The Fairlight. Audio Sampling becomes part of Music Production.

The Fairlight CMI. A little history?

The original Fairlight CMI was one of the earliest music workstations with an embedded digital sampling synthesizer. It rose to popularity in the early 1980s and competed against the Synclavier from New England Digital. The first two models, the "CMI" (Computer Musical Instrument) and the later "CMII" were developed by Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie in 1979 with the assistance of Tony Furse in designing software.

Digital devices used for recording prior to Fairlight CMI

Prior to popular music workstations, the vast majority of sound recording and editing was done on tape using analogue reel-to-reel machines. Although these early digital devices existed in the time before Fairlight CMI, they were not nearly as accessible to common people without significant technical knowledge or financial resources. ADS (Automatic Digitising System) was a digital system for storing and recalling sounds developed by American company Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) in the mid-to-late 1970s. It originally employed large mainframe computers and was later repackaged into a more compact format. These machines were largely inaccessible to composers and musicians due to the expense and complexity of their operation.

The specifications of the Fairlight CMI?

By combining a keyboard and synthesizer, Fairlight created an eight-voice digital instrument. This was achieved through QASAR M8 - which included two by four-foot processing box along with borrowing from Furse's synth-to add in some computer graphics as well interactive pen for inputting data onto disks that would store samples or sounds on them.

They also added another 1/1 5th size cabinet housing all of its ADC/DAC hardware together with 8-inch floppy disk drives.?

The Fairlight CMI was sampled from an analogue waveform and had an 8-bit resolution. The sampling rate was 25 kHz with 16 bits, but the bit depth can be manipulated to give a total of up to 24-bits. This lower sampling rate gave the CMI a harsher sound than most modern synthesizers.?

The original Fairlight CMI's keyboard could be disconnected from the computer and played like an electric piano.

The Fairlight changed music forever?

The release of the Fairlight CMI was a watershed event in music history. It created a new approach to recording and producing music which brought about pop stars who were not just singers but also composers, arrangers and producers. It led to the development of multimedia computers as seen in the Macintosh and Amiga computers. The Fairlight CMI was endorsed by several popular artists including Rod Stewart, Peter Gabriel, Jan Hammer, Stevie Wonder, Kate Bush and Herbie Hancock among others. Although the device was not practical for live performances it served as a powerful platform to produce studio-quality music.

The Fairlight CMI changed music forever. From its introduction in the late seventies to today's software samplers, the digital sampling keyboard has been a staple of professional studios and musicians worldwide. It was now possible to work with Audio in previously unimaginable ways. Need a full orchestra, don't have a sax player handy, want to put some bird song into your track. The Fairlight made this all possible?

However, the Fairlight CMI was very expensive which meant that it was out of reach for many musicians making audio sampling exclusive to high-end recording studios the stars of the industry until affordable sampling was introduced by companies like Akai, Roland and Ensoniq. The Ensoniq ASR10 was my first sampler. I still have it but its needs repairing so for now I use my computer and beatbox.

But one day my beloved ASR 10 will return.

Footnote Thanks to Stranger Things the sound of the Fairlight has returned to the pop charts. That haunting riff from Running up that Hill was created by Kate Bush on a Fairlight ?