The present invention relates to a Karaoke apparatus for automatically sounding an instrumental accompaniment or "empty orchestra" ("Karaoke" in Japanese) accompaniment during a physical vocal performance of a selected song by a singer. More particularly, the present invention relates to a Karaoke apparatus provided with a tone generator in the form of a musical sound synthesizer operative according to registered performance information.
Recently, the Karaoke apparatus has become very popular. The Karaoke apparatus is equipped with an audio medium such as a magnetic tape or an optical disk for storing an instrumental accompaniment part of a popular song except for a vocal performance part. The singer physically performs the vocal part while the instrumental accompaniment part is being reproduced. A regular type of the Karaoke apparatus is installed with a mixer which mixes a physical singing voice picked up by a microphone with the Karaoke accompaniment together with a reverberation effect or else, thereby enjoying an interesting song performance. Further, an advanced type of the Karaoke apparatus utilizes a video medium such as an optical disk for displaying word information of the song as well as associated image information, in addition to the audio reproduction of the instrumental accompaniment. Such Karaoke apparatus is more and more sophisticated with respect to various aspects such as structure of the installed tone generator, manner by which word information is provided, and arrangement of peripheral equipments under divergent environment in amusement of the Karaoke performance.
Recently, one of the most advanced Karaoke apparatus is installed with a sophisticated tone generator, i.e., a musical sound synthesizer which is generally adopted in an electronic musical instrument or a computer music box. While the tone generator is driven according to registered performance information of the instrumental accompaniment, a display device is driven concurrently according to registered word information to visually indicate song words in the form of a sequence of characters in synchronization with the automatic instrumental accompaniment. In contrast to the regular Karaoke apparatus, the most, advanced Karaoke apparatus utilizes simplified accompaniment information like a text data of a musical score, rather than audio information based on sampled analog waves, thereby saving a data amount and facilitating transfer and copy of the registered accompaniment information.
The conventional Karaoke apparatus displays the song words in the form of a sequence of characters having a plain letter style, and a color tone of each character is sequentially changed with the progression of the song performance to teach a vocal timing of each character. Namely in the conventional Karaoke apparatus, the displayed sequence of characters may merely indicate a literal form of the song words as well as a vocal timing of each character. The same is true with respect to the above mentioned advanced Karaoke apparatus which is equipped with the musical sound synthesizer driven according to the registered performance information to sound the instrumental accompaniment, while the display device is driven according to the registered word information to display a sequence of plain characters along with the sounding of the instrumental accompaniment. However, as the Karaoke amusement is widely popularized, the Karaoke apparatus is required to provide more helpful information to a performer in addition to basic audio and video information.