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Some founders relaxation on their laurels, construct industries round themselves like a cocoon, and by no means escape or outgrow the massive achievement that made their title. Some, like Dave Smith — the so-called “father of MIDI,” and one of the crucial progressive synthesizer pioneers of the final a number of many years – don’t cease creating for lengthy sufficient to gather mud. You could by no means have heard of Smith, however you’ve heard his expertise. Earlier than pioneering MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), the digital commonplace that enables tons of of digital devices to play properly with one another throughout laptop and software program makers, Smith based Sequential Circuits and constructed one of the crucial revered synthesizers ever made, the Prophet-5, invented in 1977 and important to the sound of the Eighties and past.
Smith’s keyboards made appearances on stage, video, and albums all through the last decade. Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes used the Prophet-5 on the band’s first album and “just about each report I’ve made since then,” he stated in an announcement. “With out Dave’s imaginative and prescient and ingenuity,” Rhodes went on, “the sound of the Eighties would have been very totally different, he actually modified the sonic soundscape of a technology.”
Sequential synths appeared on albums by bands as disparate as The Treatment and Daryl Corridor & John Oates, who exhibit the dream-like, ethereal capabilities of the Prophet-5 — the primary absolutely programmable polyphonic analog synth — in “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do).” The Prophet-5 additionally drove the sound of Radiohead’s Child A, and indie dance darlings Scorching Chip wrote they’d be “nothing with out what [Smith] created.” Few classic synths are as fascinating because the Prophet-5.
The unique Prophet is “not proof against the darkish aspect of classic synths,” writes Vintage Synth Explorer, together with issues resembling unstable tuning and a scarcity of MIDI. Smith mounted that challenge himself with new iterations of the Prophet and different synths that includes his most well-known post-Prophet-5 expertise. “Like so many sensible and inventive folks,” the MIDI Association writes, Smith “all the time centered on the longer term.” He was “not truly a giant fan of being known as the ‘Father of MIDI.’” Many individuals contributed to the event of the expertise, particularly Roland founder Ikutaro Kakehashi, who received a technical Grammy with Smith in 2013 for the protocol that made its debut as a brand new commonplace in 1983.
Smith most well-liked making {hardware} devices and “nearly begrudgingly accepted interviews about his contributions to MIDI….. He was additionally not a giant fan of organizations, committees and conferences.” He was a synth lover’s synth maker, a designer and engineer with a “deep understanding of what musicians wished,” says Rhodes. Collaborations with Yamaha and Korg produced extra software program improvements within the 90s, however within the 2000s, Smith returned to Sequential Circuits and debuted the Prophet X, Prophet-6, and OB-6 with Tom Oberheim. The 2 designers collaborated in 2021 on the Oberheim OB-X8 and Smith launched it simply weeks earlier than his dying.
He had traveled a great distance from inventing the Prophet-5 in 1977 and presenting a paper in 1981 to the Audio Engineering Society on what he then known as a Common Synthesizer Interface. Smith himself by no means appeared to cease and look again, however lovers of his well-known devices are comfortable we nonetheless can, and that digital devices and computer systems can speak to one another simply due to MIDI. Few of these devices sound pretty much as good as the unique, nonetheless. See an illustration of the Prophet-5’s vary of sounds within the video simply above and listen to extra tracks that showcase the synth in the list here.
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Josh Jones is a author and musician based mostly in Durham, NC. Observe him at @jdmagness
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