Patent Grant
7238876
Finger Finder Library For Guitar, copyright Feb. 4, 2002.
Not Applicable
Not Applicable
1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to music, and in particular, to enhance the instrumentalists ability to perform musical scores.
2. Discussion of Prior Art
U.S. Pat. No. 6,201,174 to Eller (2001) discloses a computerized tablature composer that generates tablature notation from conventional staff notation. This is shown in the prior art figure, step 602. However, how to perform this step is not obvious, and Eller's patent gives no indication on how to do this. In addition, Eller's patent does not generate an automated fingering sequence in order to perform the musical composition efficiently.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,396,828 to Farrand (1995) discloses a means for automatically producing guitar fingerboard information for chords from staff notation. Farrand's invention analyzes the music for various instruments and produces guitar chords that fit the harmonic rhythm of the melody, it does not give the fingering positioning of the exact notes in the staff notation that a guitar would play, and it only deals with chords, not individual notes of the melody. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,396,828 FIG. 14, the first measure of the music depicts a D chord in second position on the guitar fingerboard; this is not, however, how the three notes shown in the staff of the music would be played by the guitar (i.e., Farrand's chord does not depict the exact voicing of the chord from the staff notation).
U.S. Pat. No. 5,639,977 to Hesnan (1997) discloses a music learning aid that displays playing instructions associated with musical notes. However, Hesnan's invention does not give an automated means for determining optimal or secondary fingering of an instrument for a given musical piece.
Various patents (e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,533,903, 5,639,977, 5,690,496, and 6,388,181) discuss the depiction of musical instrument fingering. However, none of them provide a method for automatically determining the fingering information.
From the beginning of notated music, musicians have been composing music for other musicians to learn and perform. In classical staff notation, many composers have had or have the added skill of adding the symbols required, given a particular instrument, to explain the actual fingering of the musical score to be performed on the instrument by designating the fingers on the instrument for specific notes to accomplish the performance of the musical piece. That is called symbolic fingering notation. It is extremely important to the overall musical sound that the musical staff notation for each instrument have the proper symbolic fingering notation to maximize the efficiency of playing and control of time and sound (i.e., a way of the composer and virtuoso performer tell where to put your fingers). If fingering is added to a score, it is by this manual method and not automatically generated.
Although most string instruments also use some kind of tablature to determine the string length or pitch to be expressed other than standard musical notation, tablature is inefficient for the performer to play the piece since tablature only depicts the string length and not the proper fingering required to perform a musical composition.
The “Method of Automated Musical Instrument Finger Finding” is designed to automatically analyze musical data, which includes musical score and tablature data, and notate proper fingering for a musical instrument for someone to enhance their ability to play the music.
By far, most musical scores using both standard staff notation and/or tablature will not include fingering for the musician's maximum performance. Even if one does, the musician might want one or more fingering options of the score or portions of it. This invention analyzes music data (staff notation and/or tablature) for an instrument and provides the musician with the best possible fingering by predetermining what fingering to use for the instrument from the musical data. Range of notes, for example, would be a determining factor in the fingering. Other important factors would be tone, speed of performance, and the ability to play relaxed or natural to the physical limitations of one's skill level. Consequently, this invention also generates intelligent secondary options for the selection of fingering.
This invention would not only be useful for composers, but also for teachers explaining to their students the best way to play a musical composition, by music publishers allowing them to scan musical scores and have a “performance ready” printout of the music to sell, and by the performer who could now take any music available within the range of his instrument and use this invention to come up with a professionally correct fingering for the performance. This would be a tremendous time and labor saver.
Accordingly, several objects and advantages of the present invention are:
Further objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from a consideration of the drawings and ensuing description.
In accordance with the present invention a method of generating the optimal and secondary fingering for a given musical instrument from musical score and/or tablature data.
This invention automates the determination of instrument finger finding by the method of gathering and analyzing stroke groups.
For the example shown in
Likewise, there are some strokes afterwards that can be played either in group 206 or in group 210, followed by strokes only being able to be played in group 206. Again, for efficient hand movement, group 206 would be preferred, unless overridden by a user preference for other locations based on other criteria.
