An electronic percussion instrument to control generated sound in accordance with operation to the striking surface includes: a first sensor configured to detect a slapping operation on the striking surface; a second sensor configured to detect a contact operation to the striking surface; and a processor configured to control sound generated in response to detection of a slapping operation by the first sensor in accordance with a place of a contact operation to the striking surface detected by the second sensor.

Systems, methods, and devices for providing interactive striking objects (e.g., drumsticks) and performing actions in response to striking motions of the striking objects are disclosed. In some embodiments, the systems and methods provide an interactive drumstick, which includes a lighting display located at a tip portion of the interactive drumstick, a motion detector contained at least partially within the drumstick, a processor and memory contained at least partially within the drumstick, and an interactive system stored within the memory of the drumstick. The interactive system includes a striking motion module that determines striking motions of the drumstick with respect to a virtual percussion instrument based on accessing information measured by the motion detector, and a display module that causes the lighting display to present a certain type of illumination based on the striking motions determined by the striking motion module.

An integrated transducer-processor unit for use with a stringed instrument having one or more strings. When the instrument is played, the unit produces electrical output signals for conversion into musical sounds. A transducer converts mechanical vibrations of each of the strings into corresponding electrical signals, and a processor processes the electrical signals to produce selected analog or digital output signals for conversion into musical sounds. The unit processor is integrated with the transducer into a pickup, for mounting on the instrument in proximity to the strings without modification of the instrument. In addition, a gesture pad-processor system provides an interface for a user to send control signals to a device to control at least one function of the device. A touch pad receives positional and pressure inputs entered by the user making a selected predefined manual gesture for conversion into a control signal by the system processor.

Advanced, but user-friendly composition and editing environments for musical scores may be provided using the types, and in some cases the instances, of computing devices that will in turn consume musical score content so generated. Indeed, by integrating musical composition facilities within synthetic musical instruments that can be widely deployed on hand-held or portable computing devices, a social music network that includes such synthetic musical instruments gains access to a large, and potentially prolific, population of authors, editors and reviewers, as well as to the community-sourced musical scores that they can generate. By curating such content and/or by applying crowd-sourcing or other computational techniques to maintain quality, a social music network may rapidly deploy the new and ever evolving content that its user community desires.

A new and improved Digital Musical Instrument includes a hardware segment that electronically detects the physical inputs of a musicians musical playing style or articulated intent; a Software segment that interprets and formulates the data output from the hardware segment, to be applied to any digitally modulated synthesizer or recording sampler; and an optional expanded method of sampling or digitally recording articulated sounds of acoustic instruments.

Producing a visual work of art includes receiving software commands produced in response to plurality of singular manual inputs by a user to a digital input device, and in response to the received software commands, producing visual elements by an output device, wherein the software commands are preprogrammed to produce different visual elements as a function of one or more particular singular manual inputs by the user to the digital input device. The digital input device may be a digital musical instrument. The software commands can be preprogrammed to produce visual elements that mimic a style of a particular artist.

An electronic instrument comprising an elongated member, comprising a plurality of detectors aligned in the elongated member, each detector for detecting a finger-sized object in the vicinity thereof and for providing a corresponding signal; a processing unit operatively connected to the plurality of detectors, the processing unit for receiving the signals from the plurality of detectors and for generating a signal indicative of a sound to generate and a sound generating unit operatively connected to the processing unit and wherein the processing unit is located inside the elongated member.

An electronic percussion instrument to control generated sound in accordance with operation to the striking surface includes: a first sensor configured to detect a slapping operation on the striking surface; a second sensor configured to detect a contact operation to the striking surface; and a processor configured to control sound generated in response to detection of a slapping operation by the first sensor in accordance with a place of a contact operation to the striking surface detected by the second sensor.

There is provided an electronic percussion instrument. The electronic percussion instrument includes a struck surface and a plurality of strike sensors configured to detect a strike on the struck surface. The plurality of strike sensors include at least one central sensor that is disposed on a back side of the struck surface and disposed at a center side of the struck surface and a plurality of peripheral sensors that are disposed on a peripheral side of the struck surface. The central sensor and the peripheral sensors each have the same structure. The peripheral sensors are configured to transmit a strike signal in a shorter time than the central sensor when the struck surface is struck.

Provided are an electronic percussion instrument and a control device thereof. The electronic percussion instrument includes central and peripheral sensors, first and second waiting devices, and a sound production instruction device. When the central sensor detects a strike earlier than the peripheral sensor, the first waiting device performs a first waiting process for a first predetermined time after the central sensor detects the strike. When the peripheral sensor detects a strike earlier than the central sensor, the second waiting device performs a second waiting process for a second predetermined time after the peripheral sensor detects the strike. The sound production instruction device instructs production of a striking sound after the first waiting process of the first waiting device ends, or after the second waiting process of the second waiting device ends if the central sensor has not detected a strike within the second waiting process of the second waiting device.