Electronic musical instrument

An electronic musical instrument comprising:

• a synchronous binary counter which divides the frequency of a basic pulse train occurring at a rate corresponding to an allotted note of the musical scale,
• supply means for supplying the binary contents of said counter serially upon occurrence of successive basic pulses,
• a memory storing sampled amplitude of a waveform, and
• readout means, connected to said supply means to receive said serially supplied binary contents and cooperating with said memory, for reading out a sampled amplitude from said memory each time that said contents are supplied, utilizing a selected subset of said supplied binary contents as the memory address for such readout, thereby to produce a waveform having the frequency of said allotted note in an octave established by the particular selected subset of contents.

An electronic musical instrument comprising:

• a multiplexed wave data generator means for producing a repetitive, binary coded wave data signal having a repetition rate corresponding to a particular note of the musical scale, said wave data signal being incremented at successive repetitions,
• a waveform memory storing amplitude samples of a waveform at consecutive sample points,
• a latch having a plurality of stages and means for entering said binary coded wave data signal into particular stages of said latch upon each repetition thereof, said particular stages being selected in accordance with an octave selection signal, and
• readout means for reading out said amplitude samples from said memory utilizing the data in certain stages of said latch as a memory access address, whereby said read out amplitude samples constitute a waveform having the frequency of said particular note in an octave established by said octave selection signal.

A keyboard electronic musical instrument comprising:

• (a) a plurality of multiplexed octavely-related wave data generator means, each allotted to a respective different musical note, and each for generating a time division multiplexed, octave-related wave data signal having a reference pulse frequency corresponding to the frequency of the respective allotted note and including a plurality of data bits exhibiting timewise changes in binary relations thereby representing states of octavely-related waves for the allotted note;
• (b) a note selection circuit means, connected to said plural data generator means to receive the respective data signals therefrom, for selecting the one of said received octavely-related wave data signals corresponding to a note specified by a depressed key;
• (c) a data paralleling circuit means, connected to said note selection circuit to receive said selected wave data signal, for paralleling the wave data signal thus selected and for setting the bit position thereof according to octave ranges, thereby to output a parallel signal having a predetermied number of bits;
• and
• (d) at least one waveform memory in which waveform sample point amplitudes are stored in addresses thereof, and readout means, cooperating with said memory and said data paralleling circuit means, for reading out from said memory the stored contents thereof utilizing the parallel signal outputted by said data paralleling circuit means as an address signal.