'Father of MIDI' Dave Smith Dies At 72
Sad news from long-time Slashdot reader NormalVisual: Synthtopia reports that Dave Smith, founder of the legendary synthesizer manufacturer Sequential Circuits and creator of the MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) standard, died this past Wednesday. Some of Smith's notable creations include the Prophet 5, one of the first commercially available digitally-controlled polyphonic analog synthesizers, and the Prophet-600, the first available device to offer MIDI... Smith, who held degrees in both computer science and electronic engineering from UC Berkeley, was scheduled to appear at this year's National Association of Music Merchant (NAMM), but died suddenly. No cause of death has yet been released. Smith's Wikipedia entry calls his 1977 Prophet 5 "the world's first microprocessor-based musical instrument" and a crucial step forward as a programmable synthesizer. And this week Billboad magazine hailed Smith as "a key figure in the development of synth technology in the 1970s and 1980s." With Sequential (originally known as Sequential Circuits), Smith released various sequencers and programmers to be used with the Moog and ARP synthesizers prevalent at the time, before designing his own release: the Prophet-5, first polyphonic synth with programmable memory, to allow sounds to be stored and re-accessed at any time. The Prophet-5 quickly became the gold standard in its field, used in the recording both of epochal '80s blockbuster LPs like Michael Jackson's Thriller and Madonna's Like a Virgin and envelope-pushing scores for era composers like John Carpenter and Vangelis.... Smith's greatest legacy might be the introduction of MIDI to synth technology... Smith's invention (along with Roland pioneer Ikutaro Kakehashi and Sequential engineer Chet Wood) of MIDI allowed unprecedented levels of synchronization and communication between different instruments, computers and other recording equipment, which was previously incredibly difficult to achieve — particularly between equipment designed by separate manufacturers. The innovation of MIDI helped facilitate the explosion of forward-thinking programming and creativity throughout the industry of the '80s, essentially making the future of pop music accessible to all. Smith would also develop the world's first computer synthesizer as president of Seer Systems in the '90s, and launched the company Dave Smith Instruments, an instruments manufacturer, in 2002. He has won many lifetime awards for his work in the field of musical technology, including a Technical Grammy for MIDI's creation in 2013 (an honor he shared with Kakehashi).
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