Patent ID: 7005570

Claim:
A tone generating apparatus comprising: a detecting device that detects musical tones generated from a musical instrument; a storage device that stores tone data; a phrase detection system that identifies a phrase from a sequence of tones by detecting a silence interval of predetermined duration and using said detected silence interval to delimit the end of said phrase; a tone generating device that reproduces the tone data stored in said storage device and generates at least one tone corresponding to the tone data in response to said detected silence interval within a predetermined period of time after a musical tone is detected by said detecting device; and a writing device that generates tone data from the musical tones detected by said detecting device and sequentially stores the generated tone data in said storage device; wherein said tone generating device sequentially reproduces the tone data stored in said storage device to generate a phrase corresponding to the tone data in response to said detected silence interval within a predetermined period of time after a musical tone is detected by said detecting device.