Dave Smith on MIDI

Dave Smith at his home studio in Napa Valley, CA. Interviewed by Eric Chasalow, filmed by Barbara Cassidy 1997.
Copyright 1997 The Video Archive of Electroacoustic Music, all rights reserved.

[@herr_eichinger]

RIP Dave!! Thank you for all you did !! You will be sadly missed!! TRUE LEGEND !!!

[@larrytan73]

We need a movie on The birth of MIDI. I'm DEAD serious!

[@JonnyMonday]

Terrible shame about Dave passing. I'm sad he won't be around to celebrate the 40th anniversary of MIDI and hear all the praise and appreciation.

[@JET7C0]

True, but I also think he was aware: he went to trade shows, and had plenty of people coming to talk to him/thank him, which "as a musician" (I play plenty of 'IRL' instruments, like guitar, bass, piano, etc., but also have done tons of nerdy electronic music work) - I definitely owe Smith and others a debt of gratitude for the work they did in standardizing electronic music input/outputs, which even if you do nothing with synths, is central to how DAWs operate.

[@chizmo7]

I remember those days well.

[@perrypelican9476]

Dave Smith was the best. RIP!

[@nnnunemon4894]

Thanks a billion Dave 🙌

[@omnaraiya]

This is fantastic footage. RIP Dave, you are an absolute legend.

[@ExclusiveLM]

Dave Smith on Keyboards and Les Paul on guitar invented some of the most important things that have changed music forever. They are the kings I bow to !!!! Even Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin is on video with Les Paul. And even Eddie Van Halen and Michael Jackson achieved massive success thanks to Dave Smith's sequencer and Midi inventions. Thank you Dave for coming to Earth and leaving it much better. I personally use his technology in my music which I would have never been able to otherwise.

[@thaexception3406]

Great insight! I got to see him speak at SynthPlex in 2019 - the first and only so far.

[@dtm500]

R.I.P

[@udomatthiasdrums5322]

still love his work!!

[@MarshalArnold]

Dave was a legit legend.

[@peervincent7845]

Used to work with USB, now I am back to MIDI appreciating the advantages of it )) It just works.

[@11miura]

Legend!

[@muzikman2008]

Legend!... RIP Dave

[@hzalk4952]

One of the best synth stories

[@rayonism]

Thank you so much for posting this! We need all the first person accounts of this stuff we can get. It's so valuable to have Dave's words and answers spurred on by your questions. Do you have more of this footage?

[@harmonicres]

Damn genius like Mr Moog. Made me proud to be an American. Quality vision and great UI.

[@Phil-1]

Lovely video. Really poignant bit at 5:30 where (presumably) Dave's kids appear at the window to see what Daddy's up to.

[@AnnedakDragon]

4:50 Dave Smith mentions the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, a sixty-one-key, sixteen-voice polyphonic synthesizer introduced to the market in early 1983 with the DX1 and DX9 models.

[@eldjmasterfreddy3094]

RIP Dave Smith

[@LARESISTENZA]

Thanx Myth. RIP ❤️

[@magnusvanttinen7855]

RIP Dave- the Prophet man

[@Screaming-Trees]

Oh man I miss this guy. He just got the Sequential name back too. And the company has already slowed down. They haven't had a late summer release this year which was their typical release cadence under Dave. And I am having a hard time seeing who might step up here. Tiny industry and Dave kind of single handedly revived analogue design. He will be missed. Huge hole that we might not be able to fill in the short term.

[@jorgevasconcelosmadetomove]

RIPmaster

[@jfcharles]

Eric, thanks for sharing this video, it is great!

[@echasalow]

sure thing! happy you found it useful Jean-Francois

[@alexandreenkerli9361]

Very useful indeed! Found it after attending a webinar by The MIDI Association. It sounds to me like the MMA has learnt the wrong lesson from that development. At 5:10 Dave said: Sure, if we had gone through a standards committee and if we had spent five years developing MIDI … none of those things would have happened. So we kind of let … all the little details get fixed in the marketplace as things were first introduced. Which, maybe we shouldn’t have done, maybe we should have had a testing lab. Maybe it’s the reverse: the true success of MIDI came from the fact that they released early and worked out the issues through the market. These days, it comes pretty close to what we’d call “Design Thinking”. At the very least, it’s the “Get Out of the Office” principle. These synthmakers were solving a real problem together. They didn’t overengineer it. They put together something useful and started showing what it could do even before it was fully realized. As Dave explained, there were problems. It doesn’t mean that MIDI could have had the longevity it had if they had gone the “design by committee” approach.

