The Six-Trak was an

analogue synthesizer An analog (or analogue) synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses analog circuits and analog signals to generate sound electronically. The earliest analog synthesizers in the 1920s and 1930s, such as the Trautonium, were built with a variety of ...

manufactured by

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, use ...

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and released in January 1984. It is notable for being one of the first

multi-timbral Monotimbral (from the root prefix ''mono'' meaning one, and ''timbre'' meaning a specific tone of a sound independent of its pitch) is usually used in reference to electronic synthesizers which can produce a single timbre at a given pitch when pr ...

synthesizers, equipped with

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 re ...

and an on-board six-track digital

sequencer Sequencer may refer to: Technology * Drum sequencer (controller), an electromechanical system for controlling a sequence of events automatically * DNA sequencer, a machine used to automatically produce a sequence readout from a biological DNA sam ...

, hence the name. It was designed as an inexpensive and easily portable 'scratch-pad' machine for trying out arrangements. You can latch the

arpeggiator A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and f ...

and play along with sequences in real time. Also available is a unison mode which renders the keyboard monophonic but allows for very rich sounding timbres. The Six-Trak is prominently featured and can be heard on the 1998 minimalist

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CD release ''The Dream Garden'', by musician/composer Dane Rochelle. More recently it has been used by compose
Christopher de Groot
for the 2012 soundtrack to Australian feature film "Sororal". The Six-Trak's more famous sibling is the

Prophet 5 The Prophet-5 is an analog synthesizer manufactured by the American company Sequential. It was designed by Dave Smith and John Bowen in 1977, who used microprocessors, then a new technology, to create the first polyphonic synthesizer with full ...

, widely used in much of the 1970s

progressive rock Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog; sometimes conflated with art rock) is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. Init ...

. A number of other synthesizers made by Sequential Circuits used similar electronics, including the Multi-Trak, Max, and Split-8. the important parts on board of them was CEM3394 (a complete monophonic analog synth chip manufactured by Curtis Electromusic Specialties ). The Six-Trak used 6 chips for 6 voices of different timbre program.

Notable Users

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* Guerilla Toss * Solitaire (musician) *

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* Chris Tabron / The Ten Paces * Luis Delgado *

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* Luciano Mello *

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Sequential Circuits synthesizers Analog synthesizers Polyphonic synthesizers {{Electronic-musical-instrument-stub