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Prophet-5
The Prophet-5 is an analog synthesizer manufactured by the American company Sequential (company), Sequential. It was designed by Dave Smith (engineer), Dave Smith and John S. Bowen (sound designer), John Bowen in 1977, who used Microprocessor, microprocessors, then a new technology, to create the first polyphonic synthesizer with fully programmable memory. This allowed users to store sounds and recall them instantly rather than having to reprogram them manually; whereas synthesizers had once created unpredictable sounds, the Prophet-5 moved synthesizers to producing "a standard package of familiar sounds". Between 1978 and 1984, about 6,000 units were produced across three revisions. In 1981, Sequential released a 10-voice, double-keyboard version, the Prophet-10. Sequential introduced new versions in 2020, and it has been emulated in software synthesizers and hardware. The Prophet-5 has been widely used in popular music and film soundtracks. Development The Prophet-5 was crea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sequential Circuits
Sequential is an American synthesizer company founded in 1974 as Sequential Circuits by Dave Smith. In 1978, Sequential released the Prophet-5, the first programmable polyphonic synthesizer; it became a market leader and industry standard, used by artists including Michael Jackson, Madonna, and John Carpenter. In the 1980s, Sequential was pivotal in the development of MIDI, a technical standard for synchronizing electronic instruments. In 1987, Sequential went out of business and was purchased by Yamaha. Smith continued to develop instruments through a new company, Dave Smith Instruments. In 2015, Yamaha returned the Sequential Circuits trademark to Dave Smith Instruments, which rebranded as Sequential in 2018. In 2021, Sequential was acquired by the British audio technology company Focusrite. History 1974–1980: Founding, first products and Prophet-5 The engineer Dave Smith founded Sequential Circuits in San Francisco in 1974. The first Sequential Circuits product wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sequential (company)
Sequential is an American synthesizer company founded in 1974 as Sequential Circuits by Dave Smith. In 1978, Sequential released the Prophet-5, the first programmable polyphonic synthesizer; it became a market leader and industry standard, used by artists including Michael Jackson, Madonna, and John Carpenter. In the 1980s, Sequential was pivotal in the development of MIDI, a technical standard for synchronizing electronic instruments. In 1987, Sequential went out of business and was purchased by Yamaha. Smith continued to develop instruments through a new company, Dave Smith Instruments. In 2015, Yamaha returned the Sequential Circuits trademark to Dave Smith Instruments, which rebranded as Sequential in 2018. In 2021, Sequential was acquired by the British audio technology company Focusrite. History 1974–1980: Founding, first products and Prophet-5 The engineer Dave Smith founded Sequential Circuits in San Francisco in 1974. The first Sequential Circuits product was a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dave Smith (engineer)
David Joseph Smith (April 2, 1950 – May 31, 2022) was an American engineer and founder of the synthesizer company Sequential. Smith created the first polyphonic synthesizer with fully programmable memory, the Prophet-5, which had a major impact on the music industry. He also led the development of MIDI, a standard interface protocol for synchronizing electronic instruments and audio equipment. In 2005, Smith was inducted into the Mix Foundation TECnology (Technical Excellence and Creativity) Hall of Fame for the MIDI specification. In 2013, he and the Japanese businessman Ikutaro Kakehashi received a Technical Grammy Award for their contributions to the development of MIDI. Career Smith was born on April 2, 1950 in San Francisco. He had degrees in both Computer Science and Electronic Engineering from UC Berkeley. Sequential Circuits and Prophet-5 He purchased a Minimoog in 1972 and later built his own analog sequencer, founding Sequential Circuits in 1974 and advertising ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polyphony And Monophony In Instruments
Polyphony is a property of musical instruments that means that they can play multiple independent melody lines simultaneously. Instruments featuring polyphony are said to be polyphonic. Instruments that are not capable of polyphony are monophonic or paraphonic. Synthesizer Monophonic A monophonic synthesizer or ''monosynth'' is a synthesizer that produces only one note at a time, making it smaller and cheaper than a polyphonic synthesizer which can play multiple notes at once. This does not necessarily refer to a synthesizer with a single oscillator; The Minimoog, for example, has three oscillators which are settable in arbitrary intervals, but it can play only one note at a time. Well-known monosynths include the Minimoog, the Roland TB-303, the Korg Prophecy, and the Korg Monologue. Duophonic Duophonic synthesizers, such as the ARP Odyssey and Formanta Polivoks built in the 1970s and 1980s respectively, have a capability to independently play two pitches at a time. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Synthesizer
A software synthesizer or softsynth is a computer program that generates digital audio, usually for music. Computer software that can create sounds or music is not new, but advances in processing speed now allow softsynths to accomplish the same tasks that previously required the dedicated hardware of a conventional synthesizer. Softsynths may be readily interfaced with other music software such as music sequencers typically in the context of a digital audio workstation. Softsynths are usually less expensive and can be more portable than dedicated hardware. Types Softsynths can cover a range of synthesis methods, including subtractive synthesis (including analog modeling, a subtype), FM synthesis (including the similar phase distortion synthesis), physical modelling synthesis, additive synthesis (including the related resynthesis), and sample-based synthesis. Many popular hardware synthesizers are no longer manufactured but have been emulated in software. The emulation can ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Korg Prophecy
