Electronic musical instrument with temporal variation data generating circuit and interpolation circuit

Claim 1

An electronic musical instrument of the type that forms a musical waveform by calculating the waveform amplitude value at each sample point of the musical waveform through Fourier synthesis, comprising: a memory circuit for storing a plurality of sets of arbitrary harmonic coefficients for use in the Fourier synthesis, each set of arbitrary harmonic coefficients including a series of arbitrary harmonic coefficients occupying different addresses in said memory circuit, said arbitrary harmonic coefficients in each set having a characteristic wave pattern of a musical waveform to be synthesized; a temporal variation data generating circuit for setting a component ratio of a harmonic coefficient in accordance with temporal variations which vary with time, of a musical waveform to be synthesized, and by selecting from and between the sets of arbitrary harmonic coefficients stored in said memory circuit; an address data generator for generating readout addresses for reading out one set of the arbitrary harmonic coefficients from the memory circuit in accordance while varying them in response to the temporal variations of the musical waveform to be synthesized; an interpolation circuit for calculating actual harmonic coefficient data by starting at a starting address of the readout addresses from the address data generator, and by skipping by a selected skip value along the series of arbitrary harmonic coefficients in the readout addresses, the musical waveform to be synthesized having its characteristic wave pattern because of the selection of the set of arbitrary harmonic coefficients while having actual harmonic coefficients calculated by said interpolation circuit.