Dave Smith, the Sequential founder and synthmaker often known as the daddy of MIDI, has died, Sequential mentioned. He was 72. Artists together with Flying Lotus, Hot Chip, and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon paid tribute to Smith, whose innovations embody the Prophet-5, utilized by a raft of Nineteen Eighties greats, in addition to by Radiohead for his or her diversion into electronics on Child A.
Born in California, Smith based Sequential in his mid-twenties, in 1974, and designed and launched the Prophet-5 4 years later. It was the world’s first absolutely programmable polyphonic synth, and the primary instrument with an embedded microprocessor. In 1981, Smith and Sequential engineer Chet Wooden designed a fundamental MIDI interface and consulted keyboard producers together with Roland founder Ikutaro Kakehashi, who had proposed the concept of a common language for digital devices. Kakehashi and Smith unveiled the protocol that yr, later receiving Technical Grammys for his or her work. Sequential launched the Prophet 600, one of many first MIDI synths, in 1983.
Yamaha acquired Sequential in 1987, and Smith went on to seek the advice of for numerous synth corporations. He launched Dave Smith Devices in 2002, which rebranded as Sequential in 2015 when Yamaha returned the corporate title. That yr, they debuted the Prophet-6, an evolution of the sooner mannequin.
