Patent ID: 6933435

Claim:
A keyboard musical instrument for generating tones on the basis of pieces of music data information representative of attributes of said tones to be generated, comprising: plural series combinations of links selectively actuated for specifying said tones; plural vibratory members associated with said plural series combinations of links, and energized by the associated series combinations of links for generating said tones; and an electric system including an array of position transducers monitoring said plural series combinations of links for generating positional signals representative of current positions of said plural series combinations of links, each of the position transducers having an optical device having an output port and an input port for a light beam and converting said light beam incident on said input port to one of said positional signals, an optical modulator for modifying an optical intensity of said light beam depending upon a relative position to said optical device and an elastic coupler elastically connected to one of said links and secured to said optical modulator, a data processing sub-system connected to the optical devices respectively associated with said plural series combinations of links and analyzing said positional signals for producing music data codes representative of said tones to be generated, and a converter connected to said data processing sub-system, and generating said tones on the basis of said music data codes.