Did You Know...
...that after Parker Brothers executives turned down the game of Monopoly because it had "52 fundamental errors" (including taking too long to play), a copy of the game wound up in the home of the company president who stayed up until 1 a.m. to finish playing it? He was so impressed by the game that the next day he wrote to inventor Charles Darrow and offered to buy it!
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 4852443 | Capacitive pressure-sensing method and apparatus A novel capacitive pressure-sensitive sensing technique and apparatus wherein an elastomeric conductive electrode carrying a two-dimensional array of projections is pressure-deformed against a fixed coextensive cooperative electrode to generate signals, s... | 08/01/1989 |
| 4852444 | Electro-mechanical transducer which couples positive acoustic feedback into an electric amplified guitar body for the purpose of sustaining played notes A transducer for a musical instrument through which vibrations can be fed back to the instrument so that notes played on the instrument can be sustained. The transducer comprises a bracket for mounting the transducer to the instrument. First and second op... | 08/01/1989 |
| 4841828 | Electronic musical instrument with digital filter A pitch synchronizing signal snychronized with the pitch of a digital tone signal to be filtered is generated by a pitch synchronizing signal generation circuit. A digital filter circuit which receives the digital tone signal and imparts it with a desired... | 06/27/1989 |
| 4838139 | Musical keyboard A musical keyboard having keys which carry metal spoilers that alter the resonance characteristics of tank circuits associated with the keys as the keys move toward and away from the inductance coils of the tank circuits. The tank circuits are connected s... | 06/13/1989 |
| 4794837 | Tone signal generator with code converter for converting stored waveshapes of different coding forms into a common coding form A plurality of waveshapes of different characteristics are stored in a waveshape memory among which a waveshape to be read out is selected in accordance with a selected tone color or elapse of time and data of the selected waveshape is read out. At least ... | 01/03/1989 |
| 4785704 | Musical instrument transducer A transducer for a stringed musical instrument incorporating an electrically conductive base plate along with a piezoelectric crystal secured to the base plate by a conductive adhesive. On the other side of the crystal from the base plate is disposed a sp... | 11/22/1988 |
| 4781097 | Electronic drum instrument A plurality of drum pads are each provided with a respective piezoelectric pick-up. The output of each piezoelectric pick-up is fed to a corresponding envelope-extracting circuit. The envelope signal extracted by the envelope-extracting circuit is convert... | 11/01/1988 |
| 4781096 | Musical tone generating apparatus A musical tone generating apparatus for an electronic musical instrument utilizing a data compression system is disclosed. This musical tone generating apparatus is basically constructed by a memory storing difference data and a data reproduction circuit.... | 11/01/1988 |
| 4776253 | Control apparatus for electronic musical instrument In a preferred embodiment of the invention, a control unit which is freely moveable in space is equipped with three sensors to measure motion (e.g. velocity, acceleration, or the time derivative of acceleration) along three substantially orthogonal axes. ... | 10/11/1988 |
| 4774867 | Musical instrument transducer A transducer for a stringed musical instrument incorporating an electrically conductive ground plane, along with a plurality of piezoelectric transducers and a conductive strip. The ground plane, piezoelectric transducers and conductive strip are secured ... | 10/04/1988 |
| 4768412 | Low profile keyboard device and system for recording and scoring music A portable modular music recording device which simply and unobtrusively attaches to a keyboard instrument for purposes of recording live musical performances; and an efficient music microcomputing system in which the captured musical data is digitized an... | 09/06/1988 |
| 4765219 | Magnetic pick-up for stringed musical instrument A magnetic pick-up is positioned below the strings of a stringed musical instrument having four strings. The pick-up comprises a long and narrow pick-up coil comprising wraps of insulated wire about a magnetic core. A pole piece is physically and magnetic... | 08/23/1988 |
| 4765218 | Electronic keyboard musical instrument with processing of depression dynamics A keyboard circuit for an electronic musical instrument which, with the depression of a key, couples an AC signal to an allocated multiplexer input. The output of the multiplexer is connected via a rectifier and a sample-and-hold circuit to a depression r... | 08/23/1988 |
