Patent ID: 7504573

Claim:
A musical tone signal generating apparatus comprising: a tone generating portion for inputting performance information specifying pitch of respective musical tone signals to be generated, and generating the musical tone signals having a pitch determined on the basis of the input performance information, the tone generating portion having a performance play capability that enables, on the basis of a set of performance information, concurrent generation of musical tone signals having different voices each assigned to one of a plurality of parts; a performance data set storage portion for previously storing a plurality of performance data sets each of which specifies various voices applied to musical tone signals for a plurality of parts, the musical tone signals being to be concurrently generated by the tone generating portion on the basis of the set of performance information, each of the performance data sets including a plurality of tone range data sets each of which defines a tone range of musical tone signals to be allowed to be generated for one of the parts; a performance data setting portion for choosing, under user's direction, one of performance data sets stored in the performance data set storage portion, and making settings of the various voices applied to musical tone signals for the plurality of parts in accordance with the chosen performance data set, the musical tone signals being to be generated by the tone generating portion; a developing portion for enabling generation of musical tone signals for at least one of the plurality of parts and, disabling generation of musical tone signals for the other parts in response to user's direction in a state where respective settings of various voices to be applied to musical tone signals for the plurality of parts have been done by the performance data setting portion; and a tone range defining portion for defining the tone range data of the at least one part as representing a tone range including at least pitches of all the musical tone signals specified by the performance information.