Dave Smith and Sequential Circuits

Dave Smith, Bob Moog, Karl Hirano and John Bowen

In 2023 at the 4Oth anniversary of MIDI, we gave MIDI Association Lifetime Achievement Awards to Bob Moog and Dave Smith as well as Don Buchla, Ikutaro Kakehashi, Tsutomu Katoh, Roger Linn, Tom Oberheim, Alan Pearlman, and Dave Rossum.

These were people who contributed to the early development of the music production ecosystem we know today and in fact many of them were very involved in developing products in the 1970s before MIDI was created.

At the 2025 NAMM show we will honor other people who contributed to MIDI including several people who had very long and important roles in Dave’s life -John Bowen and Karl Hirano.

John Bowen was the very first official Moog clinician and contacted Dave because her wanted to use a Sequential Circuits Model 600 Sequencer to demo the MIDI Moog. John then became one of Sequential Circuits first employees and helped design the Model 700 Sequencer and the Model 800 Programmer. It was John who helped convince Dave to develop a polyphonic synthesizer which became the Prophet 5.

Karl Hirano was a Yamaha engineer who worked on the DX7 and helped with communciation between the Japanese MIDI organization and both the International MIDI Association and the MIDI Manufacturers Association in the early days of MIDI.

Karl then helped to found the Dave Smith Division (DSD) of Yamaha when Sequential Circuits went out of business in 1987.

Karl was “traded” from Yamaha to Korg (for a player to be named later) when Yamaha closed the DSD in 1988 and Korg R&D was formed with memebrs from the original Sequential Circuits team including Dave Smith, John Bowen, Stanley Jungleib, Andrew McGowan and Scott Petersen.

Dave Smith

Dave Smith was born in San Francisco in 1950 and like Dave Rossum grew up in the Bay Area in the 1950s.

He took piano lessons as a child and started playing bass and guitar in rock bands in high school because it was after all the 1960s in San Francisco.

When the record Switched on Bach came out in 1968, Dave bought a copy of the record and was intrigued by the sounds coming from the Moog modular synth.

Just like Don Buchla 10 years earlier, he went to college at the University of California, Berkeley where he earned a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. John Bowen, who would soon have a huge impact on Dave’s future also went to UC Berkeley.

One of Dave’s college projects was a very primitive program to write music on a printer plotter.

After graduating he got a job in the Aerospace industry.

Yes, I was working in the aerospace industry. This was a time when nobody wanted to hire engineers. I was in what was to become Silicon Valley, but it was not quite Silicon Valley yet, so it was very early on in the technical revolution, I suppose you might say.
So I worked at Lockheed doing stupid work, because that was the only place I could get a job, and a friend told me he saw this synthesizer thing in a music store, and I said, “Oh, that sounds interesting.”
So I went to look at it, and it was a Minimoog, and I had no idea what it did or how it worked. It just looked cool, and it was as kind of a perfect combination of my music background and technical background.
So the next day I went to the Lockheed Credit Union and got a loan and went back and bought it, and here I am.

Dave Smith in a 2014 interview with Red Bull Academy

Sequential Circuits MODEL 600 ANALOG SEQUENCER -1974

Dave bought his first synthesizer for $1500 (a Minimoog) in 1972 and immediately started to think about designing peripheral products to get more out of the Minimoog.

He bought books about electronic circuitry and microprocessors and he studied the analog sequencers that Moog and Buchla had designed for their modular synths. Soon his hobby was becoming a business and in 1974 he formed Sequential Circuits, a name that described exactly what he was building and released the Model 600 Analog Sequencer- a 16 step sequencer using analog control voltages.

Sequential Circuits MODEL 800 DIGITAL SEQUENCER-1975

Dave was gaining more and more experience with microprocessors and the Model 800 had the ability to record 16 banks of 16 sequences. You could input the steps in real time or in step time. The Model 800 didn’t make any sound so you needed a voltage controlled synthesizer to connect it to.

It was similar to the Oberheim DS2 digital Sequencer that Tom Oberheim had released to control the Arp 2600 in 1972.

Sequential Circuits MODEL 700 PROGRAMMER -1976

First, it was all about controlling other products (like MIDI would do a few years later). The Model 700 didn’t make any sounds, it actually added programmability to either the Minimoog or the Arp 2600.

It was one of the first products that stored presets.  It could store 64 programs (8 banks of 8 programs).

