Dave Smith, may he rest in peace, and Ikutaro Kakehashi deserve all of the flowers. https://www.grammy.com/news/technical-grammy-award-ikutaro-kakehashi-and-da

Dave Smith, may he rest in peace, and Ikutaro Kakehashi deserve all of the flowers. https://www.grammy.com/news/technical-grammy-award-ikutaro-kakehashi-and-dave-smith https://www.grammy.com/news/technical-grammy-award-ikutaro-k... Dave was a brilliant designer, both analogue and digital, but not so great a businessperson; his company, Sequential, who made some of the most beloved electronic instruments - not least the Prophet series - went bankrupt and Yamaha bought the name. Dave went to work for Yamaha and Korg, and then Seer Systems, where he designed the first ever “soft synth” (professional-standard PC synthesiser plugin), Reality. He had all of the acclaim, and I’m sure he did OK, but he did not have the financial success the quality of his work deserved. Nevertheless, he then founded Dave Smith Instruments, maybe the start of the analogue synth revival (which is going gangbusters now; Eurorack is the coolest hardware hacking scene on the planet). DSi did pretty well, which was great, but here’s what really reveals how beloved Dave was; his old friend Ikutaro had a word with his friend, the president of Yamaha, and more or less asked; “we all love Dave. You’re not using the Sequential name. How about it?” and Yamaha went… “you, know, yeah” and gave him the Sequential name - which still had significant brand equity - for free. Seriously: https://www.sequential.com/2015/01/sequential-back/ https://www.sequential.com/2015/01/sequential-back/ > Instrumental in restoring the Sequential name was Roland’s Founder, Ikutaro Kakehashi, a longtime colleague and friend of Smith’s. “I feel that it’s important to get rid of unnecessary conflict among electronic musical instrument companies,” said Kakehashi. “That is exactly the spirit of MIDI. For this reason, I personally recommended that the President of Yamaha, Mr. Nakata, return the rights to the Sequential name to Dave Smith. And I’m glad to see such a wonderful result—a new product with the Sequential name.” And in 2021, he sold now-Sequential again under much happier circumstances; $24m to the well-regarded British gear manufacturer Focusrite. The music gear industry has more than its share of villains - google Uli Behringer sometime - but Dave and Ikutaro were real ones, and the best parts of the industry (including the big Japanese manufacturers, Korg, Roland/Boss, and Yamaha) move in their spirit. And a large part of that is because of the existence of MIDI.