Patent ID: 6858789

Claim:
A musical instrument for generating acoustic tones, comprising: a tone generator including plural tone generating units each having plural vibratory members for generating said acoustic tones through vibrations, the vibratory members of said plural tone generating units forming plural vibratory groups respectively assigned to said acoustic tones; an automatic player including plural sets of player's fingers respectively associated with said plural tone generating units and selectively actuated so as to give rise to said vibrations in the associated vibratory members and a controller connected to the player's fingers and selectively actuating said player's fingers on the basis of pieces of music data for generating the tones along a passage, said controller having a monitor producing a report indicative of the vibratory members already driven for vibrations for generating tones along said passage, a selector checking said report for said vibratory members already driven for said vibrations and selecting other vibratory members from the vibratory groups respectively containing said vibratory members already driven for said vibrations so as to prevent said vibratory members already driven for said vibrations from being continuously driven for the vibrations before a decay of said vibrations and a driver selectively actuating the player's finger associated with said other vibratory members and the vibratory members not driven for vibrations for generating said tones along said passage.