The Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument) was the first digital sampling synthesiser. It was designed in 1978 by the founders of Fairlight, Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie, and based on a dual microprocessor computer designed by Tony Furse in Sydney, Australia. It rose to prominence in the early 1980s.
The first buyers of the new system were Peter Gabriel, Todd Rundgren, Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran, producer Rhett Lawrence and Stevie Wonder. Among the first commercially released albums to incorporate it were Kate Bush's Never for Ever (1980) and Jean-Michel Jarre's Magnetic Fields (1981). Jarre also made extensive use of the instrument on his The Concerts in China (1982) and Zoolook (1984) albums. It was used on The Buggles' last album, Adventures in Modern Recording, as well as Gabriel's "Shock the Monkey" and its parent album Security (all 1982).
History
The Fairlight CMI was a development of an earlier synthesiser called the Quasar M8, an attempt to create sound by modelling all of the parameters of a waveform in real time. Unfortunately, this was beyond the available processing power of the day, and the results were disappointing. In an attempt to make something of it, Vogel and Ryrie decided to see what it would do with a naturally recorded soundwaves as a starting point. To their surprise the effect was remarkable, and the sampler was born.
By 1979, the Fairlight CMI Series I was being demonstrated, but the sound quality was not quite up to professional standards, having only 24kHz sampling, and it wasn't until the Series II of 1982 that this was rectified. In 1983 MIDI was added with the Series IIx, and in 1985, support for full CD quality sampling (16bit/50kHz) was available with the Series III.
The Fairlight ran its own operating system known as QDOS (was a modified version of the Motorola MDOS operating system) and had a primitive (by modern standards) menu-driven GUI. The basic system used a number of Motorola 6800 processors, with separate cards dealing with specific parts of the system, such as the display driver, keyboard interface, etc. The main device for interacting with the machine apart from the keyboard was a light pen, which could be used to select options presented on a monochrome green-screen.
The Series III model dropped the light pen interface (the light pen cable apparently was one of the most fragile hardware elements in the system) in favour of a graphics tablet interface which was built in to the keyboard. This model was built around Motorola 68000 processors, running Microware's OS-9 Level II operating system (6809 version). One of the Fairlight's most significant software features was the so-called "Page R", which was a real time graphical pattern sequence editor, widely copied on other software synths since. This feature was often a key part of the buying decision of artists.
The Fairlight CMI was very well built, assembled by hand with expensive components and consequently it was highly priced (around £20,000 for a Series I). Although later models, adjusting for inflation, were getting comparatively less expensive as the relative technology was getting cheaper, competitors with similar performance and lower prices started to multiply. Fairlight managed to survive until the mid-1980s, mainly bidding on its legendary name and its cult status, sought after by those that could afford its prices.
Fairlight went bankrupt a few years later owing to the expense of building the instruments — AUD$20,000 in components per unit. Peter Vogel said in 2005, "We were reliant on sales to pay the wages and it was a horrendously expensive business ... Our sales were good right up to the last minute, but we just couldn't finance the expansion and the R&D."
Influence
The success of the Fairlight CMI caused other firms to introduce sampling. New England Digital modified their Synclavier digital synth to perform sampling, while E-mu introduced a less costly sampling keyboard, the Emulator, in 1981.
In the United States, a new sampler company called Ensoniq introduced the Ensoniq Mirage in 1985, at a price that made sampling affordable to the average musician for the first time. Though the Mirage was essentially a poor man's sampler with significantly inferior hardware specs, at less than $2000, it was nevertheless sufficiently powered (8-bit microprocessor) to signal the start of end of the CMI. In addition to these low-cost dedicated systems, very cheap add-in cards for popular home computers started to appear at this time, for example the Apple II-based Greengate DS3 sampler card, and new computer systems such as the Apple Macintosh featured built-in sampling sound systems.
