Library Organization

Sequential

Dave Smith's synthesizer company, founded 1974 as Sequential Circuits, maker of the Prophet-5 and driving force behind MIDI.

Type
Organization
Creator
Dave Smith
Subjects
Instruments Technology
Official site

Founded by Dave Smith in San Jose in 1974 as Sequential Circuits, the company released the Prophet-5 in 1978 — the first fully programmable polyphonic synthesizer, and the first musical instrument built around an embedded microprocessor — before Smith led the development of the MIDI specification in 1981, coining the term itself. Sequential Circuits closed and its name passed to Yamaha in 1987; Smith continued building instruments as Dave Smith Instruments from 2002, and in 2018, after Yamaha returned the name in 2015, rebranded the company back to Sequential.