Patent ID: 7314993

Claim:
An automatic performance apparatus that carries out ensemble performance by sequentially reading out a plurality of sounding events representative of sounding contents of musical tones for a plurality of channels from performance data in which the plurality of sounding events are associated with the plurality of channels, and processing the readout sounding events, comprising: a plurality of operating elements that output operation signals according to operation by at least one operator, and identification information for identifying said plurality of operating elements; a storage that stores operation-related information indicative of a relationship between respective ones of said plurality of operating elements and respective ones of the plurality of channels, and a master-slave relationship between said plurality of operating elements; a sounding processing device operable when the operation signals and the identification information are output from the respective ones of said plurality of operating elements, to refer to the operation-related information to determine corresponding ones of the channels to the identification information, and read out a sounding event of a musical tone to be sounded next from the performance data for each of the corresponding ones of the channels and carry out a sounding process on the readout sounding event; and a sounding process control device that controls the sounding process carried out by said sounding processing device such that a position of a sounding event corresponding to at least one of the operating elements as a slave never goes beyond a position of a sounding event corresponding to one of the operating elements as a master, which is to be processed next by said sounding processing device.