An Evening with Dave Smith | Video Recap | Part I

On November 12th, Pyramind welcomed a true legend to our facility. The one and only Dave Smith, founder of Sequential Circuits and Dave Smith Instruments who is often referred to as the Father of MIDI.

During An Evening with Dave Smith, which you can watch in it’s entirety, you will get to hear what the new Sequential Prophet-6 synth is capable of in the hands of it's creator. The Prophet-6 is Dave Smith’s tribute to the analog polyphonic synth that started it all—the Sequential Prophet-5. But it’s not simply a reissue of a classic. Rather, as Dave puts it, “It’s the result of our effort to build the most awesome-sounding, modern analog poly synth possible.” The Prophet-6 takes the best qualities of the original Prophet-5—true voltage-controlled oscillators, filters, and amplifiers—and adds enhancements such as studio-quality effects, a polyphonic step sequencer, an arpeggiator, and more. The result is pure, unadulterated analog tone with the stability and reliability of a state-of-the-art modern synth.

For more information about Pyramind events head to our blog: http://hubs.ly/H01Pj5Z0

Timestamps:

01:00 - Hardware vs. Soft Synths - real synths cost more than soft synths (hardware competes with FREE)
02:48 - What inspired you to start building equipment?
05:03 - Talks about the way he developed his synth to work, and what didn’t work for other companies
05:58 - Where do you start when designing your instruments?
09:30 - Talks about the Prophet 6 (voltage controlled oscillators)
12:18 - “Slop Control” feature
14:00 - Analog distortion
16:00 - Story about the new name - Sequential
18:20 - Starts demoing the synth (focused on sequencer)
19:24 - Talks about factory presets and why they’re made the way they are
21:10 - Arpeggiator
22:00 - Effects
24:30 - Analog synthesis has passed the test of time
26:18 - People used to just want to emulate real instruments
28:05 - Inspiration behind the Prophet 2000
30:30 - Why didn’t they quantize oscillator frequencies?
31:40 - Why he likes constrained designs
34:08 - You can know nothing about synthesis and still make cool sounds with these synths
34:58 - USB integration (it’s just midi over USB)
35:20 - Presets
35:48 - Analog gear market
37:30 - Appealing to different clients / genres
38:28 - Taylor Swift Custom Prophet 12
41:14 - What did the sound designers bring to the synth?
42:16 - Hearing presets being used / modified