical tone information is on, the synthesis control unit 110
The content of the synthesis parameter memory 118 is searched based on the tone color and volume information, the corresponding synthesis information is read, and the first and second waveform generators 111 and 112 are read according to the synthesis information.
To the first and second envelope generators 113 and 114, and outputs data to instruct 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 cycle in accordance with data input from the synthesis control unit 110 that indicates the type of waveform to be output and the cycle. On the other hand, the first and second envelope generators 113 and 114
Outputs a desired envelope in accordance with the data input from the synthesis control unit 110 and instructing the envelope to be output.

The waveforms output from the first and second waveform generators 111 and 112 and the envelopes output from the first and second envelope generators 113 and 114 are the first and second multipliers, respectively.
After being multiplied by 115 and 116, they are added by the adder 117.

With the above operation, the output waveforms of the first and second multipliers 115 and 116 which are independent of each other in time change are combined and output by the adder 117 as one complicated time-varying tone waveform.

In the tone synthesizer described above, the first and second two
Although it has a systematic, i.e. two sounding channels, there are also tone synthesizers consisting of more sounding channels.

DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION Problems to be Solved by the Invention However, in the above configuration, when the maximum polyphony number is M, that is, the number of synthesizers is M, each tone synthesizer has N tone generation channels. If so, MN pronunciation channels must be prepared. That is, there is a problem that a large number of MN sound generation channels must be prepared in either case of increasing the maximum number of sound generations M or improving the sound quality.

In view of the above problems, the present invention aims to efficiently use a finite number of sound generation channels with a simple configuration, and an electronic musical instrument capable of freely and efficiently controlling the number of simultaneous sound generation and sound quality. Is provided.

Means for Solving the Problems In order to achieve this object, the electronic musical instrument of the present invention has a control unit for inputting musical tone information and the number of sound generation channels to be used corresponding to the musical tone information input to the control unit. Parameter memory for supplying to the control unit synthetic information including data relating to the pronunciation priority of the sounding channel, a sounding channel group consisting of a plurality of sounding channels sounded under the control of the control unit, and a state of each sounding channel. In order to know, the assignment memory for the control unit to read and write, the monitor memory for the control unit to read and write the state of the musical sound being output, and the address for the control unit to read and write to the monitor memory are shown. It consists of a pointer register.

According to the present invention, with this configuration, the control unit, in response to the input musical tone information, generates synthetic information including the data regarding the number of sounding channels Li used for synthesis and the data regarding the sounding priority of the sounding channels from the synthetic parameter memory. Read and read the state of each tone generation channel from the assign memory and turn off the tone generation channel, that is, empty channel K
Capture the pieces.

When Li> K, that is, when the required number of sounding channels Li is larger than the current number of empty channels K, the control unit has a high sounding priority for the Li sounding channels necessary for the musical sound to be sounded. A sound-on instruction is given to the Lj sound channels for which Lj = K.

With the above operation, each musical tone is synthesized by the number of tone generation channels which is less than or equal to the number of tone generation channels used for tone generation which is written in advance in the synthesis parameter memory for each tone.

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

FIG. 1 is 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 assign memory, 4 is a tone generation channel group, 5 is an adder, 6 is a monitor memory, 7 is a pointer register, and 10 is a register.
.About.12 are the first to Mth sounding channels, respectively.

The operation of the electronic musical instrument configured as described above will be described below.

First, when musical tone information such as a tone color, pitch, and volume relating to a musical tone to be output is input, the control unit 1 reads synthetic information corresponding to the musical tone information from the synthetic parameter memory 2. Here, the synthesis information stored in advance in the synthesis parameter memory 2 has the contents as shown in Table 1, for example.

That is, the number of sounding channels Li to be used from tone information such as tone color Q, pitch H, and volume V, and waveform W or envelope E to be sounded on each of the Li channels, and sounding priority P of each channel. It is possible to obtain synthetic information including pronunciation information such as.

Next, the control unit 1 determines whether the first to Mth sounding channels are sounding, that is, whether each sounding channel is on or off by reading the data of the assignment memory 3, and the off sounding channels. That is, the number of free channels K
To get Here, the information about the on / off of each sounding channel stored in the assign memory 3 is, for example, the second
The contents are as shown in the table.