| 4763554 | Automatic rhythm performing apparatus for electronic musical instrument For use in or with an electronic musical instrument, an automatic rhythm performing apparatus is so constructed as to provide selectively automatic performance of various kinds of rhythms using tones of a plurality of rhythm section instruments. Each rhyt... | 08/16/1988 |
| 4760767 | Apparatus for detecting string stop position In apparatus for detecting string stop position for string instruments, there is provided fret detecting means comprising coils which generate an induced voltage by means of an electric current flowing through each of the frets, whereby the string stop po... | 08/02/1988 |
| 4757736 | Electronic musical instrument having rhythm-play function based on manual operation A plurality of pad operating means for manual operation are provided on a keyboard panel of an electronic keyboard musical instrument. When an operator operates the pad operating means using the keyboard during melody play, an operation signal is supplied... | 07/19/1988 |
| 4754680 | Overdubbing apparatus for electronic musical instrument A tone generation control unit has four waveform read/write channels for selectively reading or writing data in a waveform memory. A plurality of waveform signals stored in the waveform memory are converted into analog signals to be subjected to timbre an... | 07/05/1988 |
| 4748887 | Electric musical string instruments and frets therefor An electric string instrument, e.g. an electric guitar, has one or more resistive elements associated with each fret whereby sideways deflection of a string while in contact with a fret creates a change in the effective resistive value of that fret. This ... | 06/07/1988 |
| 4742748 | Electronic musical instrument adapted for sounding rhythm tones and melody-tones according to rhythm and melody play patterns stored in a timed relation to each other An electronic musical instrument comprises devices for inputting rhythm and melody play patterns. The rhythm and melody play patterns are stored in a pattern memory such that the rhythm and melody play patterns are in a timed relation to each other. The r... | 05/10/1988 |
| 4738179 | Musical tone producing device of waveshape memory readout type In a typical musical tone producing device of a full waveshape readout type, a full waveshape of a musical tone to be produced from the start to the end of sounding or a rise portion and a part of the waveshape following the rise portion of the musical to... | 04/19/1988 |
| 4736663 | Electronic system for synthesizing and combining voices of musical instruments A digital system is provided for synthesizing individual voices of musical instruments, which may then be combined into a musical composition. The system for a single voice is comprised of means for solving a system of simultaneous finite difference equat... | 04/12/1988 |
| 4726277 | Electrical stop control for musical instruments Electrically and manually operable stop controls for a musical instrument such as an organ are disclosed. One embodiment of the stop control is a drawknob carried by an a transfer plate mounted for horizontal motion adjacent a solenoid having an iron core... | 02/23/1988 |
| 4726276 | Slur effect pitch control in an electronic musical instrument The present invention provides a tone color control so that the tone color in an attack portion of a tone to be generated differs depending upon whether or not a slur effect is to be imparted. If, for example, the slur effect is not imparted, a tone color... | 02/23/1988 |
| 4724736 | Keyboard musical instruments with transpositional function A keyboard musical instrument with a transpositional function includes a keyboard, a mode selection switch, a microcomputer, a musical tone signal generator and a sound system. The keyboard has a plurality of keys respectively representing different notes... | 02/16/1988 |
| 4723468 | Electronic stringed instrument An electronic stringed instrument includes strings, a plurality of metal frets, an ultrasonic transmitter/receiver, and a fret discriminator. The strings are kept taut above an instrument body. The frets are arranged below the strings along their extensio... | 02/09/1988 |
| 4719833 | Tone signal generation device with interpolation of sample points A note clock generation circuit generates note clock pulses in correspondence to a note name of a tone to be generated. An octave rate data generation circuit generates rate data in correspondence to the octave range to which the tone to be generated belo... | 01/19/1988 |
