US 4,244,264 AGranted

System for registering and selecting stops in a musical instrument

AssigneeThomson-CSF

InventorDominique Fellot

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Abstract

An electronic musical instrument, such as a pipe organ, has a multiplicity of manually and electrically positionable knobs for selecting and restoring respective organ stops, any combination of signals representing selected and unselected stops being recordable in a nonvolatile memory from which that combination can be subsequently read out under the control of a keyboard and a set of pushbuttons. Whenever a new signal combination is called forth from the memory, switching instructions are loaded into a multiplicity of cascaded register stages whose outputs are connected via respective interface circuits to selecting or restoring coils of respective knobs. The interface circuits are unblocked simultaneously by a transfer instruction from the memory to establish the new knob positions. The loading of the register stages is controlled by a unit which compares the existing positions of the knobs with those specified by the selected signal combination and sends switching instructions only to those register stages whose knobs have to be repositioned. A series of cascaded ancillary memories of the read/write type may be loaded with a limited number of signal combinations appearing consecutively in the nonvolatile main memory for facilitating a quick changeover from one of these combinations to another.

Claims12

Dependent claims

In a musical instrument having a multiplicity of independently movable stops provided with respective actuators electrically operable to displace said stops between selected and unselected positions,

the combination therewith of:
nonvolatile memory means with a multiplicity of sequentially accessible storage areas each having recorded therein a combination of binary signals identifying the selected and unselected positions of respective stops;
a cascade of ancillary read/write memories connected to said nonvolatile memory means for consecutive loading with respective signal combinations from as many adjacent storage areas thereof;
a multiplicity of register stages with output connections respectively extending to said actuators;
player-operated selector means for identifying a storage area of said nonvolatile memory means containing a chosen signal combination and feeding the latter via a first memory of said cascade into a second memory of said cascade while loading said first memory with an adjacent signal combination;
control means connected to said second memory for reading out said chosen signal combination and converting same into positioning commands entered into said register stages and for immediately advancing said adjacent signal combination from said first memory to said second memory as a replacement of the chosen signal combination read out therefrom while immediately replacing said adjacent signal combination in said first memory with a further signal combination read out from the next-following storage area of said nonvolatile memory means whereby said cascade always contains a plurality of signal combinations substantially less than the number of said storage areas;
and
interface means inserted in said output connections for simultaneously transmitting said positioning commands to the respective actuators in response to a transfer instruction.

5 more elements

In a musical instrument having a multiplicity of independently movable stops provided with respective actuators electrically operable to displace said stops between selected an unselected positions,

the combination therewith of:
nonvolatile memory means with a multiplicity of sequentially accessible storage areas each having recorded therein a combination of binary signals identifying the selected and unselected positions of respective stops;
a cascade of ancillary read/write memories connected to said nonvolatile memory means for consecutive loading with respective signal combinations from as many adjacent storage areas thereof;
a multiplicity of register stages with output connections respectively extending to said actuators;
player-operated selector means for identifying a limited group of adjacent storage areas of said nonvolatile memory means and successively loading the memories of said cascade with the signal combinations of said group;
control means connected to said cascade for reading out a chosen signal combination from any one of a plurality of memories of said cascade and converting the read-out signal combination into positioning commands entered into said register stages while replacing said read-out signal combination with an adjacent signal combination;
and
interface means inserted in said output connections for simultaneously transmitting said positioning commands to the respective actuators in response to a transfer instruction.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.