[@2112jonr]

Yep, listening to customer problems and solving them is the way to do it. Not design by committee. Death by a thousand boring AF strokes, and an undesirable product at the end that no one wants to use or buy. Well done Dave, actioned like a true engineer ! :-D

[@TheGilounet]

Thanks for sharing it Eric: Just discovered on YT and it's really interesting to listen. Thanks

[@TheOmanJam]

Cool! This is a lot earlier than the other videos that show Dave and various colleagues from the music biz.

[@theaudioeng]

..... Amen. And MIDI was born out of the foresight and vision of the real Prophet (!). So gutted, shocked in fact as just seen him looking in great form at Super Booth last month, that Dave had passed 😪🙏 RIP Dave - the music tech & music world would be a lesser place without you ....

[@sonicretard4537]

muchas gracias

[@brdane]

This goes to show that people turning down an idea after hearing it for the first time doesn't mean anything... the companies that initially turned away from MIDI still ended up implementing it into their gear.

[@DungeonStudio]

MIDI is just so brilliant to this day! Why computers took so long to go from big SCSI connections, to ATAPI to PCMCIA et al. And now the myriad of USB types. That's why I gave up on music, as it just got so insane with the computers, interfaces, configurations, controlling, etc. And why in this day of age hasn't Yamaha teamed up with LG or Roland with Alien or HP to make a 'Studio Laptop'? Fully loaded with synths, effects, recording, and compatibility with all plug in's AND at least 5 MIDI IN/OUT/THRU jacks on the side or back? And a docking station with 6 XLR's, 6 1/4" in's, RCA's, USB, etc. Plop the lappy in, and the studio is all connected. Pull the lappy out, and you can work on the road with it, gig with it, plop it in a studios dock, etc. Atari and Yamaha were ahead of their time, and no one has since bothered....?

[@Unfunny_Username_389]

I hadn't thought of all that - but now I've read it, I agree - it's maddening. And weird. I think it will come though. And sooner rather than later.

[@BojanBojovic]

You mean idiot friendly solution that just works? Maybe in /Star Trek universe, but in reality you need to learn new stuff, then everything get simple really. Knowledge is the key to every locked door, not someone landing the solution to your lap.

[@DungeonStudio]

Your solution, our laps. Knowledge doesn't make ideas - ideas make knowledge. What works, what doesn't, what's efficient, what's time consuming. Got a better idea for a spoon or a shovel? Feed and bury yourself with what you already know.

[@BojanBojovic]

@@DungeonStudio Lazy ignorance.

[@VJFranzK]

A studio / dj / musician laptop should be made! We must keeep asking. There is the Ableton Push 3, which is it, in a way!

[@trakliteproductions]

RIP

[@stephenroldan5107]

Rip

[@Vincefromsin]

Korg M1 and P5 :)

[@AndrewLeSynt]

haha nobody wants it ! at the end, its the base of everything :-) awesome vid thanks for sharing

[@dvamateur]

I think I'd be fine with Oberheim Parallel Bus, and the OB-8, DSX, and DMX.

[@2112jonr]

Yep, but it would be overkill for what it could provide over MIDI. More especially for the time. And WAY too expensive to implement, which prevents adoption.

[@countyfair74]

I saw a demonstration at a Sacramento music store by an Oberheim representative of the Oberheim "System". It was the tipping point for me to get into synthesizers, I was blown away. I bought a Polysix and Oberheim DX drum machine in 1983. Neither had MIDI, but it started my long journey into synths.

[@eti313]

1:34 scared the crap out of me, listening on earbuds. 😂

[@MediaMusik777]

without midi our modern day daw would be boring and vsts would have been different

[@echodream]

Makes think about blockchain tech and IPv6 today... The real Bitcoin Protocol (BSV) and the future of Internet...