The present invention relates to a method of controlling a musical tone in an electronic musical instrument and, more particularly, to a method of controlling musical tones for an ensemble simulation in which a plurality of tone generation channels are assigned to depression of one key and a plurality of musical tones are simultaneously produced.
A conventional electronic musical instrument can simultaneously produce a plurality of tones upon depression of each key to obtain an ensemble effect as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,590,838.
In a conventional electronic musical instrument, since the number of tones to be produced in correspondence with depression of one key is predetermined as fixed data, the number of tones to be simultaneously produced greatly varies depending on the number of depressed keys. An ensemble effect obtained upon depression of a large number of keys is different from that obtained upon depression of a small number of keys. As a result, a sufficiently effective ensemble effect cannot be obtained.