Sequential Circuits Prophet-5

The Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 was a 5-voice analog polyphonic synthesizer introduced in 1978, one of the earliest to have full programmability of sounds. It was used by Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel and Tony Banks, plus Larry Fast (PG).

Phil Collins' Prophet-5
The Prophet-5 was Phil's go-to synthesizer in his early solo career for writing and recording.

It first came in handy when he began writing and demoing songs at his Old Croft home in 1979 following the split with his wife; it was these home recordings that later formed the basis of the Face Value album. Many of the songs from that album (as well as its follow-up, Hello, I Must Be Going) had been written and based around preset sounds from the Prophet, most notably "In The Air Tonight", which uses a string-like pad.

In most cases, the Prophet-5 parts Phil played on the records were retained from the demos. "In The Air Tonight" in particular, as he and engineer Hugh Padgham felt they could not quite recapture the feel of the demo when attempting to re-record it. Eventually Phil would get two Prophets.

However, in 1984, Phil had switched over to the Yamaha DX7 by the time of No Jacket Required - as he wasn't much of a synth programmer himself, he did not use the Prophet at all on the album. For live performances, he continued to play the Prophet on songs he had written with it from his previous two albums.

Tony Banks' Prophet-5
The Prophet-5 rev 2 was Tony's first piece of Sequential gear. He bought it in the late 1970s, and used it both in the studio and on tour for the Duke (1980) and Abacab (1981) albums, mainly for pad sounds. To Tony, the Prophet-5 "had a real roundness to its sound" and was the first polyphonic synthesizer that sounded "really musical".

One example of Tony using the Prophet was "Who Dunnit" (from Abacab), where Tony stepped through different sounds stored on the synth while playing, almost conveying the impression of different instruments. "Man On The Corner" is another Prophet-5 oriented tune, written by Phil Collins in a not dissimilar manner to Face Value - Tony recorded two separate Prophet-5 parts for the in the studio using stock voices. This was before he got the Prophet-10, which he'd use live to allocate two different sounds on each keyboard. On the Abacab tour, Tony only relied on the Prophet-5 to play "Who Dunnit" while the Prophet-10 was for other songs. Soon after, he changed over completely to the Prophet-10 on the Genesis album and dumped the Prophet-5 altogether.

Tony Banks' quotes on the Prophet-5
On 'abusing' the Prophet-5 on "Who Dunnit": "Actually, there was a fifth [keyboard I had] - a Prophet 5 - on the other side of the stage, and I used this for playing 'Who Done It'. This was a tune written around torturing the Prophet by stepping through the programs while playing the riff to the song. This did some very strange things, producing some unpleasant sounds and even changing key, but I liked it. Furthermore, it was consistent, so I could reproduce the effect live. It sounded like I was playing many more instruments than just the single Prophet 5."

Peter Gabriel's Prophet-5
The Prophet-5 was regarded as Peter Gabriel's "old workhorse" synth, which he was a longtime user of. He first worked with it on Peter Gabriel 3 (probably inspired by Larry Fast - see below). And it became one of Peter's main instruments during the 1980s - it was often seen on top of a Yamaha CP-70 (or CP-80) during live shows and was also featured rather extensively on his solo work at the time. He continued using the synth into the 1990s, but this time more or less for occasional studio work - the last photo of Peter with the Prophet dates to as late as 1996.

Notable examples of the Prophet are the cheap organ sound on "Sledgehammer", and the synth lead line on "Games Without Frontiers" (both of which Peter played himself).

Larry Fast's Prophet-5
Larry Fast had been one of the early adopters of the Prophet-5. He first played the Prophet-5 the Peter Gabriel 2 (a.k.a. Scratch) tour in 1978, and remained as a key component of his keyboard work with Peter Gabriel, both live and in the studio.

He used a Rev 1 Prophet-5 from 1978 to 1982. He also had a Rev 3, which he used a little during the making of PG4 and on tour for a few months in 1983.

Having worked with multiple Moog synths in the past, Larry would always program patches from scratch on the Prophet since its memory wasn't particularly reliable (especially the cassette interface).