Method and apparatus for facilitating group musical interaction over a network2009-10-20AbstractA method for providing real-time musical interaction among a plurality of players connected via a network includes the steps of analyzing local player's musical performance to extract emulation data that represents the musical performance; transmitting emulation data to remote players over a network; receiving emulation data from remote players over the network; and using the emulation data to emulate the remote player's musical performance by locally generating approximations of the performances.Claims<br /><br />What is claimed is:<br /><br />1. A method for facilitating real-time competition between players of a game, the method comprising the steps of:<br /><br />(a) receiving music performance input from a local player;<br /><br />(b) generating audio output responsive to the received input;<br /><br />(c) receiving emulation data extracted from a remote musical performance; and<br /><br />(d) generating a local approximation of the remote musical performance using the emulation data, the local approximation synchronous with the local musical performance.<br /><br />2. The method of claim 1 wherein step (a) comprises receiving music performance input from a local player via a game pad.<br /><br />3. The method of claim 1 wherein step (a) comprises receiving music performance input from a local player via a fake musical instrument.<br /><br />4. The method of claim 1 wherein step (b) comprises playing a note to indicate a successful input.
<br /><br />5. The method of claim 1 wherein step (b) comprises playing an error message to indicate unsuccessful input.<br /><br />6. A method for facilitating musical interaction over a network, the method comprising the steps of:<br /><br />(a) receiving emulation data representing a remote user's musical performance; and<br /><br />(b) locally generating an approximation of the remote user's musical performance using the received emulation data, the approximation synchronous with a local musical performance.<br /><br />7. The method of claim 6 wherein step (a) comprises receiving emulation data, the emulation data comprising a moving average of recent remote musical performance events.<br /><br />8. The method of claim 6 wherein step (a) comprises receiving emulation data, the emulation data comprising a moving average of timing deltas between recent remote musical performance events.<br /><br />9. The method of claim 6 wherein step (a) comprises receiving emulation data, the emulation data comprising an identification of recent remote musical performance events.<br /><br />10. The method of claim 6 further comprising extracting local emulation data representing a local musical performance.<br /><br />11. A means for facilitating musical interaction over a network, comprising:<br /><br />(a) means for receiving emulation data representing a remote user's musical performance; and<br /><br />(b) means for locally generating an approximation of the remote user's musical performance using the received emulation data, the approximation synchronous with a local musical performance.<br /><br />12. The means for facilitating musical interaction over a network of claim 11 further comprising means for receiving music performance input from a local player.<br /><br />13. The means for facilitating musical interaction over a network of claim 12 wherein the means for receiving music performance input from a local player further comprises means for receiving music performance input from a local player via a game pad.<br /><br />14. The means for facilitating musical interaction over a network of claim 12 wherein the means for receiving music performance input from a local player further comprises means for receiving music performance input from a local player via a fake musical instrument.<br /><br />15. The means for facilitating musical interaction over a network of claim 11 further comprising means for extracting local emulation data representing a local musical performance.<br /><br />16. The means for facilitating musical interaction over a network of claim 11 further comprising means for generating audio output responsive to the received input.<br /><br />17. The means for facilitating musical interaction over a network of claim 16 wherein the means for generating audio output responsive to the received input further comprises means for playing a note to indicate a successful input.<br /><br />18. The means for facilitating musical interaction over a network of claim 16 wherein the means for generating audio output responsive to the received input further comprises means for playing an error message to indicate unsuccessful input.Description<br /><br />FIELD OF THE INVENTION<br /><br />This invention relates to electronic music systems and, more particularly, to an electronic music system by which game players interact musically with one another in real-time over a network.<br /><br />BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION<br /><br />Music is a temporal medium, the organization of sound in time. Accordingly, music making is highly timing sensitive. When a musician presses a key on a piano, the musician expects the result to be immediately audible. Any delay in hearing the sound, even as brief as few milliseconds, produces a perceived sluggishness that impedes the ability of the musician to use the instrument.<br /><br />Music making is also often a collaborative effort among many musicians who interact with each other. One form of musical interaction popular among non-musicians is provided by a video game genre known as "rhythm-action," which requires a player to perform phrases from a pre-recorded musical composition using the video game's input device to simulate a musical instrument. The best-known example of this genre is the BEATMANIA series of games published by Konami Co., Ltd. of Japan. An example of the game environment provided by BEATMANIA is shown in FIG. 1. In this series of games the notes in musical phrases are graphically displayed to the player as a series of visual markers 104 spaced along one or more timelines 110, 120, 130, 140; each marker 104 corresponds to one note in the phrase. In the environment shown in FIG. 1 the visual markers move from the top of the display to the bottom of the display. As each marker 104 on the scrolling timelines passes a graphical cursor 108 displayed along this timeline, the player must simultaneously press a button on the input device corresponding to the correct timeline to play the sound of the corresponding note at the correct time. If the player performs this action successfully for a sufficient percentage of the notes, he scores well and wins the game. If the player fails to perform this action successfully for a sufficient percentage of the notes, he scores poorly and loses the game. Two or more players may compete against each other, typically by each one attempting to play back different, parallel musical phrases from the same song simultaneously (shown in FIG. 1). The player who plays the highest percentage of notes correctly achieves the highest score and wins.<br /><br />Multiplayer gaming increasingly incorporates various networking technologies that allow multiple players to compete against each other from remote physical locations via networks, and networked multiplayer gaming has become extremely popular. Unfortunately, however, the latency inherent in networked communication imposes a significant engineering and design burden on video game developers: data signals are often subject to large and unpredictable transmission delays. These transmission delays do not significantly impact turn-based games (such as chess) or other game genres in which timing sensitivity is not critical to gameplay. In action games and other "real-time" games, however, gameplay is extremely sensitive to the timing of various events, and transmission delays inherently result in inconsistencies continually forming between the local game states of the various players of a networked game. Consequently, developers of timing-sensitive networked games have had to invent various methods for gracefully performing "conflict resolution" to resolve divergent local game states.<br /><br />The rhythm-action genre has a unique attribute, however, that makes traditional conflict resolution methods inapplicable. Specifically, the core activity of multiplayer rhythm-action involves simultaneous music-making, which is highly timing sensitive, by two or more players. If these two players are separated by a network, the data representing musical notes played by one player will incur transmission delays when being sent to the other player. If note data were simply transmitted to a receiving machine it would trigger corresponding audio that would sound "out of sync" to the receiving player, resulting in cacophony. One solution to this problem would be to mute the audio from remote players on the local player's machine. However, this would significantly degrade the entertainment value of the game experience by destroying musical communication between the players.<br /><br />Therefore, a need exists for a system and method that enable musicians to achieve the experience of real-time musical interaction over a high-latency network, such as the Internet.<br /><br />SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION<br /><br />It is an object of the invention to provide a system and method that a group individuals connected to a networ...
Doepfer modular and it 2009-05-06DIY
Hardware and Software sub .Edit: Blue Hell has used the teleporter DJ--Last edited by DrJuste on Sun Feb 08, 8:57 pm; edited 1 time in total
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