Musical tone generating apparatus

A musical tone generating apparatus, which generates a musical tone signal having a tone color corresponding to musical tone information given thereto, comprising:

• a plurality of channel means each containing one musical tone creating portion and two or more buffers, each of said buffers being capable of storing tone-color data designating one tone color, while said musical tone creating portion creates a musical tone signal having a tone color corresponding to said tone-color data stored in one of said buffers;
• a control means for classifying all of said buffers into two or more groups among said plurality of channel means in accordance with a predetermined priority order so that in each channel means, a buffer belonging to one group is given a first priority and selected prior to another buffer belonging to another group;
• tone-color data storing means for storing a plurality of tone-color data in advance, of which number is larger than a number of said buffers provided in said plurality of channel means;
• a designating means for designating one of said plurality of tone-color data to be assigned to each of said buffers;
• and
• a transfer means for transferring the tone-color data to the buffers in accordance with a designation of said designating means,
• wherein said control means selects the channel means which contains the buffer storing the tone-color data corresponding to said musical tone information in accordance with said priority order, while said musical tone creating portion of a selected channel means eventually creates a musical tone signal corresponding to said musical tone information.

A musical tone generating apparatus comprising:

• a plurality of channel means each containing one musical tone creating portion and two or more buffers, each of said buffers being capable of storing tone-color data designating one tone color, while said musical tone creating portion creates a musical tone signal having a tone color corresponding to said tone-color data stored in one of said buffers;
• a control means for classifying all of said buffers into two or more groups among said plurality of channel means in accordance with a buffer-grouping procedure so that in each channel means, a buffer belonging to one group is given a first priority and selected prior to another buffer belonging to another group when being allocated with said tone-color data;
• tone-color data storing means for storing a plurality of tone-color data in advance, of which number is larger than a number of said buffers provided in said plurality of channel means;
• and
• a tone-color allocating means for allocating said tone-color data to said buffers in accordance with a tone-color-allocation order which is determined responsive to characteristics of a tune to be performed, so that said tone-color data allocated to said buffers are classified into two or more groups in a manner similar to said buffer-grouping procedure employed for said buffers.

A musical tone generating apparatus, which generates a musical tone signal having a tone color based on musical tone information read from a storage means, comprising:

• a plurality of channel means each containing one musical tone creating portion and two or more buffers, each of said buffers being capable of storing tone-color data designating one tone color, while said musical tone creating portion creates a musical tone signal having a tone color corresponding to said tone-color data stored in one of said buffers;
• tone-color data storing means for storing a plurality of tone-color data in advance, of which number is larger than a number of said buffers provided in said plurality of channel means;
• a designating means for designating one of said plurality of tone-color data stored in said tone-color data storing means;
• a transfer means for transferring the tone-color data designated by said designating means to said buffers;
• a detecting means for reading said musical tone information from said storage means so as to detect a maximum number of musical tones to be simultaneously produced with respect to each of the tone colors corresponding to read musical tone information;
• and
• an allocating means for automatically allocating said tone-color data to said buffers in accordance with a tone-color-allocation order by which the tone color of which maximum number detected by said detecting means is larger is allocated to a larger number of buffers among said plurality of channel means and by which the tone colors corresponding to said musical tone information are certainly allocated to said buffers.