You could store the settings for attack, decay, sustain and release. There was also a built-in sequencer.

Also it’s important to note that the Model 700 was really starting to look like a Sequential Circuits product with the buttons, the knobs and design elements (like the white border around the core programming area) that would soon become famous with the release of the Prophet 5.

Sequential Circuits Prophet 5- 1977

Perhaps no other synthesizer had as much impact on the professional synthesizer business around the world than the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 released in 1977.

It didn’t sell the most units -estimates range between 8000 and 6000 units of the three Prophet 5 variations created between 1977 and 1984.  The Korg M1 holds the record for largest selling synth of all time with over 300,000 sold and the Yamaha DX7 comes in second.

But the Prophet 5 was the first product where a number of important factors came together.

It had 5 voices of polyphony and each voice had 2 VCOs, a VCF with ADSR and a VCA with ADSR.

Rev. 1 and Rev. 2 models had the SSM2040 filter chip. Rev. 3 (and higher) used the CEM3320 filter.

But what really set the Prophet 5 apart was that the whole synth operated by Z-80 microcomputer that controlled the keyboard scanning and voice assignment (under a patent licensed from Dave Rossum of EMU fame), the storage of sound presets (40 memories, and later 120) and the oscillator calibration to keep the oscillators in tune.

The Polymod section was designed by Sequential’s John Bowen who created all the Prophet 5 factory Presets and who was also instrumental in MIDI’s early development.

The PolyMod sound is instantly identifiable on The Cars song “Let’s Go.

The extended version of George Clinton’s Atomic Dog also shows off the Prophet 5 Poly Mod sound.  There are also two synth bass parts-one is a Minimoog and the other is a Prophet 5.  The drum sound is a Roland TR606 played in reverse!

The intro to the video for Hall and Oates November 1981 release “I Can’t Go For That” looks like a Prophet 5 demo reel with Hall playing all the intro parts on a Prophet 5 and even changing Programs in real time.

It also features a drum part programmed by Daryl Hall on a Roland CompuRhythm  CR-78.

The Prophet 5 was an important part in the build up to MIDI and we will see how the digital sequencers that Sequential Circuits was working on would lead directly to the need for the universal digital musical interface that we now call MIDI.

In Chapter 6 and 7 of the History of MIDI, we look at how Sequential Circuits, Kawai, Korg, Roland and Yamaha came together to create MIDI and the roles that Dave, John, Karl and both Tom Oberheim and Bob Moog had in creating important personal connections for MIDI.

The first MIDI synthesizer- December, 1983

Sequential Corporate History

Sequential Circuits 1974-1987

Sequential Circuits released the products listed above and also the following products-

Studio 440 (1987)

Max (1984)

Six-Trak (1984)

Drumtraks (1984)

Multitrak (1985) ( replaced the Six Trak)

Split-8 (1985)

TOM (1985)

Prophet 2000 (1985–87)

Prophet-VS (1986–87)

Dave Smith Division of Yamaha 1987-1989

A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country

After the Prophet 5 came out, Sequential was quite successful for several years.

Eventually by 1987, Sequential ran into financial difficulties for a number of reasons.

Japanese companies were starting to produce quality synthesizers at lower prices and with superior digital signal processing.

At the same time Sequential Circuits invested heavily in other areas. The biggest push was towards computer music and the promise of a huge mass marketing opportunity for synthesizers in multimedia.

Before long, other computer games manufacturers realized the importance of having good sound generation, and in early 1983, Sequential was approached by Sente Technologies about producing a sound chip for its proposed arcade games computer. Sente Technologies was a new division of Pizza Time Theatres (the company that created the Chuck E. Cheeses restaurant brand) and was based in Milpitas, just a few blocks away from Sequential.

The software to drive it was written by Third Street Software, a
company based in Laguna Beach, south of LA. Sequential shareholder Len Sasso was a co-founder of Third Street and began working on the interface software mid-1982. “Well, I was intimately involved with that,” says Len. “I was the programming partner in a small software company making productivity software—spreadsheet, word processing, accounting apps, etc— for the Commodore 32 [PET]. We sold that company and another programmer, Tim Ryan—eventual founder of Midiman and then M-Audio— and I started a software company called Third Street Software. We got a commitment from Dave and Barb to write software for a MIDI interface they would develop.