Features timeline
Quasar I, II, and (last) M8 (1975-1977)
- $20,000 base price
- Dual Motorola 6800 CPUs
- Made by Fairlight and Creative Strategies
- 8 voices (no sampling, just numeric additive synthesis with 128 harmonics)
- Memory: 4 kB per voice
- Synthesis: Fourier synthesis; dynamic harmonic control, waveform editing
- Hole paper tape reader
CMI Series I (1979)
- ~£18,000
- The first musical sampler
- 8 voices of polyphony
- Sampling specification: 8 bits at 16 kHz (mono)
- Memory: 16 kB per voice, System: 64 kB
- Dual Motorola 6800 CPUs
- Synthesis: freeform waveform via lightpen; dynamic harmonic control, waveform editing
- Keyboard: 73 note unweighted velocity sensitive + slave keyboard
- Sequencer: Basic keyboard sequencer, Musical Composition Language (MCL),
- Video RAM: 16 kB (512x256 pixels)
- Two 8" floppy drives
CMI Series II (1980)
- ~£25,000
- 8 voices of polyphony
- Sampling specification: 8 bits at 2100 Hz to 30200 kHz (mono)
- Memory: 16 kB per voice, System: 64 kB
- Dual Motorola 6800 CPUs
- Synthesis: freeform waveform via lightpen; dynamic harmonic control, waveform editing
- Keyboard: 73 note unweighted velocity sensitive + slave keyboard
- Control: MIDI
- Sequencer: Basic keyboard sequencer, Musical Composition Language (MCL),
- Video RAM: 16 kB (512x256 pixels)
- Two 8" floppy drives
CMI Series IIx (1983)
- ~£27,000
- 8 voices of polyphony
- Sampling specification: 8 bits at 2100 Hz to 30.2 kHz (mono)
- Memory: 16 kB per voice, System: 256 kB
- Dual Motorola 6809 CPUs
- Synthesis: freeform waveform via lightpen; dynamic harmonic control, waveform editing
- Keyboard: 73 note unweighted velocity sensitive + slave keyboard
- Control: MIDI, SMPTE
- Sequencer: Page R, Basic keyboard sequencer, Musical Composition Language (MCL),
- Video RAM 16 kB (512x256 pixels)
- Two 8" floppy drives
CMI Series III (1985)
- £50,000
- 16 voices of polyphony (expandable)
- Sampling specification: 16 bits at 100 kHz (mono) or 50 kHz (stereo), System: 356 kB
- Memory: 14 MB, expandable to 32 MB and maximum 64 MB on last hard revision (RAM RAM disk)
- Dual Motorola 6809 CPUs, and one 6809 CPU for each voice card, one Motorola 68000 (to 68020) for waveform processor card
- Synthesis: freeform waveform via graphics tablet; FFT; waveform editing
- Keyboard: 73 note unweighted velocity sensitive (MIDI compatible)
- Control: MIDI, SMPTE
- Sequencer: CAPS (Composer, Arranger, Performer Sequencer), 80 track polyphonic, Musical Composition Language (MCL),
- Hard drive and Tape DC600 Streamer (ESDI, SCSI), one 8" floppy drive
Sound clips
Note: These sound clips require an Ogg Vorbis player. Click here for a list of downloadable players.
- A water droplet sample played musically. Composer: Greg Holmes - Original source
- A sequenced, multi-sound song played on the Fairlight CMI. Composer: Greg Holmes - Original source
- You're the Voice- the unmistakeable "clack-clack" sound etc. is a chief sound of the Fairlight CMI, as used in this John Farnham song.
- A Touch of Paradise- This John Farnham song makes extensive use of the Fairlight CMI for background atmosphere as well as lead parts
Artists using the Fairlight CMI
- ABC
- Bryan Adams
- Afrika Bambaataa
- Tasmin Archer
- The Art of Noise
- Jon Astley
- Jon Anderson
- The B-52's
- BBC Radiophonic Workshop
- Daniel Balavoine
- Lindsey Buckingham
- Kate Bush
- Cabaret Voltaire
- The Cars
- Jane Child
- Coil
- Stewart Copeland
- Elvis Costello
- David Hirschfelder
- Def Leppard
- Depeche Mode
- Al Di Meola
- Dollar
- Dire Straits
- Thomas Dolby
- Geoff Downes
- Duran Duran
- Devo
- Ebn Ozn
- Eddie Jobson
- Keith Emerson
- Brian Eno
- Eurythmics
- Fleetwood Mac
- Foreigner
- Fumitaka Anzai (Japanese Artist who makes many anime-soundtracks with CMI)
- Peter Gabriel
- Deborah Gibson
- David Gilmour
- Hall & Oates
- Jan Hammer
- Herbie Hancock
- Heaven 17
- Human League
- Icehouse
- Michael Jackson
- Jean-Michel Jarre
- Jefferson Starship
- John Paul Jones
- Kids in the Kitchen
- Shona Laing ("Soviet Snow")
- Robert John "Mutt" Lange
- Julian Lennon
- Loverboy
- Madonna
- Tony Mansfield
- Paul McCartney
- Ministry
- New Musik
- Billy Ocean
- Mike Oldfield
- Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
- Alan Parsons
- Pet Shop Boys
- Prince
- Queen
- Romeo's Daughter
- Todd Rundgren
- Scritti Politti
- Clive Smith
- Sparks
- Supertramp
- Tears For Fears
- U2
- Brian Wilson
- Steve Winwood
- Stevie Wonder
- Rick Wright
- Yazoo
- Yello
- Yes
- Zee
- ZZ Top
- David Vorhaus
A Fairlight CMI can be seen in the Devo film We Are Devo and in Jan Hammer's music video for the Miami Vice theme song. It also makes an appearance being operated by Nick Rhodes in Duran Duran's video "The Reflex".
David Hirschfelder made extensive use of the Fairlight CMI while recording with John Farnham for the 1986 album Whispering Jack.
External links and references
- Fairlight Photos
- Service and Repair Centre for CMI I, CMI II and CMI II-X
- Candor Chasma : Information about Fairlight CMI and other vintage keyboards
- Fairlight CMI History, photos and technical information
- More history, technical info and links
- Greg Holmes' Fairlight CMI page
- Fairlight Week on Music Thing
- Interview: Electronic maestros (New Scientist, 26 March 2005)
- Peter Vogel's homepage with links to some Fairlight history and photos
- Fairlight User's Groups on Yahoo
- Clive Smith, early pre-eminent Fairlight specialist