At a time later, there are a set of strokes that can either be played within group 206, 212, or 220, followed by a set of strokes that can be played within group 206, 212, 220, or 214, followed by a set of strokes that only be played within group 214. Unless overridden by user preferences to the contrary, the finger finder would choose the strokes to be played within group 206, transitioning to group 212 (via transition 216) at a musical key boundary, and then transitioning to group 214 (via transition 218) at a musical key boundary. (A musical key boundary would be marked, for example, as a C note in the key of C.) In this manner, there are two transitions from group 206 to group 214, each transition giving the minimal hand movement across the instrument. Another user preference, however, may be to minimize the number of hand transitions, and so all the strokes would be played within group 206 followed by a direct transition to group 214 where the strokes within that group would be played until a transition to another group would be required.
The determination of going from group 206 to group 212 to group 214 was based on the fact that there were strokes that could only be played in group 214, that group 206 had to be started at since starting at group 208 would have required an undesirable hand transition to group 206, that going to group 210 was undesirable as another transition back to group 206 would have been needed, and that going to group 212 was desirable as that provided an intermediate minimal hand transition.
A second set of circumstances is shown following the strokes played within group 214 and transitioning to group 228 via transition 222. At this point, there are multiple places to play the rest of the strokes. In this case, group determination is done by determining the minimal total path distance; that is, the total hand movement not just from one group to another, but taking into account all of the combinations of group traversal until the last stroke.
For example, from group 228, either group 226 or 230 would have to be transitioned to as there is a set of strokes that can only be played in group 226 or 230. From group 226 a transition to group 244 is required, and from group 230 a transition to group 242 or 226 would be required. From group 244 a transition to group 246 or group 250 would be required, and from group 242 a transition to group 250 would be required. The actual group transition sequence, without user preference overrides, would be determined by the minimum of the following transitions:
(i) Transition 234+transition 236+transition 248
(ii) Transition 234+transition 236+transition 240
(iii) Transition 232.+transition 238+transition 252
(iv) Transition 232+transition 224+transition 236+transition 248
(v) Transition 232+transition 224+transition 236+transition 240
In case of multiple paths having the same minimal total distance, the Finger Finder would prefer the path with the most right or left, or top or bottom, as appropriate for the instrument under consideration, number of groups.
Step 300 is the entry in to the Finger Finder invention. The data input to the Finger Finder is the composition data of a musical instrument, as illustrated by
Step 302 is the initialization activities of the Finger Finder. Activity variables are shown in this block that are used to qualify other activities later on. Activity variable NumStrokes represents the total number of strokes in the composition; this number is the actual number of fingering positions, where any repeated sequences in the composition are taken into account and duplicated and placed in the input stream. Activity variable StrokeIdx represents an index into the strokes, where index value 0 accesses the first stroke of the composition, and an index value of (NumStrokes −1) accesses the last stroke of the composition. Activity variable NumGroups represents the total number of positional range stroke groups that this flowchart creates.
Item 304 is a decision point. If all of the strokes in a composition have been handled (by creating positional range groups and assigning the strokes to these groups), then the Finger Finder next determines which groups are to be used for Finger Finding purposes, starting with activity 328.
Activity 306 is the retrieving of all of the positional ranges on the instrument that the stroke under consideration can be played at. Activity 308 is the initialization activities required to access the different positional ranges of the stroke.
Activity 310 is a decision point. If all of the positional ranges of the current stroke have been handled, then activity 312 is branched to; otherwise, activity 314 is branched to.
Activity 312 is the activity required to access the next stroke.
Activity 314 is a decision point. If a positional range stroke group already exists at the current time (meaning that the previous stroke and the current stroke share a common group), then activity 316 is performed; otherwise, activity 318 is performed.
Activity 316 associates the current stroke to an existing positional range stroke group. Activity 318 creates a new positional range stroke group and associates the current stroke to this new group. Activity 320 increments by one the count of the total number of groups, to be used later.
