Patent ID: 7254419

Claim:
A tone generation system comprising a communication terminal including an operator and operable for carrying out communication via a communication network, and a tone generator module, said communication terminal including: a mode setting section that is configured to allow a user of the communication terminal to set an operation mode of said communication terminal to either an ordinary mode for causing said communication terminal to operate as an ordinary communication terminal to carry out the communication via the communication network or a music mode for causing said communication terminal to operate as a control terminal to control said tone generator module; and a transmission section that, upon actuation of said operator by the user while said communication terminal is in the music mode set by said mode setting section in response to an instruction by the user, transmits, to said tone generator module, a performance signal including actuation time information representative of a time when the actuation, by the user, of said operator has taken place, and content information representative of a musical tone associated with said operator and intended by the user to be generated by the tone generator module, wherein said communication terminal and said tone generator module communicate with each other through short-range wireless communication such that the performance signal is converted into a predetermined packet data and transmitted to said tone generator module, said tone generator module includes a processing section that, when the performance signal transmitted by said communication terminal has been received, carries out, at a time based on the actuation time information included in the performance signal, a tone generation process for producing said musical tone based on the content information included in the performance signal and said tone generator module generates a tone based on performance information in the predetermined packet data according to the actuation time information, said transmission section of said communication terminal transmits, to said tone generator module, the performance signal imparted with reference number information generated in such a manner as to have predetermined regularity with respect to reference number information of a previous performance signal transmitted thereby, and when the reference number information of the performance signal received from said communication terminal does not satisfy the predetermined regularity, said processing section of said tone generator module ceases current sounding of a tone.