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Thumbrest ring adapter for musical instrument
2010-03-24 00:00:00
of the upper base portion 70 is slightly smaller than the size of the open bottom end 56 of the main body 46, thus allowing the upper base portion 70 to fit within the bottom of the hollow main body 46. The cross sectional size of the lower base portion 74 is slightly greater than the size of the open bottom end 56 of the main body 46, thereby creating a circumferential flange 78 which contacts the bottom of the main body 46 when the upper base portion 70 of the base 68 is inserted through the open bottom end 56 of the main body 46 (FIG. 2). The upper base portion 70 includes a front wall 80, a rear wall 82 and opposing side walls 84 corresponding to the front face 48, rear face 50 and opposing side faces 52 of the hollow main body 46.

A top groove 86 is formed in the top surface 72 of the upper base portion 70, as shown in FIG. 7. The top groove 86 extends completely between the front and rear walls 80 and 82, respectively, and is positioned midway between the opposing'side walls 84. Similarly, a rear groove 88 is formed in the rear wall 82 of the upper base portion 70. The rear groove 88 extends between the top surface 72 and the flange 78, and is also positioned midway between the opposing side walls 84. Lastly, a hole 90 is formed through the upper base portion 70 between the opposing side walls 84. The hole 90 extends below and intersects a portion of the top groove 86 as shown in FIG. 7, and the position of the hole 90 on each side wall 84 corresponds to the holes 62 in the opposing side faces 52 of the hollow main body 46. The base 68 is preferably made from a durable plastic material such as Delrin鈩?

A metal ring 94 (also preferably formed from brass) is bent as shown in FIG. 7 to include a rear stem 96, a straight top portion 98 extending substantially perpendicular to the rear stem 96, and a protruding eye portion 100 which extends forward from the straight top portion 98. The rear stem 96 of the ring 94 is sized to fit flush within the rear groove 88 of the upper base portion 70. Similarly, the straight top portion 98 of the ring is sized to fit flush within the top groove 86 of the upper base portion 70 so that the eye portion 100 extends forward of the front wall 80 of the upper base portion 70. Once the ring 94 is fit within the grooves 86 and 88, the upper base portion 70 and ring 94 may be fit within the open bottom end 56 of the hollow main body 46. The flush fit of the ring 94 within the grooves 86 and 88 allows the upper base portion 70 to fit within the main body 46 without interference, and the laterally-centered position of the top groove 86 ensures that the forward protruding eye portion 100 of the ring 94 is received within the slot 58 on the front face 48 of the hollow main body 46 (FIG. 2).

Once the upper base portion 70 is fit entirely within the hollow main body 46 so that the flange 78 created by the interface of the upper and lower base portions 70 and 74, respectively, contacts the bottom of the main body 46, the holes 62 in the side faces 52 of the main body 46 are aligned with the hole 90 extending through the upper base portion 70 between the opposing side walls 84. The cylindrical post 64 may then be inserted through the holes 62 and 90 so that it extends beneath the straight portion 98 of the ring 94 (FIGS. 8 and 9), thereby locking the base 68 into place relative to the main body 46. A liquid cement may be applied to the cylindrical post 64 prior to inserting it through the holes 62 and 90 to prevent the ring adapter assembly 30 from being unintentionally disassembled when the cement hardens. The length of the cylindrical post 64 is greater than the width of the main body 46 so that opposing ends of the post 64 extend beyond the side faces 52 of the main body 46.

A T-shaped cap 104, also preferably made from Delrin鈩? includes a rectangular top 106 and a downwardly extending leg 108 having a square cross section slightly smaller in dimension than the cross section of the hollow main body 46. A threaded hole 110 (FIG. 7) extends through both the rectangular top 106 and the leg 108 of the T-shaped cap 104. Two smaller non-threaded holes 112 are formed through the rectangular top 106 of the cap 104, one on each side of the downward leg 108, as shown in FIG. 7. The purpose of the holes 110 and 112 is described in detail below. The cross-sectional size of the downward leg 108 allows the leg to fit within the open top end 54 of the main body 46 so that the T-shaped cap may move up and down relative to the main body 46.

A spring steel U-shaped wire 114 includes opposing legs 116 and a closed end 118, as shown in FIG. 7. The ends of the opposing legs 116 are each bent to form hooks 120 which are attached within the holes 112 in the rectangular top 106 of the T-shaped cap 104. Additionally, the legs 116 of the ...

