{"id":34909,"date":"2022-06-03T10:49:40","date_gmt":"2022-06-03T10:49:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/synth-legend-dave-smith-designer-of-the-prophet-5-dies-aged-72\/"},"modified":"2022-06-03T10:49:40","modified_gmt":"2022-06-03T10:49:40","slug":"synth-legend-dave-smith-designer-of-the-prophet-5-dies-aged-72","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/synth-legend-dave-smith-designer-of-the-prophet-5-dies-aged-72\/","title":{"rendered":"Synth legend Dave Smith, designer of the Prophet-5, dies aged 72"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p><strong>Synth designer Dave Smith, founder of Sequential Circuits and designer of the groundbreaking Prophet-5 synth, has died at the age of 72.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A short statement on the Sequential website says: \u201cIt is with heavy hearts that we share the news that Dave Smith has died.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"hawk-nest\" data-render-type=\"fte\" data-skip=\"dealsy\" data-widget-type=\"seasonal\"\/>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re heartbroken, but take some small solace in knowing he was on the road doing what he loved best in the company of family, friends, and artists.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sequential was due to exhibit at the 2022 NAMM Show, which runs from 3 to 5 June.  The company says that it will now decline to participate out of respect for Dave Smith&#8217;s memory of him.<\/p>\n<p>Smith founded Sequential Circuits in 1974, releasing the Prophet-5 &#8211; the world&#8217;s first fully-programmable polyphonic synth &#8211; in 1977. Many other influential synths and drum machines followed, and he was also a key player in the development of the original MIDI spec, announced in 1981. Indeed, it is said to be Smith who coined the MIDI acronym.<\/p>\n<p>After Sequential Circuits folded in 1985, Smith had spells at Yamaha and Korg, where he worked on the classic Wavestation.<\/p>\n<p>Smith returned to the hardware synth market with his own company in 2002, starting Dave Smith Instruments.  Over the past two decades, his products of him have played a crucial part in the analogue revival.<\/p>\n<p><u>Dave Smith Instruments was rebranded as Sequential in 2018<\/u>with Yamaha having returned the name to Smith in 2015. <u>A rebooted Prophet-5<\/u> was released in 2020.<\/p>\n<p><u>Sequential was acquired by British audio company Focusrite in 2021<\/u>.  Most recently, <u>Smith was involved in the development of the OB-X8<\/u>the first new synth from the rebooted Oberheim, with Tom Oberheim back at the helm.<\/p>\n<p>Paying tribute to Smith, Focusrite CEO Tim Carroll said: \u201cDave&#8217;s passing is a great loss to not only the music community and music technology, but to the world itself.  To say that he changed music is no exaggeration.  Dave&#8217;s legacy di lui is one of creative passion and a deep and lifelong love for music, music technology, and the musicians that continue to enrich our world by using his instruments di lui.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt 72 he was still actively designing his next generation of synths.  At the same time, he had the foresight to mentor and build Sequential into a team that will continue his work and legacy without pause.  Dave will be greatly missed, but his contributions by lui to music will never be forgotten. &#8220;<\/p>\n<p>Sequential is inviting people to share their own memories of Smith by emailing RememberingDave@Sequential.com.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Synth designer Dave Smith, founder of Sequential Circuits and designer of the groundbreaking Prophet-5 synth, has died at the age of 72. A short statement on the Sequential website says: \u201cIt is with heavy hearts that we share the news that Dave Smith has died. &#8220;We&#8217;re heartbroken, but take some small solace in knowing he &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/synth-legend-dave-smith-designer-of-the-prophet-5-dies-aged-72\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Synth legend Dave Smith, designer of the Prophet-5, dies aged 72<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/iTLoh5w3FbCr47uhrXeGKY-1200-80.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34909"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}