Graham & James
Musical tone generating apparatus
 A musical tone generating apparatus, to be applied to an electronic musical instrument, provides at least a plurality of channels and a tone-color memory. Each channel contains one tone generator and two or more buffers. The number of the buffers provided in a plurality of channels is set smaller than the number of tone colors stored in the tone-color memory. Each of the buffers stores one tone color, so that the tone generator creates a musical tone signal responsive to the tone color stored in the buffer in accordance with musical tone information given from an external device such as a keyboard. The tone colors to be used in a tune to be performed can be freely assigned to the buffers in advance. Herein, all of the buffers are classified into two or more groups in accordance with a buffer-grouping priority, so that in a plurality of channels, when a musical-tone generation is assigned to a channel, one buffer given a higher priority is selected prior to another buffer. In a case where an automatic performance is played based on musical tone information read from a memory, the tone-color assignment to the buffers is determined responsive to a maximum number of the musical tones to be simultaneously produced with respect to each of the tone colors corresponding to the musical tone information. When a new musical-tone generation is designated, one of the channels is automatically selected in accordance with the buffer-grouping priority. 
Yamaha Corporation
G G
G10H G10H
inventional inventional
Hideo
Yamada