Love the T Brian! You rule. ; )
Update: I sometimes assume that anyone that comes to this site knows who Dave Smith is. I know I wasn't born knowing, so if you don't, in short, he was the founder of Sequential Circuits, maker of the Prophet 5 (the first full programmable polyphonic analog synth with patch memories), the Prophet VS, Prophet T8, Pro One and more. He now has a little company called Dave Smith Instruments, where you will find the Evolver and Poly Evolver line of synths. Oh, one more thing: he was the guy that brought us MIDI. Yeah, that guy. Wow. I am not worthy, I am not worthy... : )
BTW, if you came across this post directly, check out this previous post for shots of the event. Also check out this post of John Bowen talking about his time at Sequential Circuits.
I´m a little tired of Dave Smith self advertising. On an interview on youtube he says that he did all the Prophet-5 design. That´s a lie, as emu´s Scott Wedge and Dave Rossum also participated on the design, not to mention the desing of the SSM chips inside it and the keyboard scanning system.
ReplyDeleteThe MIDI idea came from Ikutaro Kakehashi, Roland´s founder. In fact MIDI as we know it has a lot more in common with Roland´s DCB than Smith´s sugested USI. USI wasn´t better than MIDI, btw.
Vector synthesis wasn´t Smith´s idea either. Chris Meyer, Sequencial´s ex-employee invented that.
hey JZ that's not self advertising, that's merely Matrix's summary and opinion of the guy ...I merely grabbed Dave and made him pose for this shot with the T-shirt 'cause I figured it would give Matrix a thrill....thanks for the update and FWIW I found a pin with some angels dancing on it , maybe you could count them for me
ReplyDeleteLOL... it's actually a brilliant shot... being a fan of Matrixsynth site it's rewarding to see "Matrixsynth" tagged with famous people woohoo!!!
ReplyDeleteHey Matrixsynth... if you are releasing your T-shirt again please drop me an email or post it up on your site and I will be the first to grab one!!!
:D
Sorry Brian, I didn´t want to offend you, or anybody. But I read LOTS of interviews to Dave in my life, and I felt the need to say he takes credit for a lot more things that he should. I think there´s so many anonymous synth heros like Kakehashi, Rossum, Wedge, Ryle, Palm, Stenzel, Mori, Mieda, etc. that deserve a *little* more press.
ReplyDeleteCool T-shirt BTW!
Dave wasn't self promoting himself at the AH Bay Area gathering. In fact, I think the fame scared him away.
ReplyDeleteI was kind of funny, he was there for a few minutes. At one point he looked around, saw everybody in the room staring and pointing at him, and then boned-out of there! You couldn't help but get the feeling he just didn't want to pose in front of everybody's rig. ;)
he prolly thought he was gunna get tied down with patchcords and raped by synth nerds. those gatherings are such a geekfest.
ReplyDeleteYep, Brian said it, those are my words, Dave isn't self advertising anything. JZ, which video are you referring to? Post a link and I'll take a look. I specifically remember Dave Smith calling out that he did not invent MIDI but rather was a major proponent behind it. This is true. You'll note that my post specifically did not call him out as the creator of MIDI and that I posted a link to wikipedia on MIDI so anyone could read the history for themselves. You don't have to knock Dave to give credit to others. And this post was about the shot and the shirt with a mention of who Dave Smith is. It would be kind of odd to go on tangents about others. It would be like putting up a pot of Bob Moog and saying btw, there was Don Buchla, and Tom Oberheim, oh, and Dave Smith, and... The post is not meant to be a history of synthesis and MIDI or even Sequential Circuits, jut the man in the shot.
ReplyDeleteSonicbrat, I'll definitely be putting up a post when they are ready again. Thanks. : )
ReplyDeleteJZ - hey no offense taken, you have to remember that I did my post at 6AM this morning BEFORE my caffeine fix, and hence my angels dig, ....but I'll issue you this tongue-in-cheek challenge , you get matrix to post a picture of you with Ikutaro Kakehashi or Chris Meyer at your local AH gig and you can have bragging rights 8-)
ReplyDeleteI agree with phloem that Dave didn't stay long, but he split because he had other commitments. The fact that he went out of his way yesterday to be there was way cool....and the real stealth at the event was I was told after the fact that Don Buchla was there for a short while too, and I didn't even know it, damn.... if I could have got that shot, matrix would have had cardiac arrest
ReplyDeleteI was talking with Mike Brown from Livewire when Don Buchla walked in. It was kind of funny, we were talking about how there were so many synth designers in the area and in walked Don. Sure enough he left pretty quickly, I don't think he even spoke to Chris Muir who had his Buchla there. Later I stepped outside for some fresh air and relief from the noise :-) when I saw Don and a friend walking back in a second time. When I returned a short time later he wasn't there. Perhaps we all imagined it :-)
ReplyDeleteI was a little disappointed that Dave Smith left so soon it would have been fantastic to speak to him. Dave was anything but self promoting - he was very low key.
Total kudos to Robert Rich. I spoke with him at length and he couldn't have been more approachable. He brought his modular and spent a lot of time changing patches and describing what he was doing, techniques he used and capabilities of different modules. Great guy.
Thanks to Brian Comnes for his efforts seting this up. I look forward to next year when I hope to bring a restored 2600.