Fairlight CMI
The Fairlight CMI (short for Computer Musical Instrument) is a digital synthesizer, sampler, and digital audio workstation introduced in 1979 by Fairlight.[5][6][7] It was based on a commercial licence of the Qasar M8 developed by Tony Furse of Creative Strategies in Sydney, Australia. It was one of the earliest music workstations with an embedded sampler and is credited for coining the term sampling in music. It rose to prominence in the early 1980s and competed with the Synclavier from New England Digital.
For other uses, see Fairlight (disambiguation).Fairlight CMI
1979–1989, 2011–present
8–16 voices
Additive synthesis
Sampling (8 bit @ 16 kHz – 16 bit @ 100 kHz),
waveform editing/drawing,
additive resynthesis (FFT)
73 keys non-weighted, velocity sensitive.
Option: slave keyboard[4]
3 sliders, 2 buttons,
numeric keypad (right side)[4]
Computer keyboard
Light pen
CV/Gate (option, CMI II~)
MIDI • SMPTE (CMI IIx~)
History[edit]
Origins: 1971–1979[edit]
In the 1970s, Kim Ryrie, then a teenager, had an idea to develop a build-it-yourself analogue synthesizer, the ETI 4600, for the magazine he founded, Electronics Today International (ETI). Ryrie was frustrated by the limited number of sounds that the synthesizer could make.[8] After his classmate, Peter Vogel, graduated from high school and had a brief stint at university in 1975, Ryrie asked Vogel whether he would be interested in making "the world's greatest synthesizer" based on the recently announced microprocessor. He recalled: "We had long been interested in computers – I built my first computer when I was about 12 – and it was obvious to me that combining digital technology with music synthesis was the way to go."[7]
In December 1975, Ryrie and Vogel formed a home business to manufacture digital synthesizers.[8] They named the business Fairlight after the hydrofoil ferry passing before Ryrie's grandmother's home in Sydney Harbour.[8] The two planned to design a digital synthesizer that could create sounds reminiscent of acoustic instruments (physical modelling synthesis).[8] They initially planned to make an analogue synthesizer that was digitally controlled, as the competing Moog synthesizer was difficult to control.[9]
Adoption[edit]
Peter Gabriel was the first owner of a Fairlight Series I in the UK. Boz Burrell of Bad Company purchased the second, which Hans Zimmer hired for many recordings during the early part of his career.[19] In the US, Bruce Jackson demonstrated the Series I sampler for a year before selling units to Herbie Hancock and Stevie Wonder in 1980 for US$27,500 each.[20] Meat-packing heir Geordie Hormel bought two for use at The Village Recorder in Los Angeles.[20] Other early adopters included Todd Rundgren, Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran, producer Rhett Lawrence and Ned Liben of Ebn Ozn,[8] the owner of Sundragon Recording Studios who served as the demonstration representative for Fairlight for the U.S. east of the Mississippi.
The first commercially released studio album to incorporate the Fairlight was Kate Bush's Never for Ever (1980), programmed by Richard James Burgess and John L. Walters.[21]
Wonder took his Fairlight out on tour in 1980 in support of the soundtrack album Stevie Wonder's Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants" to replace the Computer Music Melodian sampler he had used on the recording.[20] Geoff Downes used the Fairlight on Yes' 1980 studio album Drama and its subsequent tour. Downes later used the Fairlight on the Buggles' 1981 studio album Adventures in Modern Recording, and both in the studio and live with Asia. The first classical album using the CMI was produced by Folkways Records in 1980 with composers Barton McLean and Priscilla McLean.[22]
Peter Gabriel's 1982 studio album also featured the CMI. In 1981, Austrian musicians Hubert Bognermayr and Harald Zuschrader composed a symphony, Erdenklang – Computerakustische Klangsinfonie.[23] This work premiered live on stage, using five music computers, during the Ars Electronica festival in Linz.[24] In 1984, he released an album by the singer and songwriter Claudia Robot. (Phonogram) Her studio album Alarmsignal consisted of songs written by the female vocalist, with tracks produced by the Fairlight CMI.
The first commercially released single in the US made with a computer, a Fairlight CMI, was Ebn Ozn's "AEIOU Sometimes Y" (Elektra 1983) - actually recorded in 1981-82[25] along with their studio album "Feeling Cavalier" (Elektra Records 1984).
Devo's 1984 studio album Shout heavily featured the Fairlight CMI at the expense of analog instruments. Gerald Casale later stated that Shout was the biggest regret of his career, "because the Fairlight [synthesizer] just kind of took over everything on that record. I mean, I loved the songwriting and the ideas, but the Fairlight kind of really determined the sound."[26] Frontman Mark Mothersbaugh later used the CMI in the soundtrack of the 1991 children's television show Rugrats.[27] The instrument is most prominently heard as the lead instrument in the show's theme song – it is the 'Swannee' sample with a low-pass filter applied.
Australian singer John Farnham used a Fairlight CMI for his first album, Whispering Jack, in 1985 and 1986.
Influence and legacy[edit]
After the success of the Fairlight CMI, other firms introduced sampling. New England Digital modified their Synclavier digital synth to perform sampling, while E-mu Systems introduced a less costly sampling keyboard, the Emulator, in 1981. In the United States, a new sampler company, Ensoniq, introduced the Ensoniq Mirage in 1985 for the price of $1,695, less than a quarter of the price of other samplers.[28]
In America, Joan Gand of Gand Music and Sound in Northfield, Illinois was the top salesperson for Fairlight. The Gand organisation sold CMIs to Prince, James "J.Y." Young of Styx, John Lawry of Petra, Derek St. Holmes of the Ted Nugent band, Al Jourgensen of Ministry, and many private studio owners and rock personalities.[29] Spokesperson Jan Hammer appeared at several Gand-sponsored Musictech pro audio events, to perform the "Miami Vice Theme".
The ubiquity of the Fairlight was such that Phil Collins stated on the sleeve notes of his 1985 studio album No Jacket Required that "there is no Fairlight on this record" to clarify that he had not used one to synthesize horn and string sounds.[30]
Experimental music group Coil considered the device unique and unsurpassed, describing using the Fairlight as "An aural equivalent of William Burroughs cut-ups".[31]
In 2015, the Fairlight CMI was inducted into the National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia collection.[32]