To provide the device and method for musical tone signal generation which can obtain a weak to a strong hit sound of sound quality close to that of a natural musical instrument in spite of small memory capacity.

The device and method are equipped with a secondary strong sound waveform memory 10 storing a secondary strong sound waveform which is varied and made more gentle at the fall of the envelope of a decay part than at the fall of the envelope of the decay part of a strong sound waveform generated by a strong hit, a difference waveform memory 11 storing difference waveform data between the strong sound waveform and secondary strong sound waveform, amplitude varying means 12 and 14 which vary the size of the difference waveform data read out of the difference waveform memory according to key hit strength, and a mixing means 15 which mixes the difference waveform data from the amplitude varying means with the secondary strong sound waveform data read out of the secondary strong sound waveform memory, thereby generating a musical tone on the basis of the output of the mixing means.