Fairlight CMI

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A Fairlight CMI with a monitor
"Page R" and the light pen on a Fairlight CMI II
A Fairlight CMI
Fairlight Series III (1985)

The Fair Light CMI ( C omputer M usical I instrument ) was the first digital synthesizer with sampling technique.

The Fairlight was designed by the two Australians Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie in the late 1970s and became particularly famous in the 1980s. In 1979 the first copies were ready and found their first buyers in Peter Gabriel and Stevie Wonder . The first pop songs in which a Fairlight CMI could be heard are on Gabriel's third solo album, during the production of which he received a visit from Peter Vogel including a demonstration instrument and was so enthusiastic that he immediately founded a sales company for the device.

Soon there were other artists who used the Fairlight, such as B. Kate Bush on the album "Never For Ever" (1980, with the hit "Babooshka"), as well as Jean Michel Jarre on "Magnetic Fields" (1981) or The Art of Noise on "Into Battle" (1983).

The first long-playing record produced exclusively with the Fairlight CMI was "Erdenklang - Computer Acoustic Sound Symphony" by musicians Hubert Bognermayr and Harald Zusatzrader . The work was commissioned in 1981 , premiered at Ars Electronica in September 1982 and released a little later as an LP on the label " Erdenklang " founded by Ulrich Rützel especially for this new music production technique in Germany .

history

  • 1975-1977: Quasar I, II, M8
  • 1979: Fairlight CMI I (24 kHz, 8 bit)
  • 1982: Fairlight CMI II (30.2 kHz, 8 bit)
  • 1983: Fairlight CMI IIx (MIDI, SMPTE, 30.2 kHz, 8 bit)
  • 1985: Fairlight CMI III (MIDI, SMPTE, 100 kHz, 16 bit)
  • 2011: Fairlight CMI 30A (MIDI, USB, LTC, Word Clock, 44.1–192 kHz, DVD drive, 17 ”LCD monitor)
  • 2011: Fairlight CMI iPhone / iPad app

The forerunner of the Fairlight CMI was the Qasar M8 , whose sound synthesis was based on real-time modulation of waveforms. However, the results were sobering, not least because of the limited processor capabilities of the time. In the following, Vogel and Ryrie used digitally recorded natural waveforms instead of synthetic ones. The result was so promising that the first series started in 1979. The sound quality of the system did not meet professional requirements due to the low sampling rate of 24 kHz. With the Series II this has been greatly improved. In 1983 the Fairlight was expanded to include MIDI capabilities, and in 1985 CD quality recordings were achieved.

The success of the Fairlight led other companies to launch products with sampling capabilities. New England Digital, for example, added sampling to its Synclavier digital synthesizer . In 1981, E-mu Systems launched the emulator, a cheaper, albeit still very expensive, sampling keyboard. In 1985, Ensoniq launched the Ensoniq Mirage, the first affordable sampler, which heralded the slow end of the CMI with its 8-bit processor. The Commodore Amiga was from 1985 samples on 4 channels (24 kHz, 8 bit) play simultaneously and be extended to MIDI functions. The last Fairlight CMI III was built in 1991. At the same time, simple expansion cards for home use came onto the market, such as the Greengate DS3 expansion cards for the Apple II . With the Apple Macintosh , sampling was already part of the sound system.

technology

CMI I / II (x)

The Fairlight CMI was based on QASAR , a computer for business and scientific applications. The QASAR was a dual processor system in which both processors worked with the same 2 MHz bus. This allowed one processor to control the peripherals and their input and output, while the second worked exclusively for the application. Additional cards were used to connect peripherals such as floppy disk drives, keyboards, etc. There were two processor cards for the QASAR. The first with Motorola 6800 processors was used in the CMI I / II. The version with 6800/6809 processors was already used in the IIx .

The sound was generated with 8 bits at variable sampling rates depending on the pitch (max. 35 kHz) and a maximum length of 16 kB. In the CMI II, up to eight audio cards, each with 16 kB RAM and additional processors, were responsible for generating the sound. The cards worked autonomously as soon as the sound data was available in the card's RAM. A low-pass filter on each card limited the quantization noise that was inevitable at the sample rates used. Initially quite inflexible, it could be controlled differently in later versions, e.g. B. via the keyboard history. The Series IIx had the then new MIDI interface.

