Sequence 15 has a great post today looking at the stories behind several synth legends.

Are they true or are they false?

Here’s a short excerpt:

Story: Prior to the creation of MIDI, Sequential Circuits had designed a serial bus for musical instruments which was much faster than MIDI.

Verdict: True. The interface was implemented on the Rev3 Prophet-5; it allowed a sequencer to play the synth, command program changes, send and receive program data, and receive key presses from the P5’s keyboard. The obvious question to ask, then, is: why didn’t Sequential propose this as the MIDI standard?

Get the full story at the Sequence 15 site.