Patent ID: 7589273

Claim:
A musical instrument for performing a music tune, comprising: plural link-works selectively actuated by a human player so as to specify an attribute of tones to be produced and tone producing moments at which said tones are produced; a tone generator connected to said plural link-works so as to produce said tones at said moments; an automatic accompanying system including a data storage storing pieces of music data expressing accompanying tones to be produced, pieces of time data expressing accompanying tone producing moments to produce said accompanying tones, pieces of cue note data expressing selected ones of said tones to be produced by said human player and pieces of cue time data expressing the tone producing moments at which said human player is expected to produce said selected ones of said tones, a first time keeper connected to said data storage so as to read out said pieces of cue note data and said pieces of cue time data and monitoring said link-works expressed by said pieces of said cue note data so as to produce pieces of control data expressing whether or not said human player activates said link-works at or before said tone producing moments expressed by said pieces of cue time data, a second time keeper connected to said tone generator and said data storage so as to read out said pieces of music data and said pieces of time data and supplying said pieces of music data to said tone generator for causing said tone generator to produce said accompanying tones when said accompanying tone producing moments come, and an interrupter connected to said first time keeper and said second time keeper and responsive to said pieces of control data so as to interrupt the passage of time toward said accompanying tone producing moments while the answer of said first time keeper is being given negative.