Dave Smith demos all the features of the Prophet 12 [Video]

I'm a huge fan of everything Dave Smith does, and the Prophet 12 is no exception.  I'm normally a pretty die hard analog fan, but the P12 shows the strength of 4 digital oscillators, plus sub oscillator.  This thing sounds absolutely huge, and the quick modulation routing is fantastic.  Dave has really outdone himself.  Check out this demonstration of all the cool features, and tell me you don't want this thing.

Dave Smith & Roger Linn Interview with Ean Golden

Dave Smith and Roger Linn interview.  Nice and lengthy.  Need I say more?

Don't forget to check out my interview with Dave back in 2011.

Prophet 12 Demos by Peter Dyer, playing M83

 Looking to hear more of the new Prophet 12 by Dave Smith Instruments?  Pete Dyer (peterkeys88 on YouTube) has been lucky enough to play around with the new monster synth, and he's done a couple demos of recent electronic tracks from M83 and Big Black Delta from the Tron Remixed Soundtrack.

This thing sounds awesome!  Can't wait to hear more demos and start hearing it on records.

The Prophet 12: Dave Smith's Newest Monster is Genius

DSI unveiled their newest synth today, which Dave is calling the finest he's ever made. It's the Prophet-12, an incredible 12 voice, 4 oscillator-per-voice synthesizer for the price of $2999.  This keyboard has everything.  While the oscillators seem to be purely digital, the VCA and filters remain analog.  There's an effects section, with delay and distortion.  There are knobs to change the character of the oscillators.  Just by hearing it, you can tell its one of the most fantastic and innovative synths around.  I applaud Dave and his small team of engineers.  He's created a synthesizer that you could sell the rest of your gear for and not regret it.

Don't just take my word for it.  Listen below, in DSI's official video, and an additional demo.

"ANAHEIM, Calif.—January 24, 2013—Dave Smith Instruments today introduced a new polyphonic synthesizer, the Prophet 12, at the 2013 NAMM Show. “After 35 years of creating synths, this is simply my best synth yet,” said Smith. “We sort of started from scratch on this one rather than spinning off another product from our previous designs.”

At twelve voices, the Prophet 12 boasts the greatest polyphony of any instrument designed by Smith. Each voice features four oscillators capable of generating classic and complex waveforms, a sub-oscillator, resonant analog low- and high-pass filters, and analog VCAs. The new Character section adds a variety of wave shaping and sound sculpting options, like Drive, Hack, Decimation, Girth, and Air. Additional features include a tuned feedback path, a four-tap stereo delay per voice, expanded arpeggiator functionality, deep modulation capabilities, and bi-timbral operation. The LFOs, delay, and arpeggiator can all be synced, either to the internal clock or an external MIDI clock. Two programmable position- and pressure-sensitive touch sliders take the performance controls beyond the standard pitch and mod wheels (also included).

“We’re already blown away by the sonic breadth of this synthesizer’s new voice architecture,” Smith continued. “It doesn’t sound like anything else and I’m very excited for people to hear it.”

The Prophet 12 is expected to be available Q2 of 2013 with a projected MAP of $2,999."

Dave Smith Instruments announces the Mopho x4

From GearJunkies:
"Dave Smith Instruments is just a week away from introducing DSI's new Mopho x4 synthesizer keyboard to the world. This new synth is polyphonic Mopho keyboard! The Mopho x4 is the newest addition to DSI's revered line of analog subtractive synthesizers. Building upon the same award winning voice architecture of the Mopho and Mopho Keyboard, the Mopho x4 boasts huge sound and 4 voice polyphony in an ideally sized, portable, and elegantly designed package. Use it to create huge unison basses, creamy leads, maniacal sequences, and ethereal pads. The Mopho x4 is sure to satisfy all your polyphonic analog synthesis needs.

Awesome Music Store: Robotspeak in San Francisco

Found this cool little gem through Dave Smith Instruments.  It's a piece on CNET about Robotspeak, an electronic music store in San Francisco, California, specializing in analog gear and circuit bent instruments.  Here's a perfect little store for all the synth and sound lovers.  You'll find gear here you can't find at your local big box store.  Check out a full article here.

Dave Smith Interview: We talk Tempest with a synth legend

As some of you may have noticed, I recently changed the header of the site to a certain familiar font-- that of Dave Smith Instrument's logo.  It's commemorating the release of the new Tempest, DSI's brand new analog/digital hybrid drum machine.  I'd been trying to score an interview with Dave for a couple months now, but he's been quite busy at work on his newest classic.  Finally, that interview is up today.

