Patent ID: 7511214

Claim:
An automatic performance apparatus that supplies performance data indicating a music piece to a tone generating circuit having plural tone generating channels each generating a tone signal, to thereby reproduce the music piece, comprising: a performance data memory that stores plural pieces of performance data corresponding to each of the plural music pieces and including channel information for designating any one of the plural tone generating channels; a performance data read-out portion that reads out the performance data of the first and the second music piece among plural pieces of performance data of the music piece stored in the performance data memory with the progression of the music piece; a fade-out processing portion that processes the read-out performance data of the first music piece such that the tone signal generated by the performance data is faded out and outputs the resultant to the tone generating circuit; a fade-in processing portion that processes the read-out performance data of the second music piece such that the tone signal generated by the performance data is faded in and outputs the resultant to the tone generating circuit; and an assignment controller that assigns the generation of the tone signal based upon the performance data of the second music piece to a tone generating channel that is not used for generating the tone signal based upon the performance data of the first music piece, the assigned tone generating channel being different from a tone generating channel designated by the channel information included in the performance data of the second music piece, wherein the fade-out processing portion processes the performance data such that the fade-out speed of the tone signal is made different for every tone generating channel in accordance with a predetermined order of priority.