In the late ‘60s, music technology was expensive, unwieldy and mostly out of reach. Synths were the size of refrigerators and access was limited to well-funded studios and successful artists. But, all that began to change in the ‘80s, as companies like Moog began shrinking modular systems into practical, portable formats.
One of the central figures in that shift was Dave Smith, who founded Sequential Circuits in 1974. By 1978, Smith had launched the Prophet-5, the world’s first fully programmable polyphonic synth and a landmark moment in music tech history. Over the next decade, Sequential released a series of influential instruments that helped to shape the sound of modern music.