Low profile keyboard device and system for recording and scoring music
2010-03-23 00:00:00
INVENTION

This invention relates to a convenient, low cost modular device to be unobtrusively attached to any keyboard instrument which electronically captures musical note and note expression data; and a processing system to convert and transmit the datato computer-compatible interfaces thereby recording live musical performances.

Various inventions have been devised to assist musicians in performing, arranging, recording and composing music. An historically early method of recording music which is still in use today is the player piano. Holes, corresponding toparticular notes, are punched in paper which is rotated as the player piano is played. Recording music with this technique requires an entirely different instrument than the piano or substantial adjustments to a conventional piano. U.S. Pat. No.1,194,302, entitled "MUSIC RECORDER," to Liefield, discloses an extremely bulky electrical attachment which is capable of recording musical notes on a rotating sheet of paper to be applied to a conventional keyboard instrument. The device of thisinvention which attaches to the keyboard, however, covers more than half of the keyboard and thus interferes with a musician's efforts at the keyboard. U.S. Pat. No. 4,351,221, entitled, "PLAYER PIANO RECORDING SYSTEM," to Starnes et al, teaches amore modern recording system in which player piano tapes are prepared. This system requires the elaborate and delicate installation of photosensors to the underside of the piano keys. While the invention does not interfere with the musician's use ofthe keyboard, such installation of the apparatus to the keyboard is expensive and requires the services of a skilled piano tuner or electronics technician. This invention is furthermore limited in its application because the purpose of the invention isto create player piano tapes and not a musical score for immediate viewing by the musician. Another example of a musical recording system is given in U.S. Pat. No. 3,798,719, entitled "TAPE ACTIVATED PIANO AND ORGAN PLAYER," to Maillet, which againrequires the elaborate installation of sensitive electronics to the underside of a keyboard, with the accompanying disadvantages of being costly and requiring skilled persons to render the invention useful. U.S. Pat. No. 3,905,267, entitled"ELECTRONIC PLAYER PIANO WITH RECORD AND PLAYBACK FEATURE," to Vincent, teaches an electronic data storage system including a magnetic type recorder/replayer for recording spontaneous musical presentations for replay through a similar instrument. Tocapture the musical data, the invention also requires extensive and expensive modifications to the underside of each key in the instrument. See also U.S. Pat. No. 4,023,456, entitled "MUSIC ENCODING AND DECODING APPARATUS," to Groeschel, for yetanother example of how electronic switching to monitor keyboard action requires bulky circuitry and modification of the keyboard from within the instrument.

The sequencer is a viable alternative method of recording music which has been developed in the prior art, although early in its development, the sequencer was a massive network of electronics, often covering walls in a recording studio. Musicians are able to record and immediately play back music with the use of sequencers. A sequencer, in its simplest form, consists of a series of adjustable voltage memories stepped by a clock pulse. The typical analog sequencer uses potentiometersand variable resistors, each including a manually operable dial for establishing a certain DC voltage In order to load the sequencer, the musician manually sets each potentiometer. Thereafter, the bank of potentiometers is scanned sequentially and theDC voltages are read to a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) which then produces the melody or the rhythm. The sequencer thus enables the musician to repeatedly listen to the melody and make changes by varying the potentiometer dials. Sequencers areused to create the familiar insistent machine-beat that has been used in electronic organs. See Keyboard Synthesizer Library, Vol. 3, Synthesizers and Computers, p. 37 (1985). While the sequencer produces the accompaniment, a musician can play the leadline of the same or another keyboard, or even another instrument.

With the advent of solid state electronics, smaller and more efficient electronics have been combined in the prior art to produce a digital sequencer. Typical digital sequencers utilize a Read/Write memory storing a plurality of words, each wordbeing coded to represent a note played on the keyboard. Once the memory has been coded, the sequencer can be used to play the keyboard instrument by reading back the data words in the memory in time sequence. See U.S. Pat. No. 3,890,871, entitled,"APPARATUS FOR STORING SEQUENCES OF MUSICAL TONES," to Oberheim; U.S. Pat. No. 4,160,399, entitled, "AUTOMATIC SEQUENCE GENERATOR FOR A POLYPHONIC TONE SYNTHESIZER," to Deutsch; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,487,101, entitled "DIGITAL SOLID STATE RECORDING OFTHE SIGNALS CHARACTERIZING THE PLAYING OF A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT," to Ellen. While providing an improved and efficient means of recording music, sequencers do not provide a written means of preserving music on musical score sheets. More importantly,however, sequencers require an electronic musical instrument and have not been adapted to conventional acoustic keyboard instruments, such as the piano.