When Li ≦ K, the control unit 1 sequentially outputs Li pronunciation information and pitch information, etc. read from the synthesis parameter memory 2 for the off tone channel to turn it on, and to the assign memory 3 as well. On the other hand, the pronunciation channel (Li
Data) indicating that each of them is ON. Further, the control unit 1 confirms that the Li tone generation channels to be used are on and the unused (M-Li) tone generation channels are off at the address in the monitor memory 6 indicated by the pointer register 7. After writing the indicated data, the content of the pointer register 7 is incremented. Here, the information regarding the assigned state of each output musical sound stored in the monitor memory 6 has the contents shown in Table 3, for example.

As described above, the monitor memory 6 indicates the order in which the output musical tones are generated and the tone generation channel used for each musical tone.

When Li> K, the control unit 1 outputs the pronunciation information and the pitch information read from the synthesis parameter memory 2 for the K off tone channels of each channel indicated by the pronunciation information of the synthesis parameter memory 2. Channels with high sounding priority are sequentially output and turned on, and data indicating that the sounding channels (K) are on are written to the assign memory 3. Further, as in the case of Li ≦ K, the control unit 1 writes the data indicating the state of each tone generation channel to the address in the monitor memory 6 indicated by the pointer register 7 and increments the content of the pointer register 7.

Here, the information regarding the assigned state of each output musical sound stored in the monitor memory 6 has the contents shown in Table 3, for example.

In the above, the tone generation channel group 4 consisting of M tone generation channels 10 to 12 operates in the same manner as the conventional one.

The tone waveforms output from the M tone generation channels 10 to 12 by the above operation are added by the adder 5 and output as tone data.

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 tone color, the pitch, and the volume, that is, the pronunciation information such as the number of sounding channels and the sounding priority of each sounding channel is used as a synthesis parameter. Since it is stored in memory, the number of different sound channels required for synthesizing tones of the same level, which is different for each tone, is changed appropriately, but when the number of empty channels is insufficient, the order of sounding priority is high. It is possible to realize an electronic musical instrument that can output musical sounds by assigning as many empty sounding channels as possible. Further, when it is desired to increase the number of polyphony, it is only necessary to reduce the number of polyphony used for musical tones. Furthermore, since it is adapted to correspond to the volume, so-called touch response can also be adapted.

EFFECTS OF THE INVENTION Since the present invention is configured to arbitrarily set the appropriate number of sounding channels to be used for each musical sound to be output, the sound quality of various musical tones can be set to the same level, and the number of sounding channels to be used for each musical sound can be further increased. It is also possible to change the polyphony by controlling the. Also, when the number of unused sound generation channels is less than the number of sound generation channels used, by assigning waveforms corresponding to the number of empty sound generation channels according to the sounding priority assigned to each sound generation channel, the tone color of the musical tone is not extremely deteriorated. A synthetic sound can be obtained.

[Brief description of drawings]

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 a conventional electronic musical instrument. 1 ... Control unit, 2 ... Synthesis parameter memory, 3 ... Assign memory, 4 ... Sound channel group, 5 ... Adder, 6 ... Monitor memory, 7 ... Pointer register, 10
…… 1st sounding channel, 11 …… Second sounding channel, 12 …… Mth sounding channel.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A control unit for inputting musical tone information, and synthetic information including data on the number of used tone generation channels and data on tone generation priority of the tone generation channels corresponding to the tone information input to the control unit. In order for the control unit to read or write the synthesis parameter memory supplied to the control unit, a sound generation channel group consisting of a plurality of sound generation channels that sound according to the synthesis information output from the control unit, and the state of each sound generation channel. Assign memory, a monitor memory for the control unit to read or write the state of the musical sound being output, and a read area for the monitor memory, a pointer register for writing a write address to the control unit. , The control unit is empty when the number of the used sounding channels is the sounding channel When the number of channels is less than the number of channels, the synthesis information for the number of empty channels is output to the sounding channels in the descending order of the sounding priority of the data on the sounding priority among the synthesis information for the number of used sounding channels. And electronic musical instruments.