![]() ![]() The Prophet was not a polyphonic Minimoog, and its voice architecture was much more closely related to that of the ARP Odyssey than it was to any Moog of the time. Nevertheless, they were beautiful instruments that felt and sounded, in a gloriously indefinable way, absolutely right. OK, so the earliest 5s were stripped-out versions of the failed 10s, and they remained incredibly unreliable, requiring further modifications to make them usable. ![]() Glimpsing its beautiful red koa-wood case, expensive-looking hardware, and well-designed control surface. Indeed, we wrinklies remember when Sequential first burst upon the music scene, redolent with the promise of five programmable Minimoogs in a single, polyphonic keyboard. No other name rolls off the tongue as smoothly, nor excites the younger generation of analogue anoraks as much. Apparently, the only solution was a radical one: Smith and Bowen dumped half the electronics, and voil. Unfortunately, it was hopelessly unreliable, and heat build-up within the case meant that it was never in tune for more than a few minutes. The 10 looked and sounded exactly like the instrument we now call a Rev 1 Prophet 5, the only difference being that you could play ten notes simultaneously. And, whether by luck or craft, they hit upon a specification that every keyboard player would soon crave: a 5-octave keyboard, genuine polyphony, a powerful polyphonic modulation section, memories that stored every parameter, and a punchy sound reminiscent of the Minimoog itself. So it was into this immature market that Sequential Circuits Incorporated (a company that, like Apple Computers, had started out in its founder's garage in California) launched its first keyboard instrument.ĭave Smith and his partner, John Bowen, had conceived this synth while designing and building a Minimoog programmer and an early digital sequencer. Indeed, in 1977, NO polysynth could store all the parameters that defined a patch. But whereas the CS80 had several presets, and allowed you to store four partials in its fledgling memories, it shared a fundamental failing with its only competitor, the Oberheim Four Voice: it couldn't store all the parameters that defined a patch. Yamaha's CS80 was the successor to the mighty GX1 and as such was the heir to the polyphonic castle. Moog had designed the Polymoog around octave-dividing organ technology, and ARP was still playing with various incarnations of 'string' synthesis. to a year in which neither of the American keyboard giants of the day offered a true polyphonic synthesiser. But why should a 'mere' designer of sequencers and polyphonic synthesisers (which are, when all's said and done, just specialised computers) evoke such a response from someone old enough and ugly enough to know better? To find out, let's jump in the SOS synthesiser time-machine, and leap back 22 years. ![]() As a result, I found myself feeling like a gawky kid as we were introduced. "Certainly", he said, "Would you like to be introduced?"ĭave Smith is up there for me alongside Keith Emerson and a handful of other pioneers whom I've respected since I was a teenager. He was walking around the San Francisco AES Convention with Roger Linn, and I glimpsed his name badge while I was talking to one of his associates. I met Dave Smith for the first time a few weeks ago. Gordon Reid's Vintage Synths - the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 and Prophet 10
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