BigRedX Posted March 8, 2018 Share Posted March 8, 2018 Intersteing interview with Kim Ryrie and Peter Vogel founders of Fairlight Instruments, talking about the development of the Fairlight CMI and other projects they have been involved with. Over 90 minutes long but well worth the time to listen (you don't really need to watch the video, it's all static headshots). 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BassTractor Posted March 8, 2018 Share Posted March 8, 2018 Fairlight CMI, the bobbin lace of synthesis and electronic music making! 35 years ago, I hated that suicide-inducing thing with a vengeance, but I was saved by my love for a pretty Norse girl. Today, I think I'll rather go back to the CMI. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivansc Posted March 8, 2018 Share Posted March 8, 2018 A pal in Nashville mortaged his house up to the hilt to buy a fairlight with the 8" floppy disks. Worked like crazy for a year or so and then the world of tech caught up with hi, so he now several decades later, has a cumbersome black sideboard in his living room that might actually be worth 1/1oth of what he paid for it now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BassTractor Posted March 8, 2018 Share Posted March 8, 2018 3 minutes ago, ivansc said: A pal in Nashville mortaged his house up to the hilt to buy a fairlight with the 8" floppy disks. Worked like crazy for a year or so and then the world of tech caught up with hi, so he now several decades later, has a cumbersome black sideboard in his living room that might actually be worth 1/1oth of what he paid for it now. True dat. The three top music colleges in The Netherlands had to work very, very hard to finally buy one as a shared investment. The irony was that none of those three had a department for electronic music, and the thing was hardly used during my days (until '84). These days, if you have an iPad, you can get the CMI app with most of its functionality, and that app will set you back a few tenners. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigRedX Posted March 8, 2018 Author Share Posted March 8, 2018 But that's the way it always is with high tech musical devices. If you want to be at the cutting edge you have to pay a comparative fortune. If you are content to wait and just be a "me too" you can buy in for next to nothing. Of course by then unless you happen to be a complete genius or happen to stumble upon some brand new way of using it that no-one else has exported so far, you'll have been left behind creatively. I had a look at the App Store page for the CMI. I can't say that it impressed me in the same way that the E&MM review of the Fairlight CMI in the early 80s did. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ambient Posted March 9, 2018 Share Posted March 9, 2018 When I was studying at goldsmiths we had a lecture from J. J. Jeckzalic from the art of noise, he’d previously worked with Trevor Horn who had bought one of the first fairlights which was used a lot on the frankie goes to Hollywood stuff. It was quite an interesting lecture, he talked a lot about the fairlight. It is quite an iconic sound. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave_bass5 Posted March 9, 2018 Share Posted March 9, 2018 My guitarist owned a rehearsal studio years ago, and one day when i walked in i saw an old Fairlight sitting against the counter. Turned out it used to be owned by Jeff Wayne. We tried to get it working and although the lights came on it wasn't usable. Shame as there were a load of disk's with it as well and i bet they had some interesting samples on them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigRedX Posted March 9, 2018 Author Share Posted March 9, 2018 The Sound of the Fairlight like lots of electronic musical equipment is a product of the technology not being completely up the demands being placed upon it. The original version had 8-bit sampling with half a second maximum sample time was completely down to the fact that it was the best the technology of the day could achieve. Peter Vogel even had to design and build his own D-A converter from discrete components because there was nothing available off the shelf back then. In many ways it has parallels with guitar amplification. None of the designers of the original guitar amps wanted distortion. They did everything they could to minimise it, but now of course almost every guitarist wants that overdriven valve sound and guitar amps are deliberately designed to allow this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrunoBass Posted March 9, 2018 Share Posted March 9, 2018 (edited) The band I was in back then dreamed of using a Fairlight, dream that inevitably went unfulfilled. We did however circa 1986 pool our resources to buy a Yamaha QX1 sequencer and a Sequential Circuits Prophet 2002 rack sampler (I still remember the exciting day we went down to Rod Argent’s shop by pick it up!) which did the same job as the Fairlight for a fraction of the cost and was arguably more reliable too. I much preferred music tech when it was lots of black boxes and miles of MIDI leads... Edited March 9, 2018 by PaulGibsonBass Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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