At the time i did not realize i was part of a music revolution. Fairlight was my first job in Australia I worked there from 1985 photo of the team at 10:53 brings me back lovely memories. The guy with glasses next to the blond girl was me, her name was Petra if i remember right Tuye was our team leader bottom left corner next to him Vivien we walked a lot to Oxford street Darlinghurst to catch a bus . Fairlight etched in my heart for ever.
Did you have a chance to meet Alan Galt? I’ve had a pleasure to know him, very briefly though. He was a real gentleman. He was also very modest and only briefly mentioned his role in the Fairlight development. I am just trying to piece together what his role really was, as something is telling me it may have been more significant that he had told me. There is photo on the web of the Fairlight team reunion for his funeral. That’s one sign of it.
I bought and restored a Series IIx and a Series III around 2010 because I was a child of the 80s in awe of these incredible machines used by my favorite artists like Nick Rhodes and Trevor Horn. I of course could never afford one as a kid but it was such a treat to be able to own them and work on them later on. These were futuristic machines with their massive CPUs and light pen interface that provided endless hours of fun an experimentation. And a huge shoutout to Peter Wielk (featured in this video) for his dedication to and continued support of the Fairlight CMI community. In addition to selling me numerous parts for my restoration, he was always willing to chat and provide tips and advice about my Fairlights (and tell some great stories about working with artists back in the day). This is a great video highlighting the history of two visionaries and their amazing invention that completely transformed music.
@@looneyburgmusic That's incorrect. Soundstream created digital recording systems to digitise music. They didn't create musical instruments using analogue samples which were converted to digital, which could then be modified on the unit, to create other sounds and played, at different tones on a piano keyboard. There was a small cross-over in basic digitising technology.
@@anniedarkhorse6791 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 "Small"? How about massive crossover. Samplers, at their very core, are nothing more than digital recorders, which can then modify and playback what has been recorded. As you have already admitted
@@looneyburgmusic Are you 10 years old? Seriously, what a childish way of communicating. I recognise your type. The entire world knows that Fairlight made an incredible contribution to synthesiser development and history and you're going to be the one angry little incel who thinks he knows what the rest of the world, including the documentary film makers, do not. No technology is created in complete isolation, as any intelligent person knows. No one's impressed with you. I suspect that's why you started your bullshit in the first place. I won't bother replying. I've got a life.
These guys are still hugely under recognised for the tectonic shift they created in music. It makes me incredibly proud of them as an Aussie. I reckon they should be immortalised in bronze somewhere prominent.
Fairlight CMI was featured in an original song that I recorded back in 1986 in Brisbane, Australia. It was such a big deal to have that instrument on our modest little production.
Mid 80’s Stevie Wonder was playing a concert in the round at Wembley Arena, in the middle of a 3+ hour set the rest of the band went off for a break while Stevie stayed on to have a play with his new toy - a Fairlight. I remember him loving the wild electric guitar sound he was getting out of it. P E A C E : )
As a budding teenage keyboardist growing up in 1980's England, the Fairlight was held in such esteem, that even knowing someone who'd used one, was like knowing one of Jesus's disciples. It was nice to see the story told. At the forefront of a music revolution, two guys with a dream.
My absolute favorite Factory sound (and in my opinion the most iconic and most defining sound) of the Fairlight will always be the breathy enigmatic "Aar1" sound. This sound is so much engraved into my musical memory since my earliest childhood, it always gives me goosebumps and i feel like being a child again. The sound really cuts and brings your attention to a new layer and when i was a kid i was always blown away by it and it made me wonder HOW it was made and with what kind or Synthesizer. It both made me dream but also feel like being taken to a journey. You can't imagine the sheer impact it had on that little child born in 1984 east germany, that i was. Thank you Peter and Kim and ALLLL you amazing folks who put together and programmed all the Fairlight CMIs and the CVIs 💕
❤️ This is extraordinary ! These guys are light years ahead everybody. That's why their names are written on the history. I lived that time and I saw everything happening. 🙏🙏👍❤️
Briliant! We used a Fairlight on our first recording working with Tony Mansfield in 1983, the song was 'Cccan't You See' released in 1984. We used it on lot's of our records, with Tony as our producer and later used one with Gary Moberley as our producer. The Fairlight was a real game changer!
