1970s/80s Vintage Sequential Circuits Ads

Sequential Circuits "Prophet-5"

A tale about a synth with mystical properties

Reinhard Lakomy

A German children's music composer and musician.

Kim Carnes - Bette Davis Eyes

Keyboardist Bill Cuomo came up with the signature synth riff, using the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 synthesizer, which now defines Carnes's version. The song was recorded in the studio on the first take.[17]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bette_Davis_Eyes

watched a video this morning about the integrated circuit chips in a lot of 80s analog synths and realizing just how different an animal these synths are from the modular synthesizers of the late 60s and the 70s

like ive known for years “oh yeah prophets used SSM chips until they switched to curtis chips thats why the filter in the rev 3 prophet 5 sounds different” or “tom oberheim used his original SEM designs until eventually switching to curtis chips with the OB-Xa” but only now am i grasping these are synthesizers whose individual components are all ICs effectively from off the shelf

this isnt a bad thing i love the sound of the prophet 5 and i love a lot of 80s synths i just never really thought about how this actually affected synth design, i never realized anything more than just the filter was an IC i never realized even the envelopes and VCAs in a lot of 80s synths were literally the exact same chips

and yet at the same time conceptually, isnt this kinda what happened to modular too? like we went from everyone handwiring their own filter and oscillator designs to now in eurorack world you can buy individual modules to build the synth of your dreams

the modules in a modular synth are basically the same concept as the ICs in a lot of analog polysynths from the late 70s and 80s, youre buying what is effectively kind of an off the shelf part and sticking it in your synthesizer instead of designing your own and building it yourself or buying someone elses unique design

it kinda lends to the idea that its not what parts you have, its how you use them. im convinced even more than ever now that a vast majority of analog subtractive synthesizers all sound more or less the same and the major difference in sounds is in terms of what features it has that others dont or the way its laid out affecting how you program it. i feel like looking at an OB-Xa, a jupiter 8, and a prophet 5, you cant help but program different kinds of sounds with them because of their different layouts and different feature sets and THATS where the sound difference comes into play

synthesizers are so cool i love all kinds of synthesizers i love instruments that allow you to create the sound of the instrument and as much as im diving headfirst into the modular world and falling deeply in love with the idea of building an instrument from the ground up i also still love the analog polysynths of the 70s and early 80s or the digital behemoths of the rest of the 80s and everything thats come since then

Steve Jansen & Richard Barbieri

Synths for album no. 2 😏

I just want every single person out there who writes fics and headcanons to know, that everytime you include a "newspaper clip" in your writing that I read that shit in the voice of the fish news anchor from SpongeBob.

"Make a mess dripping crimson and bone-"

Beware false prophets (in synth form). Accept no substitute

quick on the draw, slow on the uptake, all out of time.

2000s aus + misc bruno abba and gio :3

that anna croft doesn't go to 1865 while selena kim does is something I think about perhaps too much

the 1865th turn must have its own anna croft of course... maybe having inherited some early memories from retrocognition, she's already started making plans to reach her "perfect night" knowing she's likely going to have to manipulate everyone around her like what she can remember of last time

but then, she meets selena kim. the selena that isn't who she expects from her those memories, the selena who already Knows knows some of the future somehow--but not just that, she knows anna. knows how hard anna worked in the previous turn, and has a guess of some of what she had to do in all the ones before that too...

so you can take a break this time, anna. let me handle it.

with who selena is, that's not the first time anna's heard something like that from her but maybe... the first time she lets herself believe it