Electronic musical instrument with editing of tone data

DETAILED DESCRIPTION It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an electronic musical instrument which stores a plurality of groups of tone data obtained by respectively sampling different tones into a memory and uses the plurality of groups of tone data as a plurality of tone sources to generate a single complex-waveshape tone.
It is another object of the invention to provide an electronic musical instrument which stores tone data obtained by sampling a single tone into a memory and uses a plurality of portions of the tone data as tone sources to generate a plurality of tones, respectively.
The present invention operates in a first mode to store tone data in a memory and in a second mode to read tone data from the memory.
According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided an electronic musical instrument comprising mode selection means for selecting one of a plurality of modes including first (e.
g.
, sampling) and second (e.
g.
, play) modes, the mode selection means outputting a mode signal representative of the selected mode; transducer means for converting a tone into a tone signal representative of the tone; memory means comprising a plurality of storage areas each having a plurality of addresses; read/write rate designation means for outputting a first rate signal designating a first rate of access to the addresses of the memory means when the mode signal represents the sampling mode, and for outputting a second rate signal designating a second rate of access to the addresses of the memory means when the mode signal represents the play mode; storage area designation means for designating one of the plurality of storage areas and for outputting an area signal indicative of the designated storage area; read/write control means responsive to the mode signal, the first rate signal and the area signal for storing data representing the tone signal into the addresses in the designated storage area only at the first rate when the mode signal represents the sampling mode, and responsive to the mode signal and the second rate signal for reading data from the addresses in the plurality of storage areas at the second rate when the mode signal represents the play mode; and tone generating means for generating a tone in accordance with the data read from the memory means