To call Dave an audio electronic engineer who owns is own company just doesn't quite cut it.  He's very much a legend in the world of synthesizers.  If you don't know why, you'd have to try hard to not find his influence.  Dave started Sequential Circuits back in the mid-70s, a music company.  They created the first programmable polyphonic synthesizer, the Prophet-5, in 1977.  Prophet-5s are still highly sought after today and is arguably the greatest synthesizer ever made.  In addition to that and other great products made by SCI, Dave helped create MIDI, the universal music standard we all use for our keyboards-- he even coined the term.  Sequential Circuits was eventually bought out and Dave had stints at other companies making digital products, only to return to his roots more recently with Dave Smith Instruments, who've also remade his classic Prophet-5 as the Prophet '08, in addition to other new classics like the Evolver and Mopho.

I can't help but feel lucky to get a chance to chat with such a legendary name in electronic music.  I sit here with my Mopho Keyboard and my Tetra just within reach, two of DSI's recent creations, which I love to play.  The Tempest marks a huge moment for many synthusiasts as it's a truly rare breed-- drum machines aren't as popular, let alone an analog and digital hybrid.  While I haven't tried a Tempest yet and there aren't many (if any) reviews out yet, early impressions say Dave has once again set the bar incredibly high for competitors with a new classic.  Check out what Dave has to say on Roger Linn and the Tempest below.

The DSI Tempest is almost here...

All you lovers of drum beats and Analog/ Digital combos can rejoice that the much sought after Dave Smith Instruments Tempest is almost here!

The release date of this soon to be legend has been clicked back a few times, but it looks as though we've just about made it-- I've most recently heard it should be just about ready in another week.  If you haven't heard about this thing, be prepared to be talking about it for the next twenty years-- this is just about as classic as it's going to get.  Dave Smith, who helped pioneer polyphony in synths and created the Prophet 5 and Pro One, teamed up with Roger Linn, who created the LinnDrum and other classic drum machines.  Mixing these two together is a recipe for awesome, as they're both incredible innovators in music technology.  Great drum machines seem to be dying down, and analog drum sounds are becoming even rarer, but the Tempest is going to change all that.  Not only does it feature analog oscillators and the warm Curtis filter found in the other DSI products, but it also includes 2 digital oscillators per voice as well.  Not only that, but it also has samples of Roger Linn's older drum machine creations.  This represents such an important step in music tech because of the beautiful marriage of analog and digital sounds, which compliment each other so nicely, as we could see in the DSI Evolver and PolyEvolver.  This is pretty much the perfect piece of equipment if you're looking for a high end drum machine of today-- but enough gushing, watch the video below.

Hopefully we'll see this thing shipping in another week or so-- I'm sure the last little bits are just tiny software issues ironing out and are worth the wait.  After this, who knows what's next for DSI?  They have synths in pretty much every price bracket... perhaps we'll see a keyboard version of Tetra, or something even grander...

Frankmusik Interview: On Do It In The A.M., Erasure, and the perfect Pop Record

Frankmusik is a really exciting artist for me to be able to interview.  His music helped kick start my initial interest in electronic music and the 80s revival.  His track "3 Little Words" off his record Complete Me, along with its awesome retro-feel video was the start of my own personal music evolution.  Not only was "3 Little Words" great, but the rest of the record was an awesome collection of beautifully mixed vintage and new elements, as it featured old-school chip tune style sounds, as well as borderline show-tune piano all expertly crafted. To this date, Frankmusik has inspired many, but no one else has come close to his unique style of beautiful vocals over warm synths, catchy hooks, and classic piano.

Of course, when I heard FM had moved to L.A. for his next record (if I recall correctly, I remember him tweeting in 2009 how if Complete Me wasn't a hit, he wanted to move to L.A. and make a pop record) I was a little concerned.  In my opinion, he'd have to change drastically for US radio.  Was the singer selling out?  My concerns grew when his collaborations with Far East Movement, who are very much in the rap/pop realm of the US currently, landed him on Jimmy Kimmel Live.  Was FM trying to be the next US pop star? Would he trade his awesome original niche for a taste of some stateside fame and boring electropop?  I voiced these concerns via Twitter and that's when FM first got in contact with me.

A little over a month ago, I chatted with Frankmusik about his new record, Do It In The A.M., but didn't get enough information at the time for a proper interview.  After seeing him in Philadelphia, he promised to finish up some follow up questions I had sent him via email.  The first set below are from our chat over Skype, and the second half is from our email correspondance.  I've edited the Skype chat a bit to make it more readable and taken out some dialogue, but there was no edits to the words.  Enjoy!

