1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a karaoke device that plays back an instrumental sound based on the MIDI Standard and presents image and words in synchronism with the sound on a screen, and particularly to a technique that allows the instrumental sound to be mixed with backing chorus.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Recently in widespread use is a karaoke system in which each terminal receives karaoke information via communications line from a host computer that holds a vast amount of digitized and coded karaoke information and then reproduces the received karaoke music. Means of minimizing the amount of data for karaoke information in communications is a known technique in which instrumental sound is constructed of electronic musical sound source based on the MIDI Standard. Instrumental sound based on performance of musical instruments is easy to handle to form musical data that are based the MIDI Standard, and thus appealing in the activity of the creation of karaoke music. In one of the prior art techniques, the reproduction of a backing music and the display of video images are synchronized, and further words of a karaoke song are presented on screen along with progress of the song being performed.
In such a system, however, each terminal can play back the instrumental sound only, and "human" backing chorus cannot be played back along with the instrumental sound because the backing chorus is not constructed according to the MIDI Standard. An idea is contemplated in which an electronic musical instrument that has a capability of synthesizing human voice is used to produce a backing chorus that is then played back along with the instrumental sound. Although an electronic musical instrument can synthesize human voice, the waveforms of human voice are extremely complicated. In practice, a human backing chorus cannot be reproduced by any electronic musical instrument.