Thank you Kim and Peter for making the 1980's for what they were. Also thank you Peter and Kate for helping the Fairlight CMI become the success that it was. I am still astounded that you managed to ever get a machine built at all. You touched on how these machines were hand built. From the monitors to the lettering on the keyboards to the fabrication of the circuit boards everything was made by hand. You had no choice as Australia's thriving computer manufacturing base was non existent. From what I can see there is more assembly line automation in the construction of a Rolls Royce of the same era. No wonder the Fairlights costed a bomb. Considering that even today Running up that hill still manages to be one of the most popular songs ever says something not just about Kate Bush but also to the instrument that allowed the magic happen.
I had the privilege of working on a couple of series 3 fairlights back in the day. Such impactful sessions as I was so in awe and never wanted to leave ha.
Would love to have a go on one of these. Doing it through a dAW is a bit soulless. I can see why people (such as Depeche Mode) went out and about with a mic and just recorded what they found as they wandered. !
Peter Vogel - You are the man! This instrument was very inspiring. People could finally see some of the textbook audio principles actually working in real life. It was figuring out what the waterfall plot on a IIx was that made me want to learn about FFTs and DSP in the first place. We all wish that the CMI30A didn't get shut down by the current Fairlight.
I loved how peter gabriel used the fairlight on his 4th album, security. Specially on family and the fishing net, i absolutely adore how the flute hits are sincopated in the intro, the utilization of the sample is just genius
that was my first cassette purchase ever. I still have it on my shelf behind me. such a timeless album, as was his 3rd self titled "melt". I'll never forget hearing family and the fishing net for the first time with my brother. Yes. the flute, the percussion, ha ha haaaaah!
Awesome doco. My dad used to help finance these for artists and studios and I remember him telling me that the soundtrack to Crocodile Dundee was totally recorded on Fairlight. Dad was a huge fan of Jean Michelle Jarre who I think was also a fairlight fan.
Here's a couple of bits of trivia for you, firstly the Fairlight CMI actually used two Motorola 68000 CPUs which were interleaved to enable rapid processing of all the data, secondly the DACs (Digital to Analog Converters) were 8-Bit DACs, but the instrument was still capable of producing sounds with remarkable fidelity.
Interesting as the 68000 is a 16-bit data bus so it wouldn't be too difficult to go there DAC-wise. Just a bunch of resistor bridges. I suppose memory limitation was the issue.
@@v12alpine Memory was very much the issue for the Series 1. The Series III on the other hand had up to 14Mb of memory. Not huge by today's standards but when I was handed my development machine after joining Fairlight featuring 8M of memory, 10 6809 CPU's, 2 68000 CPUs and 256K of program memory and 120M hard disk I was comparing it to my similar vintage (1984) fully decked out PC with 256K and 20M hard drives running at 4.7 MHz.
@@v12alpine The DAC's on the series 1 were 8 bit chips and pretty high quality for their day. On the series III, they were 16 bit and were absolutely state of the art for the time. The post processing analogue circuitry was so closely guarded that the service manual did not include the schematic for the channel cards but included every other schematic. A resistor ladder discrete DAC would unlikely meet the required specifications. On the other hand, Peter Vogel created the original 8 bit ADC used for sampling from discrete chips. It was pretty limited in the sample rate as a result. The machine could play back faster than it could record - something that was fixed with the Series II.
To me this is THE definition of a DAW. Everything integrated. And it has the imho best sounding sampler of the early digital Sampling Era because of the way the CMI Sampler worked that didn't cause a lot of nasty aliasing to be heard. Which is why i am always amazed at what people pulled off with just 32Khz 8 bit in the early models. The whole architecture of the CMI oozes such a special type of sound signature that i really never heard on any other Digital Audio Workstation. As a kid the sounds made on this thing, followed me everywhere. And i bow in respect to the achievements of these aussie geniuses who had the right idea at the right time. Even sadly at a price that only the 5 wealthiest kings of the world could afford....
@@Helios824 it really is. And in my opinion it still does things better than modern DAWs. Especially on the Operating System aspect and how the sampler worked.
