Masahiro Kakishita

Electronic musical instrument for simulating wind instrument musical tones

An electronic musical instrument simulating a wind instrument is fundamentally configured by a loop circuit at least containing a linear portion and a non-linear portion. The linear portion simulates a pipe portion of the wind instrument, while the non-linear portion simulates a breath-blowing portion of the wind instrument so as to produce an excitation signal, which is supplied to the linear portion. By an interaction between the linear portion and the non-linear portion which is carried out while a signal circulates through the loop circuit, a sounding characteristic of the wind instrument is simulated. In order to accurately simulate a jet reed instrument (e.g., organ pipe), there are further provided a delay circuit and an edge tone generator. The delay circuit imparts a delay time to the output signal of the linear portion, and then, a delayed signal is supplied to the non-linear portion. The delay time corresponds to a time which is required when an air flow passing through a slit reaches an edge in the jet reed instrument. The edge tone generator generates a noise signal representing an edge tone (or an aeolian tone) which is unique to the jet reed instrument. The noise signal is mixed with the output signal of the non-linear portion, and then, a mixed signal is supplied to the linear portion. Thus, a sound of the jet reed instrument can be accurately simulated by a musical tone signal picked up from the loop circuit.

The VL1 virtual acoustic synthesizer

McIntyre et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (1983)] suggested the idea of constructing electrical musical instruments based on physical models of natural musical instruments. The first product employing such an approach has been developed, the VL1, and the synthesis technique is called ‘‘virtual acoustic synthesis.’’ Differences and comparisons between conventional music synthesizers and the virtual acoustic synthesizer will be shown. Also, problems arising in the approximation of natural musical instruments and the realization of approximated models will be described to some extent. The VL1 synthesizer also contains a sound effects section and other common features found in commercial digital musical instruments. The system is realized using specialized DSP chips. The current VL/virtual acoustic synthesizer is expensive, so reducing the cost was the next goal. A low‐cost version, the VL70‐m, was also released this year. There will be a small demonstration to exhibit the sound of the instrument.