The electronic music revolution has led to the invention of the synthesizer, an electronic musical instrument. Sequencers, as described above, have been incorpo...

Device for cleaning wind musical instruments
2010-03-18 00:00:00
view of an arrangement for latching one end of the separable sections of the elongated member.

FIG. 11 is a fragmentary, elevation view of the arrangement shown in FIG. 10 for latching one end of the separable sections of the elongated member.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

Illustrated in FIGS. 1-4 is a device 10 for cleaning the inner wall of a tube of a wind musical instrument, such as a saxophone, flute and clarinet. The device 10 comprises an elongated, semi-rigid member 15 made of suitable material. In the preferred embodiment, the member 15 is made of aluminum. The length of the elongated member is suitable for extending along a substantial portion of an inner wall of a tube of a wind musical instrument, such as a tenor saxophone (FIGS. 1, 2 and 7).

The elongated member 15 is formed with an axially directed slit or slot 20 extending substantially along the entire length of the elongated member 15. In the preferred embodiment, the slit 20 extends along the entire length of the elongated member 15 to form sections 15a and 15b that are entirely separable. The confronting walls of the separable sections 15a and 15b have complementary sinuous configurations (FIGS. 2 and 4). The complementary sinuous-shaped walls extend across an entire cross-sectional area of the elongated member 15 to be in effect diametral (FIG. 4). The complementary sinuous-shaped walls for the separable sections 15a and 15b serve to provide a more effective closure for releasably securing therebetween a cleaning cloth 25. In the preferred embodiment, the amplitudes of the complementary sinuous-shaped walls are equal and the center axis of the complementary sinuous-shaped walls is a diametral.

In the exemplary embodiment, the cleaning cloth 25 is made of a synthetic chamois or felt material. The cleaning cloth 25 extends substantially along the entire length of the elongated member 15 and gradually increases in transverse dimension from one end to the other when used as a cleaning cloth for a saxophone (FIGS. 2 and 7). When used to remove moisture from the inner wall of a tube of a wind musical instrument, the cleaning cloth 25 is removably secured between the separable sections 15a and 15b and extends generally along the entire length of the elongated member 15.

In the preferred embodiment, the confronting sinuous-shaped walls of the separable sections 15a and 15b are coated with a suitable abrasive material to improve the gr...

Method for encoding music printing information in a MIDI message
2010-03-10 00:00:00
INVENTION

Common Musical Notation (CMN)

The modern system for notating the music of Western Civilization, referred to here as Common Musical Notation (CMN), has a long and distinguished history. The origins of the modern system can be traced as far back as the 10th Century AD with notation of early church chant. These simple melodies were made up entirely of the notes of what we today call the diatonic scale. This is the origin of the "white" keys on the modern keyboard. Early chant was not composed in what we today call the major-minor system of keys but rather in an older system call modes. All modes used the same diatonic scale tones, but each mode started at a different degree (note) of the diatonic scale. Thus, for example, the Dorian Mode started on what we today call the diatonic pitch of D and consisted of the notes, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. This mode sounds a lot like the modern key of D minor, but includes a "raised" sixth degree (the note B instead of the B-鈾?that would be called for in modern D minor.

The system for notating pitch in chants and other early music was quite simple. A set of lines was drawn (sometimes four, sometimes five, sometimes more than five), and the degrees of the scale were represented as positions on the lines or on the spaces in between them. This is the origin of our modem five-line staff system. In the case of the Dorian mode referred to above, the notation of the scale would look as shown in FIG. 1.

The important thing to notice is that each degree (note) of the scale has a position that is one level higher than the previous degree, but that the actual size of musical interval between two consecutive degrees is not the same in all cases. For example, the size of musical interval between D and E is what we today call a whole step. In terms of sound frequency, the pitch E is on the order of 12.24 percent higher than the pitch D (the actual size will depend on the system of tuning used). The size of the musical interval between E and F is what we today call a half step. In terms of sound frequency, the pitch F is on the order of 5.94 percent higher than the pitch E. To restate the point in another way, the levels on the musical staff do not all represent the same size musical interval.

The modern system of major-minor keys, which is the basis of practically all music written and/or performed today (both classical and popular), grew out of the earlier modal system. What allowed the major-minor system to develop was the ability to alter selectively the basic pitches of the modes either by raising them with what we today call a sharp (#), or lowering them with what we today call a flat (鈾?...