Patent ID: 7554028

Claim:
In an apparatus to assist play of a wind instrument of the type having an excitation part attached to the instrument that vibrates a portion of the instrument to thereby assist play of the instrument; having a vibration signal generation part that produces a vibration signal in response to sound produced by the instrument and having a breath pressure sensor that generates a breath pressure signal in response to detected breath pressure produced by blowing into the instrument during the play thereof, a controller comprising: a signal generator receptive of said vibration signal and said breath pressure signal, the signal generator detects an envelope of the amplitude of the vibration signal, generates an inverse of the envelope signal and produces a control signal corresponding to the product of the inverse envelope and the breath pressure signal; and a variable gain amplifier receptive of said control signal and said vibration signal that supplies an output signal to said excitation part of said wind instrument, said variable gain amplifier producing said output signal by applying a variable gain to said vibration signal which varies in accordance with said control signal.