Musical envelope control device

DETAILED DESCRIPTION It is an object of the present invention to provide a musical envelope control device in which an envelope characteristic is selected in correspondence with the tempo of the melody to be performed and a melody sound with a desirable natural tone quality is produced.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention.
The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and attained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.
To achieve the objects and in accordance with the purpose of the invention, as embodied and broadly described herein, the musical envelope control device of this invention comprises a memory means for storing a plurality note data including first musical performance data representing note pitch and second musical performance data representing note duration; read-out means for selecting and for reading out the note data from said memory means; first processing means, connected to said memory means, for receiving the first musical performance data and generating a tone signal according to said first musical performance data; second processing means, connected to said memory means, for receiving the second musical performance data and dividing said note duration into a predetermined number of components irrespective of the length of note duration, and generating for each component coded signals which have predetermined bits; decoder means, connected to said second processing means, having a predetermined input/output conversion mode corresponding to a desired envelope waveform, for converting said coded signals in accordance with said input/output conversion mode and for generating voltage signals which vary for the various components of note duration; and envelope control means, connected to said first processing means and said decoder means and receiving the tone signal and the voltage signals, for producing a stepped, sound pressure signal representing a stepped musical envelope waveform whose level changes in a stepped manner in response to changes in the voltage signals, whereby said sound pressure signal and said tone are used to generate a sound signal each note of which has substantially the same envelope waveform irrespective of the duration thereof