The Korg Prophecy is considered one of the earliest (mid-nineties) virtual analog (a.k.a. VA) synthesizers, although its synthesis capabilities went beyond many of its VA contemporaries. Details Along with the Korg Z1, the Korg Prophecy is a direct ancestor of the ill-fated Korg OASYS, OASYS project. It was a small three-octave monosynth, a pioneer of the late 1990s return-to-analog trend. Offering assignable knobs, a "log controller" (a combination of a modulation wheel and ribbon controller assembled like a sausage) and many other control sources, it invited players to tweak and shape the sound both easily and quickly. However, deep editing wasn't as straightforward, because the sound engine contained 13 Digital signal processing, DSP-modeled oscillator types, each one offering a large number of parameters to adjust. Some of the most used DSP models were the analog model (based on the classic osc+filter+amp scheme, although with many powerful enhancements), the VPM model (a for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ralph Towner
Ralph Towner (born March 1, 1940) is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger and bandleader. He plays the twelve-string guitar, classical guitar, piano, synthesizer, percussion, trumpet and French horn. Biography Towner was born into a musical family in Chehalis, Washington, United States. His mother was a piano teacher and his father a trumpet player. Towner learned to improvise on the piano at the age of three. He began his career as a conservatory-trained classical pianist, attending the University of Oregon from 1958-1963, where he also studied composition with Homer Keller. He studied classical guitar at the Vienna Academy of Music with Karl Scheit from 1963–64 and 1967-68. He joined world music pioneer Paul Winter's "Consort" ensemble in the late 1960s. He first played jazz in New York City in the late 1960s as a pianist and was strongly influenced by the renowned jazz pianist Bill Evans. He began improvising on classical and 12-string guitars in the lat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ecotopia (album)
''Ecotopia'' is an album by American world music/jazz group Oregon featuring Ralph Towner, Paul McCandless, Glen Moore, and Trilok Gurtu, who replaced Collin Walcott following his accidental death, recorded in 1987 and released on the ECM label.ECM discography accessed September 28, 2011 Reception The review by Thom Jurek states, "there is no excuse for this waste of studio time and 's energy. It is no wonder that he began the ECM New Series a few years before, given the junk churned out by some of label's stable between 1983 and 1988, a ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MIDI
MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and related audio devices for playing, editing, and recording music. The specification originates in the paper ''Universal Synthesizer Interface'' published by Dave Smith and Chet Wood of Sequential Circuits at the 1981 Audio Engineering Society conference in New York City. A single MIDI cable can carry up to sixteen channels of MIDI data, each of which can be routed to a separate device. Each interaction with a key, button, knob or slider is converted into a MIDI event, which specifies musical instructions, such as a note's pitch, timing and loudness. One common MIDI application is to play a MIDI keyboard or other controller and use it to trigger a digital sound module (which contains synthesized musical sounds) to generate sounds, which t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moog Music
Moog Music Inc. () is an American synthesizer company based in Asheville, North Carolina. It was founded in 1953 as R. A. Moog Co. by Robert Moog and his father and was renamed Moog Music in 1972. Its early instruments included the Moog synthesizer (the first commercial synthesizer), followed by the Minimoog in 1970, two of the most influential electronic instruments of all time. In 1971, following a Recession of 1969–70, recession, Robert Moog sold Moog Music to Norlin Musical Instruments, where he remained employed as a designer until 1977. In 1978, he founded a new company, Big Briar. Moog Music filed for bankruptcy in 1987 and the Moog Music trademark was returned to Robert Moog in 2002, when Big Briar resumed operations under the name Moog Music. Moog Music also manages Moogfest, a pioneering electronic music and music technology festival in Durham, NC. History 1953–1967: R. A. Moog Co. Robert Moog founded R. A. Moog Co. with his father in 1953 at the age of 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keyboard (magazine)
''Keyboard'' is a magazine that originally covered electronic keyboard instruments and keyboardists, though with the advent of computer-based recording and audio technology, they have added digital music technology to their regular coverage, including those not strictly pertaining to the keyboard-related instruments. The magazine has its headquarters in San Bruno, California. History and profile Future is the owner of ''Keyboard'' which was launched in 1975. During the initial years the magazine was named ''Contemporary Keyboard''. Over the years, the print and online editions of the magazine have moved into discussions on anything related to gear. The editors and writers of the magazine have covered historical information and stories on the development of keyboards from their inception with pioneers such as Moog Music. At times, editorial and guest articles in the magazine have covered subjects including music philosophy, keyboarding instruction, music theory, and harmonics. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ARP Instruments
ARP Instruments, Inc. was a Lexington, Massachusetts manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, founded by Alan Robert Pearlman in 1969. It created a popular and commercially successful range of synthesizers throughout the 1970s before declaring bankruptcy in 1981. The company earned a reputation for producing excellent sounding, innovative instruments and was granted several patents for the technology it developed. History Background Alan Pearlman was an engineering student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts in 1948 when he foresaw the coming age of electronic music and synthesizers. He later wrote: :"''The electronic instrument's value is chiefly as a novelty. With greater attention on the part of the engineer to the needs of the musician, the day may not be too remote when the electronic instrument may take its place ... as a versatile, powerful, and expressive instrument.''" Beginnings Following 21 years of experience in electronic engineering ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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