Apparatus for displaying musical information without overlap

An apparatus for displaying musical information including a plurality of words in correspondence to notes displayed along a time axis on a musical staff comprising:

• a music performance data providing device which provides music performance data containing note data representing notes in progression along a time axis to constitute a musical performance, and word data representing words in progression in association with said notes;
• a determining device which determines a display length and a display position of each of said words along the time axis based on said word data contained in said music performance data;
• a detecting device which detects an overlap of words in the direction of the time axis when displayed based on said determined display lengths and said determined display positions of the respective words along the time axis successively from a top word to subsequent words;
• a modifying device which modifies, when said detecting device detects an overlap of two adjacent words in the direction of the time axis, the position of the latter of said two adjacent words to a position which is apart from the former of said two adjacent words by at least a predetermined word gap in the direction of the time axis;
• and
• a display device which displays the word of which the position is not modified at the position determined by said determining device, and displays the word of which the position is modified at the position modified by said modifying device.

A computer readable medium containing program instructions executable by a computer for causing said computer to execute:

• a process of providing music performance data containing note data representing notes in progression along a time axis to constitute a musical performance, and chord data representing chords in progression in association with said notes;
• a process of determining a display length and a display position of each of said chords along the time axis based on said chord data contained in said music performance data;
• a process of detecting an overlap of chords in the direction of the time axis when displayed based on said determined display lengths and said determined display positions of the respective chords along the time axis;
• a process of determining a vertical display position of a chord of which no overlap with another chord is detected to be at a predetermined standard vertical position in a direction perpendicular to the time axis, and determining a vertical display position of a chord of which an overlap with another chord is detected to be at a vertical position which is vertically apart from said other chord by at least a predetermined gap;
• and
• a process of displaying each of the chords at the position in the direction of the time axis as determined by said process of determining a display length and a display position and at the vertical position as determined by said process of determining a vertical display position,
• thereby displaying musical information including a plurality of chords in correspondence to the notes displayed along the time axis on the musical staff.

A computer readable medium containing program instructions executable by a computer for causing said computer to execute:

• a process of providing music performance data containing note data representing notes in progression along a time axis to constitute a musical performance, and word data representing words in progression in association with said notes;
• a process of determining a display length and a display position of each of said words along the time axis based on said word data contained in said music performance data;
• a process of detecting an overlap of words in the direction of the time axis when displayed based on said determined display lengths and said determined display positions of the respective words along the time axis successively from a top word to subsequent words;
• a process of modifying, when said process of detecting detects an overlap of two adjacent words in the direction of the time axis, the position of the latter of said two adjacent words to a position which is apart from the former of said two adjacent words by at least a predetermined word gap in the direction of the time axis;
• and
• a process of displaying the word of which the position is not modified at the position determined by said process of determining, and displaying the word of which the position is modified at the position modified by said process of modifying;
• thereby displaying musical information including a plurality of words in correspondence to the notes displayed along the time axis on the musical staff.