History shows that Sequential’s pitch at computer-based music
production was indeed a taste of things to come. But the market needed time to
develop. Home computer users and musicians were still finding their feet with
regard to computer usefulness in home and professional situations. Also,
technology needed to catch up to meet musicians’ aspirations. Although the
Commodore 64 was a popular home computer, by 1986, musicians who
embraced computers preferred higher-spec units, such as the Atari ST and Apple
Mac, in conjunction with advanced software from the likes of Digidesign,
Passport Designs, Opcode Systems and Dr. T.

David Abernethy

Excerpts from David’s excellent book-
The Prophet from Silicon Valley: The complete story of Sequential Circuits

How John met Karl- The complicated story of Sequential, Otari, Yamaha and Korg

By the fall of 1987, things were pretty bad at Sequential. In fact, occasionally they couldn’t make payroll on time and had to ask employees to hold on their checks for a few days.

But soon several potential buyers appeared from Japan.

Sequential met with Bryan Lanser (former MIDI Association Exec Board member) who was working for Otari at the time. Sequential thought that the Prophet 2000 sampling technology would be a really good fit for Otari to get into the hard disk recording business.

Otari was considering acquiring Sequential and might have used the 16 bit sampling technology from the Prophet 3000 sampler to develop a digital recording system that might have put Otari ahead of Avid.

Pro Tools founders Evan Brooks and Peter Gotcher had expanded from just making EPROMs for Emu’s Drumulator and developed their Sound Designer program for the Macintosh which worked with to many other sampling keyboards, such as E-mu Emax, Akai S900, Sequential Prophet 2000, Korg DSS-1, and Ensoniq Mirage. Thanks to the universal file specification subsequently developed by Brooks with version 1.5, Sound Designer files could be transferred via MIDI between sampling keyboards of different manufacturers.

But when the second meeting with Otari was scheduled, it was people from Yamaha who showed up instead.

In the end, Yamaha acquired Sequential in December of 1987.

When John, Dave Smith and Scott Peterson took a tour of the Yamaha warehouse in late December and saw stacks of Yamaha TX16Ws, they knew that Yamaha had not acquired Sequential for the sampling technology.

Yamaha formed DSD (Dave Smith Division) and DSD waited for clear direction from Yamaha on what to design and build.

Katsuhiko “Karl” Hirano (2025 MIDI Lifetime Achievement Award winner) had worked on the DX7 with Nishimoto-san (also 2025 MIDI Lifetime Achievement Award winner) and had also helped with communications between the International MIDI Association (IMA) , the MIDI Manufacturers Association (MMA), and the Japanese MIDI Standards Committee (JMSC and precursor to AMEI) so he seemed like a logical choice to liaison between Yamaha and the new DSD.

However the relationship with Yamaha was very short lived. There were communications problems caused by the fact that there were three parties involved – for legal reasons, Yamaha Corporation of America had actually acquired DSD and had to process all the paperwork and pay everyone, but the direction came from Yamaha Corporation of Japan so DSD was always caught in the middle.

The structure hasn’t been firmed up yet. We don’t know what our name is going to be. We don’t know who to report to yet. And we don’t know how much production we’ll be doing here. What we do know is that we’re starting production on the Prophet 3000. The VS won’t be continued. Neither will the 440. I think Sequential design philosophies and some of our innovations will continue. I just don’t know if they’ll have the Sequential name on them. To me, we’ll be getting the best of both world.

Dave Smith

May 1988 Issue of Keyboard Magazine

Dave and John (along with a team that included Alex Limberis from Ensoniq) worked for 2 years on physical modeling and softsynth projects, but never came out with a product under the Yamaha brand name.

Korg R&D 1989-1994

In May 1989 the Korg R&D group in California was founded which went on to produce the innovative and commercially successful Wavestation synthesizer and other technology. We will tell the story of the creation of Korg R&D and the Wavestation in another installment of MIDI History.

Korg R&D released a number of spinoff of the Wavestation and also started to work on the core technology for the Korg Oasys.

Seer Systems 1994-2001

Smith reunited with Stanley Jungleib who had worked with at Sequential and served as president at Seer Systems which developed the world’s first software based synthesizer running on a PC.

This synth was commissioned by Intel to prove the power of Intel CPUs. 

The  second generation of Seer Systems software was licensed to Creative Labs in 1996 and used in the Creative Labs’ AWE 64 line of soundcards which were developed by Dave Rossum from Emu (Emu having been acquired by Creative Labs in 1993).

