Patent ID: 8634759

Claim:
Karaoke game processing apparatus comprising: a display for indicating successive groups of target notes to be sung by a user, each target note being defined by a pitch and a target time of singing that note, each successive group of target notes having a sequence of target notes; and scoring logic for determining a user score in which detected notes sung by the user are compared with the target notes of a given successive group, the scoring logic comprising: an input arrangement by which a sequence of notes sung by the user may be detected, the detected sequence of notes including a sequence of pitches sung by the user according to a timing thereof; a comparator for comparing the pitches and the timing of the detected sequence of notes sung by the user with the pitches and target times of the sequence of target notes of the given successive group to determine the user score; and a detector for detecting a timing offset between the timing of the sequence of pitches of the detected sequence of notes sung by the user and the target times of the sequence of target notes of the given successive group as a relative timing displacement between the timing of the sequence of pitches of the detected sequence of notes sung by the user and the target times of the pitches of the sequence of target notes of the given successive group of target notes; wherein the timing offset is detected at a beginning of each successive group of target notes and that timing offset is applied as a time shift to the timing of the detected sequence of notes sung by the user when comparing the pitches and the timing of the detected sequence of notes sung by the user to the pitches and the target times of the target notes to determine the user score, while maintaining a timing of the indication of target times of the target notes by the display for indicating each of the successive groups of target notes for the duration of each successive group of target notes.