| 4715257 | Waveform generating device for electronic musical instruments An improved waveform generator used in an electronic musical equipment for reproducing musical sounds stored therein, in which the waveform of each musical sound is stored in a memory as a sequence of amplitudes sampled at specific sampling points on the ... | 12/29/1987 |
| 4713996 | Automatic rhythm apparatus with tone level dependent timbres Tones of percussion instruments produce different timbres, i.e. different tone waveshapes, depending on the strength of percussion. An automatic rhythm apparatus includes a rhythm tone generating unit which stores the tone waveshape produced from a hard p... | 12/22/1987 |
| 4711149 | Electric guitar pickup switching system The preferred embodiment relates to a musician operated electric guitar having a plurality of metal strings and at least two pickups for transforming mechanical vibrations of the metal strings into electrical signals proportional to such mechanical vibrat... | 12/08/1987 |
| 4709611 | Electronic musical instrument for generating a natural musical tone An electronic musical instrument includes a first waveform memory for storing a waveform corresponding to an attack portion of a musical tone and one period of a steady waveform produced after the attack, a second waveform memory for storing one period of... | 12/01/1987 |
| 4706537 | Tone signal generation device Waveshapes of plural periods for plural channels having characteristics different from each other are stored in a waveshape memory and read out from it when a musical tone is to be produced. Read out waveshapes are respectively weighted by weighting data ... | 11/17/1987 |
| 4704931 | Acoustic tone inhibiting means for keyboard musical instrument A keyboard musical instrument includes: a keyboard; an acoustic musical tone production mechanism for generating an acoustic musical tone; a tone generator for generating an electronic musical tone; a solenoid driver for inhibiting generation of the acous... | 11/10/1987 |
| 4704932 | Electronic musical instrument producing level-controlled rhythmic tones An electronic musical instrument allows the performer to control tone volume of a rhythmic tone by a simple manipulation of keys of a keyboard. The electronic musical instrument comprises a rhythmic tone generator including a plurality of tone sources, to... | 11/10/1987 |
| 4704940 | Computer keyboard adaptor A device adapted to be removably placed over a computer keyboard which converts the keyboard to the format of a muscial instrument. The computer is programmed such that selected computer keys of the keyboard will synthesize different musical sounds. The d... | 11/10/1987 |
| 4703680 | Truncate prioritization system for multi channel electronic music generator An electronic musical instrument comprises a keyboard for generating tone data or key codes each representative of a tone to be generated and a tone generating circuit having a plurality of tone generating channels. The electronic musical instrument also ... | 11/03/1987 |
| 4703681 | Key depression indicating device for electronic musical instrument In a key depression indicating device for an electronic musical instrument capable of visually indicating which keys are to be depressed on a keyboard, the device includes a plurality of indicators provided correspondingly to a plurality of keys of the ke... | 11/03/1987 |
| 4702142 | Fundamental frequency variation for a musical tone generator using stored waveforms A keyboard operated musical instrument is disclosed in which musical tones are created by reading out data values stored in a waveshape memory. The number of stored data points is reduced by storing the data values in segments corresponding to one-half of... | 10/27/1987 |
| 4700603 | Formant filter generator for an electronic musical instrument In the production of a desired musical waveform by combining harmonic components corresponding to respective harmonic orders, the cut-off harmonic order qc, each harmonic component value is controlled by selecting the level Ha and the slope of ... | 10/20/1987 |
| 4699039 | Automatic musical accompaniment playing system An automatic musical accompaniment playing system for use in an electronic musical instrument with an auto rhythm system changes a tone color of accompaniment tones when the state of operation of the auto rhythm system is changed. The automatic accompanim... | 10/13/1987 |
| 4699037 | Electronic musical instrument with glide function An electronic musical instrument has a keyboard, a key depression speed detector and a glide pattern generator. When any key of the keyboard is depressed, the key depression speed detector detects the speed of depressing the key and produces a signal repr... | 10/13/1987 |
