Dave Smith (engineer)

Dave Smith is an engineer and musician who has pioneered many groundbreaking music technologies. Smith was responsible for the first polyphonic and microprocessor-controlled synthesizer, the Prophet 5, and later the multitimbral synthesizer.^[1] He is also referred to as the "Father of MIDI" for his role in the development of MIDI, now a standard interface protocol for electronic instruments and recording/pro audio equipment.^[2]

History

Smith has degrees in both Computer Science and Electronic Engineering from UC Berkeley. He purchased a Minimoog in 1972 and later built his own analog sequencer, founding Sequential Circuits in 1974 and advertising his product for sale in Rolling Stone.^[3][4] By 1977 he was working at Sequential Circuits full-time, and later that year he designed the Prophet 5, the world's first microprocessor-based musical instrument and also the first programmable polyphonic synth,^[5] a functionality adopted by virtually all synthesizer designs ever since. Sequential Circuits went on to become one of the most successful music synthesizer manufacturers of the time.

In 1981 Smith set out to create a standard protocol for communication between electronic musical instruments from different manufacturers worldwide. He presented a paper outlining the idea of a Universal Synthesizer Interface (USI) to the Audio Engineering Society (AES) in 1981 after meetings with Tom Oberheim and Roland's Ikutaro Kakehashi. After some enhancements and revisions, the new standard was introduced as "Musical Instrument Digital Interface" (MIDI) at the Winter NAMM Show in 1983, when a Sequential Circuits Prophet-600 was successfully connected to a Roland Jupiter-6. In 1987 he was named a Fellow of the AES for his continuing work in the area of music synthesis.^[6]

After Sequential, Smith was President of DSD, Inc, a Research and Development Division of Yamaha, where he worked on physical modeling synthesis and software synthesizer concepts. In May 1989 he started the Korg R&D group in California, which went on to produce the innovative and commercially successful Wavestation synthesizer and other technology.

Smith went on to serve as President at Seer Systems^[7] and developed the world's first software based synthesizer running on a PC. This synth, commissioned by Intel, was demonstrated by Andy Grove in a Comdex keynote speech in 1994. The second generation of this software synthesizer sold over 10 million copies, as a result of being licensed to Creative Labs in 1996; it was responsible for 32 of the 64 voices in Creative Labs' AWE 64 line of soundcards.

The third generation of Smith's software synthesizer, renamed Reality, was the world's first fully professional software synthesizer, and was released in 1997. Dave was both the lead engineer on Reality, and wrote all the low-level optimized floating point synthesis code. Reality was the recipient of a 1998 Editors' Choice Award, and earned Electronic Musician Magazine's highest possible rating.

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

In 2005, Smith was inducted into the Mix Foundation TECnology (Technical Excellence and Creativity) Hall of Fame for the MIDI specification,^[8] and in 2013, he and Ikutaro Kakehashi received a Technical Grammy for their contributions to the development of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) technology.^[9]

In 2015, Smith regained the rights to the Sequential name from Yamaha, and released the Prophet-06 under that name. The instrument, a spiritual successor of the original Prophet-5, has been very popular.

Awards

• January 2013: Technical Grammy (along with Ikutaro Kakehashi) for the creation of MIDI.
• September 2012: Keyboard Magazine Hall of Fame
• September 2005: Induction into the TECnology (Technical Excellence and Creativity) Hall of Fame at the AES show by Mix Foundation.
• October 1987: Received Audio Engineering Society (AES) Fellowship Award, for having made a valuable contribution to the advancement in or dissemination of knowledge of audio engineering or in the promotion of its application in practice.^[10]

Interviews

• "Oral History: Dave Smith explains pieces of his life story and career", NAMM Oral History Library, Jan 2005
• "Dave Smith In His Own Words", Francis Preve, Keyboard Magazine, Jul 2012
• Dave Smith: Sequential Circuits, Korg, Yamaha, soft synths, and his new Evolver synths., Gearwire.com, 2006
• Dave Smith: The father of MIDI Mac Music, Oct 2003
• Interview With Dave Smith KVR

External links

• Dave Smith Instruments

References