Patent ID: 7605322

Claim:
An apparatus for automatically starting an add-on progression to run along with an input music progression, comprising: an add-on progression storing device that stores a plurality of add-on progression data files each corresponding to one of a plurality of music pieces, each of said add-on progression data files representing a progression of an add-on matter, which includes at least one of an accompaniment, a description display, or a picture display corresponding to the respective music piece, corresponding to a progression of one of said plurality of music pieces; a performance data input device for inputting performance data including pitch-and-duration string data representing a musical performance of a music piece played by a player; a music piece recognizing device for recognizing a music piece under said musical performance based on said input performance data in comparison with reference music data including pitch-and-duration string data of reference music pieces, the recognized music piece having predetermined break-in time points; an add-on progression selecting device for selecting an add-on progression data file that represents the progression of the add-on matter for said recognized music piece; and an add-on progression device for detecting the progression points of said input performance data in reference to the predetermined break-in time points of said recognized music piece, and automatically starting the progression of the add-on matter in synchronism with a predetermined break-in time point that comes first among the predetermined break-in time points after a music piece recognition period in which the music piece recognizing device recognizes the music piece, thereby automatically running said progression of the add-on matter along with the progression of said music piece according to said selected add-on progression data file upon selection of said add-on progression data file.