The Fairlight had its own operating system called QDOS with a graphical user interface , a variant of the Motorola MDOS . In addition to the keyboard for input, there was a light pen for the monochrome green monitor (512 × 256 pixels ). One of the most copied functions of the Fairlight software was the so-called "Page-R" function: a graphical real-time pattern sequence editor, which was often one of the main reasons for buying a Fairlight.

CMI III

In the CMI III, the light pen has been replaced by a graphics tablet integrated into the keyboard , as working with the light pen for a long time can be very tiring. The 680x were also replaced by Motorola 68000 processors. The operating system was now OS-9 (not to be confused with Mac OS  9).

Technical details

  • 16 voices polyphonic (expandable)
  • Sampler: 16 bit, 100 kHz (mono) or 50 kHz (stereo)
  • Memory: 14 MB, expandable to 32 MB or 64 MB in the last version
  • Synthesis: free waveforms via graphics tablet; FFT; Waveform editing
  • Effects: none
  • Keyboard: 73 keys unweighted, velocity sensitive
  • Control: MIDI, SMPTE
  • Sequencer: CAPS (Composer, Arranger, Performer Sequencer), 80 track polyphonic, Musical Composition Language (MCL)

MFX 3

The world's first all-digital 24-track disc recorder.

DREAM

Post-production system based on the new QDC technology. For the first time, video is being integrated into audio post-production devices.

CC-1 Crystal Core

Once again, Fairlight delivers an audio revolution. Only a single FPGA is used to process the signals of the entire mixer, disc recorder and video system.

CMI 30A

The Fairlight CMI 30A was presented at the Winter NAMM 2011 trade fair. Although it has almost the identical housing of the legendary CMI II, inside it works with a chip developed by Fairlight called CC-1 - Crystal Core Media Processor in Field Programmable Gate Array technology. It is also published as an iPad app.

sound

The sound of the 8-bit models of the Fairlight was initially shaped by the limited technical possibilities. But as is so often the case in the retrospective, this is what made this instrument so charming. The sounds were often a bit “breathy” and “scratchy”. Many of the sounds of the Fairlight were used very widely. So you can find the "Ahh" chorus (program name SARAHIIx) z. B. in "Moments in Love" by The Art of Noise , "Shout" by Tears for Fears and others. v. a. In comparison with more modern samplers, the lack of resonance filters is particularly noticeable. Also known was the so-called " Orchestra Hit ", an orchestral brush that z. B. can be heard in the song "A View To a Kill" by the group Duran Duran .

additional

The Fairlight CMI models were very solidly built and accordingly expensive. The first series cost approximately $ 1 million with all options. Subsequent models were more powerful with falling prices. A Fairlight CMI II started at $ 25,000. The Fairlight CMI III started at US $ 40,000, but it was also easily possible - depending on the expansion stage - US $ 100,000.

A Fairlight CMI can be seen in the film We're All Devo by the group Devo as well as in various music videos, for example in Magnetic Fields Part 2 by Jean Michel Jarre or Etude (Killing Fields) by Mike Oldfield . The album " Spurensicherung" by Eberhard Schoener (1983) shows a screenshot of the "Page-R" function of the Fairlight described above. Several artists presented the musical possibilities of the device in picture and sound, Vince Clarke, for example, demonstrated the development of a song at the Fairlight CMI on a music cassette for the magazine Melody Maker . On the other hand, Phil Collins mentions on the inner sleeve of the LP of his album No Jacket Required : "There is no Fairlight on this record."

Even Boris Blank and Carlos Perón of Yello used Fairlight of different generations. In 2013, a Fairlight CMI III Boris Blanks was auctioned on Ebay for 18,300 Australian $ (approximately US $ 13,455.08).

Important recordings with the CMI

Web links

Commons : Fairlight CMI  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Interview with Boris Blank from 1994
  2. ↑ Boris Blank's (Yello) Fairlight CMI III. Huge Library! Fully optioned. Warranty. In: eBay . October 27, 2013, accessed October 23, 2013 .