This page is read from MIDI Instrument Definitions, a Python library used in the author's other projects, in which every number is traced to a document its maker published. Its source is on GitHub.

Sequential Prophet-6 MIDI implementation

The MIDI implementation of the Sequential Prophet-6: what it answers to, and the 115 controls it offers, on firmware 1.6.7.

At a glance

Firmware

This page describes firmware 1.6.7.

MIDI channel

1 to 16.

MPE

Received: its voices are spread across its MIDI channels, a note to each.

Voices

6.

Note range

0 to 127: C-1 to G9, counting middle C as C4.

Velocity

Sent and received. Release velocity is ignored.

Aftertouch

Channel pressure and polyphonic, each answered. It sends aftertouch too.

Pitch bend

How far it bends is not recorded, and the range can be changed.

Program change

Received and sent, with 1000 presets.

MIDI clock

Sent and received.

Start and stop

Received.

Control change

45 controls, in the tables below.

NRPN

Supported, and preferred to CC. 108 of the controls below have one.

System exclusive

Supported.

Controls

In the order the definition gives them, by group. Under each control is the name a program calls it by, once pymidiinstrumentdefs.load("sequential/prophet_6") has loaded them.

Performance

Oscillators

Mixer

Glide

Low-pass filter

High-pass filter

Filter envelope

Amplifier envelope

Low frequency oscillator

Aftertouch

Poly mod

Effects

Distortion

Unison

Misc parameters

Clock

Arpeggiator

Sequencer

Global settings

Without a group

Where these facts come from

Source documents

• Prophet-6 Operation Manual, Version 2.1, dated February 2021, its user manual, read on 4 October 2026 (the file read).
• Prophet-6 Manual Addendum for OS 1.6.7, its firmware addendum, read on 4 October 2026 (the file read).
• Prophet-6 Handbuch, dated February 2016, its user manual, read on 4 October 2026 (the file read).
• Prophet-6 Operating System - Sequential, Main 1.7.5, its download page, read on 4 October 2026.

How they were read

Operation Manual version 2.1 (100pp, Feb 2021): the global settings that govern MIDI at pp. 72-73, the received and transmitted messages at pp. 73-75, the controller table at p. 76, the NRPN transport at p. 77, the Global parameter table at p. 78, the Program parameter table at pp. 79-80, the Control NRPN table at p. 81, and the SysEx messages at pp. 81-83. The programs and banks are at p. 2, the voices at p. 1, the aftertouch at p. 59. The OS 1.6.7 addendum carries everything the manual does not: MPE, and four more aftertouch curves. The German Handbuch and the operating system page are cited only where named.

THE MAKER PRINTS THIS APPENDIX THREE TIMES AND NO TWO PRINTINGS AGREE. The English manual prints the Global block twice over - once on p. 78 with the meaning of every value and again at the foot of p. 80 without them - and the German Handbuch prints the whole appendix a third time, in English, inside German prose. Three printings is three chances to be caught, and each one caught something.

WHAT THE TWO PRINTINGS OF THE GLOBAL BLOCK DISAGREE ABOUT. They hold the same eighteen numbers, name eleven of them differently - Master Fine Tune against Tuning Fine, Aftertouch Response against At Response, MIDI Control Enable against the doubled MIDI MIDI Control - and give two of them different ranges: MIDI Clock Mode is 0-3 on p. 78 and 0-4 on p. 80, MIDI Out Select is 0-3 on p. 78 and 0-1 on p. 80. NEITHER RANGE IS RECORDED for those two, because nothing here can settle which printing is right. The manual's own prose does not settle it either: it lists five clock modes at p. 72 where p. 78 names four, and offers MIDI Out as "MID, USB" at p. 73 where p. 78 names four choices.

WHAT THE GERMAN EDITION CAUGHT, AND WHAT IT HAS WRONG ITSELF. The two editions print the same 60 controller numbers with the same name on every one. They differ in three places, and each edition owns a defect: the English misspells CC 6 as Data Enttry MSB where the German has Data Entry MSB; the English prints CC 120 twice, as All Sound Off and again as Reset Controllers directly above 121 Reset Controllers; and the German has no CC 125 at all, running 124, 126, 127 where the English has Omni Mode On between them. Nothing in this file rests on any of the three - they are all channel mode messages or value transport - but a maker's translation is a second printing of the same table, and comparing them is what separates one edition's slips from the instrument's facts.

THE CONTROL NRPN TABLE CONTRADICTS ITSELF. Page 81 says its four rows are "received and transmitted but not saved as part of a program" (manual p. 81), and three of the four are NRPN 1, 2 and 3 - Osc 1 Sync, Osc 1 Level, Osc 1 Shape - with the same numbers, the same ranges and the same names as three rows of the program table on p. 79. They cannot be both. They are recorded here as program parameters, which is where two of the three printings put them, and only NRPN 1088 Seq Play/Stop is taken from the control table.

NOT RECORDED:

• which number means which named state, except where the Global table spells it out, because the implementation gives ranges and nothing else;
• what changed in the OS releases after 1.6.7, which Sequential publishes no notes for;
• the range of MIDI Clock Mode and MIDI Out Select, for the reason above;
• the range of Aftertouch Response, which says range: unknown, since the manual gives four curves in its tables and its text and the addendum says eight and prints no table;
• the range of Velocity Response, which says range: unknown too, since the tables of both editions and the German text print four values and the English text names eight curves;
• and the thirteen NRPN blocks that address a program's stored data rather than a control - its name at 236-255 and its sequence at 256-1023, six notes and six velocities for each of 64 steps.

The manual also says a Global dump carries "50 nibbles (LS then MS) for 25 Global parameters" (p. 83) while the Global table names eighteen, so seven global parameters exist that no table here names.