The third generation of Seer Systems software synthesizers was called Reality and was released in 1997.

Dave Smith Instruments 2002-2015

In 2002, Smith launched Dave Smith Instruments, a manufacturer of hardware electronic musical instruments.

Dave Smith Instruments released the following products:

Pro 2 (2014)

Evolver (2002)

Poly Evolver (2005)

Mono Evolver (2006)

Prophet 08 (2007–16)

Mopho (2008)

Tetra (2009)

Tempest (2011) co-created with Roger Linn

Prophet 12 (2013)

Sequential Circuits 2015-2021

In 2015, Smith regained the rights to the Sequential name from Yamaha, and released the Prophet-6 under that name.

Ikutaro Kakehashi, who had worked with Smith to create MIDI and was in failing health reached out directly to the President of Yamaha at the time, Tak Nakata.

Kakehashi said: “I feel that it’s important to get rid of unnecessary conflict among electronic musical instrument companies. That is exactly the spirit of MIDI. For this reason, I personally recommended that the President of Yamaha, Mr. Nakata, return the rights to the Sequential name to Dave Smith.”

Kakehashi passed away at age 87 in 2017.

Dave Smith Instruments was rebranded as Sequential in 2018.

Sequential Products released since 2015

Trigon (2022–present)

Prophet-6 (2015–present)

OB-6 (2015–present) (co-created with Tom Oberheim)

Tom designed the VCO and VCF sections and Dave provided the arpeggiator/step sequencer, effects and production capabilities. After 30 years, two of the pioneers of modern synthesis were working together to design new products.

Prophet Rev2 (2017–present)

Prophet X (2018–present)

Sequential and Focusrite

On 27, April 2021, Sequential announced that it had been acquired by the British audio technology company Focusrite.

Dave Smith passed away on 31 May, 2022 just a few days before his friend for many years Tom Oberheim would launch the OB-X8 at the 2022 June NAMM show.

Sequential Products released since 2018

Prophet X (2018–present)

Pro 3 (2020–present)

Take 5 (2021–present)

Oberheim Electronics reopened and Oberheim OB-X8 released

At the 2022 June NAMM show, Oberheim Electronics showcased the new OB-X8.  What was supposed to be a joyous celebration was dampened by the news that just days before the June NAMM show, Dave Smith had passed away.

This is a picture from 2019 of Dave Smith, Tom Oberheim, Marcus Ryle (an engineer at Oberheim when still in his teens and founder of Line 6) and Roger Linn.

More information about Dave Smith and Sequential

Sequential

Sequential was founded led by legendary instrument designer and Grammy-winner Dave Smith. In 1977 Dave designed the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5, the world’s first fully-programmable polyphonic synth, and the first musical instrument with an embedded microprocessor. Sequential released many innovative instruments and drum machines over the next 10 years.

Today, Sequential’s talented and dedicated team of designers and synth fanatics continue Dave’s legacy in accordance with the spirit of innovation and ingenuity Dave embodied and imparted during his lifetime.

https://www.sequential.com/

Sequential Prophet-5 – Milestone and Musical Legend

https://greatsynthesizers.com/en/review/sequential-prophet-5-milestone-and-musical-legend/

Sequential Circuits Prophet-600 (EMM Apr 83)

Sequential Circuits Prophet-600, Electronics & Music Maker, Apr 1983

Dave Smith | Oral Histories | NAMM.org

Dave Smith was the founder of Sequential Circuits and inventor of the polyphonic synthesizer, the Prophet 5.

https://ww1.namm.org/library/oral-history/dave-smith

A personal note from the author (Athan Billias):

Because of my decades long association with Korg and Yamaha, I have a lot of first hand knowledge of many of the people and events covered in this article.

However I want to acknowledge David Abernethy who wrote “The Prophet From Silicon Valley- The Complete Story Of Sequential Circuits”.

It is packed with tons of details and is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the history of synthesizers and MIDI.

Below is a link to David’s book on Amazon.

I’d also like to acknowledge Stanley Jungleib who worked at Sequential Circuits and Seer Systems and very closely with John Bowen and Dave Smith during much of his career.

Stanley’s history of MIDI from the draft version of the Prophet 600 manual (which was never shipped to customers) was invaluable in piecing together the early history of MIDI before its adoption.