Keyboard Image Generation for Electronic Music Teaching
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional performance teaching apparatuses for electronic keyboard instruments struggle to help users easily recognize the relative relationship between the position of keys on a physical keyboard and their corresponding positions in a displayed keyboard image, especially when the pitch range of music is wide, leading to difficulties in learning and playing.
Innovation Solution
A performance teaching apparatus and program that includes a keyboard with marks indicating reference pitches, a music search unit to confirm the pitch range, an image generating unit to create a keyboard image based on these marks, and an image outputting unit to display the keyboard and guide images on a display device, allowing users to easily identify key positions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If the key range to be displayed is shifted in unit of octave in accordance with the pitch range of music, then the keyboard image can accommodate wide pitch ranges, but the player finds it difficult to recognize the relative relationship between real key positions and displayed key positions
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies color coding to differentiate between displayed key ranges. Specifically, keys are displayed in different colors based on their octave relationships, allowing players to visually distinguish between different octaves and understand the relative relationship between real key positions and displayed key positions even when the pitch range is wide.
2Quantity of substance
If a wide range of keys to be played are displayed on a small key-display unit, then the display can show more keys, but the player must do troublesome adjustment to move and set the key-display unit depending on music
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a dynamic display system where the keyboard image automatically adjusts based on the detected pitch range of the music. The display unit dynamically shifts and scales the keyboard image to accommodate different pitch ranges, eliminating the need for manual adjustment by the player while maintaining an optimal viewing of the relevant keys.
3Adaptability or versatility
If the key range to be displayed is shifted in unit of octave, then the displayed keyboard image can cover different pitch ranges, but white keys and black keys arranged in the same pattern every octave makes it difficult to recognize which octave a key position locates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses color differentiation to convey octave information. Keys are displayed in different colors based on their octave assignments, allowing players to easily identify which octave a key position belongs to while maintaining the standard keyboard pattern arrangement. This color-coding system preserves octave identification information that would otherwise be lost in the repetitive pattern.
Data Source
AI summary
In an electronic musical instrument 100, CPU confirms a pitch range of music stored in a music memory, and generates a keyboard image as large as possible for display based on marks M1 and M2 on a keyboard and the confirmed pitch range, and sends and displays the generated keyboard image on a television receiver 200, whereby a user is allowed to easily learn a relative relationship between a key position on a keyboard and a key position designated by performance guide in the keyboard image. The marks M1 and M2 are provided on the keyboard for indicating key positions corresponding respectively to reference pitches C4 and C5.