Patent ID: 7265281

Claim:
An automatic player musical instrument for producing tones without fingering of a human player, comprising: an acoustic musical instrument including plural manipulators selectively manipulated for specifying the tones to be produced, and a tone generator having certain links connected to said plural manipulators and responsive to motion of the manipulated manipulators for producing said tones through motion of the certain links connected to said manipulated manipulators; and an automatic player including plural actuators respectively associated with said plural manipulators and responsive to a driving signal so as to give rise to said motion of said manipulated manipulators along reference trajectories, reference velocity of said manipulated manipulators at respective reference points on said reference trajectories being proportional to velocity of the associated certain links which in turn is proportional to loudness of said tones produced through said tone generator and a data processing unit connected to said plural actuators, storing a playback relation between target values of said reference velocity and target values of said velocity of said certain links therein, analyzing music data codes representative of at least said manipulated manipulators and said loudness of said tones so as to determine the target values of said reference velocity on the basis of said playback relation and controlling said manipulated manipulators to pass through said reference points at said reference values of said reference velocity, wherein at least a part of said playback relation is prepared through a transcription from a reference relation between target values of said reference velocity and measured values of the velocity of corresponding certain links of a master automatic player musical instrument, which is equipped with sensors for monitoring said corresponding certain links and actuators for driving corresponding manipulators at said target values of said reference velocity.