1. Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to electronic musical instruments, and more particularly, to electronic musical instruments capable of generating musical sounds with plural timbres in response to a sound generation instruction.
2. Related Art
Electronic musical instruments having a plurality of keys composing a keyboard, in which, upon depressing plural ones of the keys, different timbres are assigned to each of the depressed plural keys, and musical sounds at pitches designated by the depressed keys are generated with the timbres assigned to the depressed keys, are known. An example of such related art is Japanese Laid-open Patent Application SHO 57-128397.
Another electronic musical instrument known to date generates musical sounds with multiple timbres concurrently in response to each key depression. For example, musical sounds that are to be generated by different plural kinds of wind instruments (trumpet, trombone and the like) at each pitch may be stored in a memory, and when one of the keys is depressed, those of the musical sounds stored in the memory and corresponding to the depressed key are read out thereby generating the musical sounds. In this case, when one of the keys is depressed, musical sounds with plural timbres are simultaneously generated, which provides a performance that sounds like a performance by a brass band. However, when plural ones of the keys are depressed, musical sounds with plural timbres are generated in response to each of the depressed keys. Therefore, when the number of keys depressed increases, the resultant musical sounds give an impression that the number of performers has increased, which sounds unnatural.
Another known electronic musical instrument performs a method in which, when the number of the keys depressed is fewer, musical sounds with a plurality of timbres are generated in response to each of the keys depressed; and when the number of the keys depressed is greater, musical sounds with a fewer timbres are generated in response to each of the keys depressed.
However, in the electronic musical instruments of related art, timbres that can be assigned according to states of key depression are limited, and the performance sounds unnatural or artificial when the number of keys depressed changes. For example, when one of the keys is depressed, a set of multiple musical sounds is generated; and when another key is depressed in this state, the musical sounds being generated are stopped, and another set of multiple musical sounds is generated in response to the key that is newly key-depressed. Furthermore, when plural ones of the keys are depressed at the same time, timbres to be assigned to the respective keys are determined; but when other keys are newly depressed in this state, the new key depressions may be ignored, which is problematical because such performance sounds unnatural.