of Sequential’s Flagship Synth
Hello, everyone! Earlier this year, synthesizer guru Jerry Kovarsky recorded a roundtable with six other expert sound designers. The discussion began with their work on the Sequential Prophet X, and then progressed into strategies for crafting signature sounds on any synth. Thanks to my work on the interview book The Art of Digital Music, KVR asked me to help edit the conversation. There’s so much good material that we’ll be spreading it out over several posts. Several of the sound designers will be following along here as well, so please jump in with comments and questions.
—David Battino
Introduction
Think about that magic moment when you first touch a new hardware or software synth and hear what it can do. Sound design is the most important feature of any programmable synthesizer: If the factory patches don’t sound fresh and amazing, that synth ain’t gonna sell.
One of the most revered synth developers is Sequential, whose founder Dave Smith has been designing electronic instruments since the 1970s — including the world’s first fully programmable polyphonic analog synth, the Prophet-5 . In 2018, Sequential released its most ambitious Prophet yet, the Prophet X. This $4,000 flagship synth combines two shape-shifting digital oscillators, two sample-playback oscillators with 150GB of samples to manipulate, four LFOs, 92 modulation destinations, and stereo analog filters.
In short, the Prophet X is a sound designer’s dream, and we gathered six members of the voicing team to find out how they approached it: Richard Devine, Rory Dow, Drew Neumann, Francis Preve, James Terris, and Mitch Thomas.
To kick it off, we’ll let the panel introduce themselves and talk about their first impressions of the Prophet X. In the next installments, they’ll go deeper into the instrument and share more techniques on finding a synth’s personality.
Tell us a bit about your background. What prepared you for this opportunity?
Aren’t we all? [Laughter]
In the mid-’90s, I moved to Austin, where I slipped on a metaphorical banana peel and became a college professor thanks to my experience in multiple music production domains. Later, at the South by Southwest conference, I met Greg Rule, the editor of Keyboard magazine, and he asked if I’d like to take over their dance/remix column. I said sure, because I’d grown up reading Keyboard and it was a massive influence on my knowledge of synthesis and sound design. Through that gig I started to meet folks from synth and software companies. In fact, my first real sound design gig was for Korg (thanks to Jerry) for their Legacy Collection software. Then I met the folks from Ableton and starting doing stuff for them. I’m still doing work for both companies, as well as many others.
What was your first reaction to seeing and hearing the prototype of the Prophet X?
As soon as I said that, Dave said, “How soon can you start?” The fact that you could use sample data for AM and FM (amplitude and frequency modulation), for panning, and for filter modulation really connected with me, from all the work I do with Ableton Operator using those techniques.
Now we’ve got all the convenience of being able to hook up your computer, and lots of RAM, and SSDs, and deep sampling with velocity splits and all that stuff, but having it in a hardware environment where you can really manipulate it is just brilliant. The Prophet X stands out for me as the synth of last year purely because of that sample engine.
To be clear, you’re not talking about — for example — wanting to get more of the nuanced gestures of a nylon guitar. You want samples so that you can mangle them. You want fodder for synthesis.
And Dave’s been adamant that he has no interest in making a ROMpler. Never has…
Check out Part 2 of this series, where the designers get deeper into the Prophet X's unique approach to sample-based oscillators.
Meet the Panel
Richard Devine
YouTube
Soundcloud Examples (various instruments)
Rory Dow
www.boxedear.com
Prophet X Demos
Drew Newman
www.drewneumann.com
Francis Preve
www.francispreve.com
James Terris
www.jamesterris.com
Mitch Thomas
YouTube Playlist