The Prophet from Silicon Valley

  • Ich weiß nicht, ob das bereits irgendwo erwähnt wurde:


    David Abernethy hat ein Buch über die Geschichte von Sequential Circuits geschrieben, dem Synthesizer-Hersteller, der die legendären Prophet-Synthesizer entwickelt hat, die unter anderem von Tony, Phil und Peter genutzt wurden. Der Band beinhaltet neben technischen Details auch Anekdoten aus kürzlich mit einigen Sequential-Nutzern geführten Interviews. Zu den Musikern, die von Abernethy interviewt wurden, zählen auch Tony Banks und Larry Fast. Da es ja hier im Forum einige Musiker und Equipment-Interessierte gibt, dachte ich mir, dass dieses Buch zumindest eine Erwähnung wert sein sollte.


    Hier geht's zum Amazon-Link: http://www.amazon.de/Prophet-S…ry+of+sequential+circuits

  • [Habe dieses Interview mit Tony bei Sound on Sound (https://www.soundonsound.com/s…articles/retroprophet.htm) gefunden]


    Tony Banks On Prophets Large And Small

    I interviewed Tony Banks of Genesis in 1994, and we spent a considerable amount of time discussing Prophets.


    "The Prophet 5 had a real roundness to its sound and was, as far as I was concerned, the first polysynth that sounded really musical. So I used one for recording our album Abacab in 1981. The Prophet 10 was just an extension of that. For example, the track 'Man on the Corner' has two tracks of Prophet 5 that were recorded separately in the studio. These were factory voices, simply because Phil [collins] wrote the track on an un-reprogrammed Prophet 5, and I was able to reproduce it live using the Prophet 10 by allocating the different patches to the two keyboards.


    "At the time, my live setup was limited to just four keyboards. The Prophet 10 was used for synthesizer and organ voices, while the solos were played on an ARP Quadra which had replaced my earlier ARP 2600 monosynth. I also used a Yamaha CP70B electric grand piano and a Roland VP330 Vocoder Plus that had been introduced to recreate the choral and strings voices of my Mellotron. Actually, there was a fifth instrument -- a Prophet 5 -- on the other side of the stage, and I used this for playing 'Who Done It'. This was a tune written around torturing the Prophet by stepping through the programs while playing the riff to the song. This did some very strange things, producing some unpleasant sounds and even changing key, but I liked it. Furthermore, it was consistent, so I could reproduce the effect live. It sounded like I was playing many more instruments than just the single Prophet 5.


    "My favourite use for the Prophet 10 was to produce big organ sounds. Allocating four oscillators to each key meant that I could imitate four drawbars to build genuine organ sounds. It was the first time that I successfully got rid of my Hammond for live work. I even found the 10 to be reliable except for the tape-based voice storage. Consequently, I occasionally had to reprogram it, and we carried a spare machine for emergencies. Unfortunately, this didn't sound the same as my first-choice instrument. In particular, the tuning was different, and this was critical on, for example, 'Dodo' which sounded quite different on the spare synth.


    "The best sounds on our next album, Genesis (1983) were also from the Prophet 10. The big chords -- organ-like but with 'stringiness' -- on 'Mama' were Prophet sounds, as was the low drone that was created using Unison mode. At that time I also had a Yamaha CS80 and a touch-sensitive Prophet T8, but by then other sounds and types of synthesis were coming along, and as far as I was concerned, the emergence of digital synthesis and sampling on the Emulator I ended the era of the big analogue polysynth.


    "Nevertheless, I liked the Prophet era of instruments because you could home in and tweak the sounds so easily. In fact, as soon as I received my Prophet 10, I dumped the factory sounds and started programming the instrument again. I miss this immediacy with modern sample-based instruments such as the Roland JD800 which I used on We Can't Dance (1992). On these you have to choose the partial you want to edit, adjust that, then choose another. The D50 also suffered from this, and the Yamaha DX7 was the worst. Sometimes this isn't too much of a problem. For example, the Korg Wavestation has some great factory sounds (such as the one I used on 'Fading Lights'), but I would still love modern instruments to have arrays of knobs like the Prophets.


    "I suppose that the Prophet 10 was the peak of pre-digital big analogue synthesis. But keyboards tend to improve and, unlike guitars, where a 1950s instrument can be superior to a 1990s model, you don't lose too much if you move on."

    [Blockierte Grafik: https://www.soundonsound.com/images/regulars/sos_end.gif]
    Published in SOS March 1999

    The girl from all those songs
    Who made everything feel right
    She came in like an angel, into your lonely life
    And filling your world with light
    Oh, and everybody told you "you're oh so lucky"
    ___
    Mein Iona-Thread: Iona

    Meine Musiksammlung: Discogs

    Mein Blog: http://earl-of-mar.blogspot.de/

  • Ja, kenne ich. Schon lustig, wie sich die Zeiten wieder ändern:


    "I suppose that the Prophet 10 was the peak of pre-digital big analogue synthesis. But keyboards tend to improve and, unlike guitars, where a 1950s instrument can be superior to a 1990s model, you don't lose too much if you move on."



    Und 16 Jahre später steht er dann wieder daran:


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://www.genesisfan.net/medi…59f6d2610e3cdfbe51_XL.jpg]


    Vielleicht hat er sich ja bei der Gelegenheit einen Prophet-6 bestellt: SEQUENTIAL PROPHET-6 - By Dave Smith Instruments