Activity 322 is a decision point. If there is only one positional range group that the current stroke can be played in, then activity 324 is performed, in which the stroke is marked as a “termination point” (i.e., a stroke that can only be played in one group). After activity 324 or if the stroke can be played within multiple groups upon arriving at activity 322, activity 326 is performed, which is done in order to access the current stroke's next positional range group.
Activity 328 is the initialization activities required to determine which groups are used for the purposes of finger finding. As before, Strokeldx is the variable used to access the strokes in the composition. Activity variable LastStrokeldxHandled represents the index into the strokes that was last handled by the activities of
Activity 330 is a decision point, where if all of the groups have been found, then the flowchart starts the activities of determining the actual fingering, starting with activity 348. If all the groups have not yet been handled, then activity 332 is gone to.
If a stroke under consideration can only be played within one positional range group (the stroke is a “termination point”), activity 332 branches to activity 336, and if there was a previous termination point, then activity 336 branches activity 342 where the shortest path to the previous termination point is found, as described for
If the current stroke is not a termination point, then activity 332 branches to activity 334, where if the current stroke is the last stroke in the composition, then activity 334 branches to activity 338 where the shortest path to the previously handled last stroke is found (which may be the first stroke of the composition if there are no termination points), as described for
After activity 338, 340, or 342 is performed, activity variable LastStrokeIdxHandled is set to the current stroke index in order to find the shortest path from a later stroke to this stroke (if this is not already the last stroke).
If the current stroke is not the last stroke of the composition in activity 334 or after activity 344 is performed, activity 346 is performed, which is the activity required to access the next stroke in the composition.
Activity 348 is the initialization activity required to find the actual fingering of the instrument for the strokes in the composition, which then branches to activity 350. If all the strokes have been handled, then activity 350 exits the Finger Finder via 364; otherwise, activity 352 is entered.
Activity 352 finds the group used for the stroke under consideration then goes to activity 354 which goes through the group to find and stroke at or crossing a key boundary to the next used group. Activity 354 leads to activity 356 which determines the hand position on the instrument; this is based on the previous group that is being come from, if any, and the number of fingers needed to play the strokes in the group. For example, if not all the fingers on the hand are needed to play the strokes, then the hand may be able to transition to the position in such a way as to minimize the transition distance (and therefore transition time), so that a stroke that would normally be played by one finger will actually be played by another.
Activity 356 leads to activity 358, where, based on the hand position on the instrument, the fingering positions on the instrument is determined for the strokes in the group up to but not including the key boundary stroke. After this, the group is listed as unused in activity 360 so the group that the next stroke is in can be found. Afterward, activity 362 is performed, which is required in order to access the first stroke in the next group.
Different variations of this could be implemented as input to the Finger Finder. The above scheme works fine if the key of the composition is maintained with the line object 402, where different lines could be in different keys. The key could alternately be maintained in the measure container 404, which could then remove the need for a line container 402.
The measure container 404 is handy for containing information about such measure related information as the beginning measure and the end measure of a repeated sequence, so that the Finger Finder can find strokes that aren't necessarily next to each other as written on sheet music. Alternately, the software that creates the input for the Finger Finder could create a data structure such that all the notes are linearly accessed by the Finger Finder (so, e.g., the strokes in a repeated sequence are duplicated and put in the data structure where appropriate) and have the key that the composition is currently in maintained with the stroke container, so that the measure container 404 and the composition line container 402 would not be needed; this is the configuration assumed by
Another option for the input involves the stroke container 406 when there occurs, at the same time, multiple strokes of different durations, as shown in
The output of the Finger Finder contains information on the fingering for the instrument; e.g., the number of hand positions in the output data, followed by an array of hand positions containing information such as an indication of which hand is being described (differentiating between the right hand and the left hand, as appropriate), and information denoting which finger is where on the instrument. For example, for a guitar this information would indicate which finger of the left hand is on which string and at which fret; for a piano this information would indicate which hand and which finger is pressing which key. For an implementation of this invention, an indication of which stroke in the composition the fingering data refers to may also be desired for graphical user interface purposes.
In
This application is entitled to the benefit of Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/444,413 filed 2003 Feb. 2.
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