Alesis Andromeda A6

Ah, the Alesis Andromeda A6.  One of the true modern analog beasts.  Boasting 16 voices of analog grit, this synth is raw power.  While it's not the prettiest looking board (maybe one of the ugliest even), it's really just telling us not to judge a book by its cover.  The Andromeda boasts sine, triangle, square, saw up and saw down waves (one of the very few analogs to have sine waves), as well as 32 total filters.  No wonder this thing cost more than 3 grand USD.  That may seem like alot of dough for a keyboard, but keep in mind that Moog likes to charge 3.5 grand for a Voyager, and 5 grand for a Voyager XL (that has the same amount of keys as the Andromeda).  The engineers behind this beast were brilliant.  You can turn off the automatic tuning of the keyboard to give it more vintage warmth, or snap them in to place for a nice tuning.  The synth also has some nice digital effects-- don't see those everyday on an analog either.  I highly recommend you click this picture to get a better look at all the great features it has.  Alesis does wonders in getting so much in for the cost.

Sadly, it's already out of production (I'm assuming the reason is because of the hefty price tag).  Hey Alesis, do you want a million dollar idea?  Take what you've made here, scale it down to 5 or 6 voices, give it a more vintage style of control, and do whatever else you need to to make it cheap as possible.  Hell, you can even break it down further than that for a 1 voice, 3 oscillator analog keyboard as well.  I KNOW that Alesis is capable of that-- their engineers are brilliant at packing value into tight spaces.  Making something smaller and more entry level would appeal to analog fanatics and newbies alike, and in turn might even give DSI and Moog a run for their money!  Let's not forget that Korg is slowly amassing research to enter the analog market again as well... perhaps in another 5 year we'll not only have DSI and Moog, but Korg and Alesis with great analogs of their own!  Now, if only someone could whip Roland into making new Jupiters and Junos, we'd all be happy about our keys like we were in the 70s and 80s. 

But in the mean time, Alesis, about that smaller analog synth?  Pretty please?

Prophet 5: Analog vs Digital

I was checking out these videos yesterday, and found them pretty interesting.  This Youtube user is comparing the patches found in the original Prophet 5 to the Arturia Prophet 5.  Some of the patches are almost identical.  While it's unfair to truly judge due to the sound quality Youtube offers (I'd love to see someone do this and upload it to SoundCloud), it does show that you could probably get away with certain plugs in mixes, especially for background sounds.  It would also be interesting to compare these to the modern Prophet 08.  While Arturia's plugins are of the most demanding CPU wise, they are among the best.  Check out the videos and try to hear some differences yourself.  Of course, don't get me wrong, I'd take real analog any day...

Patch Breakdown: The Prophet Piano

Mozart - Sonata in C using the Prophet Piano Patch by The Synth Symp

Today I'll be breaking down a patch for you guys.  This was one of the original intentions of the site, so hopefully this will happen more often from now on, since patch building is essentially the heart of synthesis.  You can have a great synth with crap sounds if you're not careful.  I didn't create this sound but I'd like to start with it as a template to what the future of this will look like.  Above is the Prophet Piano patch (No. 77 on my DSI Tetra) playing Mozart's Sonata in C (MIDI from this website).  I think it's a decent stab at the sound of a real piano, and should be easily recreated on any number of synths.  Hopefully this tutorial will give you a really great understanding of what is happening in this sound.

DSI Tetra Sequence Demo

DSI Tetra Sequence Demo by The Synth Symp

Here's a little demo using my Tetra I got for Christmas.  The Tetra is a great little piece of synth with an unfortunate interface and app holding it back.  It's basically a 4-voice Prophet, but with even more features like sub-oscillators.  The app that Soundtower makes (I won't even link it, it's that bad) doesn't play nice with DAWs, however, so any programming you'd like to do while recording this synth requires you to use the onboard controls, which is a fair amount of menu-diving, unfortunately.  The app on its own works brilliantly for me but I've heard a ton of complaints from others, however, which is why I've joined the CTRLR crew (I've made a post about it earlier.  MIDI controllers for every synth!).  Let's hope Dave Smith and his crew cook up a Tetra keyboard sometime soon, otherwise I'll end up buying a Mopho keyboard to help this thing out (the Mopho keyboard's knobs map directly to the Tetra and they can be polychained).  Enjoy!  I think this turned out way better than I expected it would.  The Tetra packs some great sounds.

And of course, if you want to see anything on this blog, shoot me an email (thesynthesizersympathizer@gmail.com) or find me on twitter (@thesynthsymp) and follow/ @ reply me.  I'd love to hear what you guys want to see!  And if you want me to keep making content, click an ad or throw in a buck in the ole donate on the top left.


Also, don't forget to check out the new Facebook Page!