The first, Revision 1, was hand-assembled and produced quickly to generate initial revenue only 182 were made. Smith demonstrated the Prophet-5 at NAMM in January 1978 and shipped the first models later that year. Smith and Bowen removed half the electronics, reducing the voices to five and creating the Prophet-5. Initially, Smith and Bowen developed the Prophet-10, a synthesizer with ten voices of polyphony however, it was unstable and quickly overheated, creating tuning problems. When no instrument emerged, in early 1977, Smith quit his job to work full-time on the idea. He did not pursue the idea, assuming Moog or ARP would design the instrument first. Smith conceived the idea of combining them with synthesizer chips to create a programmable synthesizer this would allow users to save sounds to memory, rather than having to recreate them manually. At the time, Smith had a full-time job working with microprocessors, then a new technology. The Prophet-5 was created in 1977 by Dave Smith and John Bowen at Sequential Circuits. Problems playing this file? See media help. Bass and percussion come in at 20 seconds. He is joined at ten seconds by Paul McCandless on soprano saxophone, with synth and horn each repeating the theme. The Prophet-5 has been widely used in popular music and film soundtracks.įrom the 1987 jazz album Ecotopia by the band Oregon, this song starts with the Prophet-10 played solo by Ralph Towner.
![polyphonic analog synth polyphonic analog synth](http://analoguediehard.com/studio/keyboards/oberheim_obx/oberheim_obx-internal-sm.jpg)
#Polyphonic analog synth software
Sequential introduced new versions in 2020, and it has been emulated in software synthesizers and hardware.
![polyphonic analog synth polyphonic analog synth](https://tabmuse.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/PolyM-Screenshot-768x576.jpg)
In 1981, Sequential released a 10-voice, double-keyboard version, the Prophet-10. : 385īetween 19, about 6,000 units were produced across three revisions. This allowed users to store sounds and recall them instantly rather than having to reprogram them manually whereas synthesizers had once created unpredictable sounds, the Prophet-5 moved synthesizers to producing "a standard package of familiar sounds". 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 fully programmable memory. The Prophet-5 is an analog synthesizer manufactured by the American company Sequential.
#Polyphonic analog synth manuals
A Prophet-10 Rev 4, a 10-voice version of the Prophet-5Ĥ0 patches (120 patches on later units, 200 patches on the Rev4 iteration)Ħ1 keys (Prophet-5 (all versions), Prophet-10 (1977, Rev 4))ĭouble 61 key manuals (Prophet-10 (1981-84))