Electronic player system for electrically operated musical instruments

Claim 1

A Player System for a Musical Instrument including; in combination: an Encoding Instrument; said encoding instrument comprised of a first series of keyswitches; a pair of output terminals; pulse generating means for producing at said output terminals, recurring frames of pulses, each frame including a series of pulses including as many pulses as there are keyswitches; a pulse modifier for causing the operation of any keyswitch to modify, in a predetermined manner, a specific pulse in each frame; a decoding instrument having a pair of input terminals; signal transmission means connecting the output terminals of said encoding instrument to the input terminals of said decoding instrument; a series of decode gates; each decode gate having an output terminal and a plurality of input terminals; and electrical musical instrument including a series of keying terminals for respectively sounding individual musical notes of said electrical musical instrument; connections between the output terminal of each decode gate to a specific keying terminal; a data recovery circuit including an enable terminal adapted to be energized whenever a modified pulse is present at the input terminals of said decode instrument; an enable line connecting said enable terminal to one input terminal of each decode gate; a clock recovery circuit for deriving a pulse train synchronized to the signals at the input of the decode instrument; means controlled by said pulse train for energizing the additional input terminals of each decode gate for a time coincident with the occurance of a specific single pulse of each frame of pulses appearing at the input terminals of said decode instrument.