That didn't stop far too many balladeers from employing the now-famous DX Rhodes emulation, a sound that would become an obligatory inclusion in every keyboard workstation for decades to come. Indeed, most DX7 players never bothered making their own sounds, and a third-party patch industry grew up around the instrument. Good thing it was loaded with presets, then. Unfortunately, the instrument that ushered in digital synthesis would bring with it a nearly impenetrable architecture consisting of operators, algorithms and unusual envelopes, all accessed through tedious menus and a diminutive display. With its crisp, spiky percussion, crystalline bells and clinical basses, it was the perfect antidote to a decade of analogue waveforms. It certainly didn't sound like anything else. From its stellar playability to its sterile, knob-free front panel, it was nothing like the analogue instruments that dominated the synthesizer market in 1983. Troubled from the start, this cantankerous instrument nevertheless found favour with a number of high-profile users, Rick Wakeman among them.įew synthesizers have ever had such a lasting impact as Yamaha's DX7.
Released in 1975, the original Polymoog was a 71-note synthesizer that offered organ-style divide-down polyphony and a miserly eight presets. Vox Humana (from the Moog Polymoog Keyboard) This ripping, nasal lead patch would - like many of the Prophet's presets - become wildly overused in the years following the instrument's release. One such player was Greg Hawkes of The Cars, who promptly exploited one of the Prophet's wicked oscillator sync presets for the memorable riff that propels the band's Let's Go, the lead single from their classic Candy-O LP. Sequential's slick combination of patch storage and polyphony ensured the P5's popularity, with a then-impressive 8000 units being sold, many to big name performers.
Before Sequential Circuits unleashed the Prophet-5 in 1977, synthesizer presets were a rarity – most often relegated to non-programmable instruments like ARP's Pro Soloist.
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