Always nice to see documentaries like this! Jean Michel Jarre deserves to be mentioned in this as well. His 1984 album Zoolook shows some real creative use of the CMI…
It’s weird that ZOOLOOK is rarely listed when Fairlight is talked about. Perhaps it’s not as mainstream as it’d to be remembered ? I still think that even today it’s very difficult to « redo » Ethnicolor where, for instance, it’s quiet easy to « redo » The Art of Noise Love track (which is great !)
I had a friend who was a keen synthesist and Jarre fan. I remember the day we drove in to the city and picked up "Zoolook." I feel like he had a security cordon around him walking back to the car with it. His precious. At which point he had no idea how it would be. It was Jarre, so even I was able to enjoy it, but homes was blown away.
I worked my first music trade show in Sydney 1979 and there was a constant crowd at the stand near ours. I caught glimpses of a keyboard and screen and heard real world sounds at different pitches. It was Fairlight of course.
Absolutely brilliant. I am an ‘80s child and vividly remember pretty much every song this was used on. I make this bow, publicly: if I’m ever a billionaire, I’d get the creators to make an app for creators, with every single bell and whistle - literally- they ever wanted. Thank you!
I saw that Tomorrow's World episode when it first aired and I was blown away by the "hello" part. As a tyro musician I realised instantly that such a machine would very likely remain out of my price range. Technology has changed and I can do all the sampling I want now using a laptop, but the Fairlight was the first one to take that step and it is still out of my price range!
Here is a bit of trivia: Al Jourgensen from Ministry once got a hold of one of those, completely reinvented the sound of the band, irreversibly influencing the genre that would later become industrial-metal. This piece of gear was a true game changer for sure. The thing was, all people at his studio were so high on all kinds of drugs, they couldn't really figure out the way how to leave the initial sequencer screen. So they built all of the songs around four bar loops they could fit on that one screen. That is how most of the album The Land Of Rape And Honey got made. True story, believe it or not. Priceless.
I can't tell you how much I love coming across bits of info online telling about how some of my favorite music & other forms of entertainment are made! This sounds like me when i first started working with a DAW, totally clueless but I made my music whether I knew how to properly utilize the program or not lol!
What you speak of is completely true but it was Revolting Cocks album Big Sexy Land a Ministry side project that was made under those circumstances with that instrument
Although I never had the opportunity to use the amazing Fairlight. It will always have a high status and almost mythic quality in my life, because of the music it helped generate, which I grew up with. I think as an older high schooler, I eventually purchased and Emulator II, but, Wow, I just wish I could have afforded the Fairlight. Great job guys on bringing this story and its creators to RUclips ❤❤🎹
Technically a "light pen". It works by noticing the timing of the scanning beam on the CRT and capturing the values of the counters in the video card. In fact you didn't have to touch the screen at all. The light pen works up to about 1cm away from the screen.
Home computer magazines in the 80s often had articles about adding a light pen to your Commodore/Sinclair/Atari/Acorn very inexpensively. Like Paul says, then pen simply sends a signal to the computer when it sees the monitor's beam fly past its tip, and since the computer knows roughly where the beam is at any given time, the computer can tell which part of the screen the pen is pointing at.
@@patrickjhogan I remember seeing some of those articles. The hardware on the graphics card of the CMI had a special trick where it would invert the video signal whenever the light pen saw the scanning beam. That resulted in a kind of "cursor" appearing as a roughly 'D' shaped spot on the screen directly under the tip of the pen. Depending on the brightness setting of the monitor, this would even work on the dark parts of the raster creating a bright spot but more often it was used over the bright part of the screen to create a dark spot for the cursor. That is why the screen drawing controls (sliders, waveform drawing etc) were preferentially rendered with black on green, rather than green on black whenever it was expected the user could interact with the screen element. Text mostly worked okay (it had enough white/bright/green bits for the light-pen to pick up but "button" type controls were frequently rendered in inverse text to make them easier for the light-pen to pick up.
Nick Rhodes REALLY showed off the potential of the Fairlight on the Arcadia album "So Red the Rose"- just brilliant! The tracks "The Promise" , "Goodbye is Forever" & "The Flame" with David Gilmour & Sting are stunningly good. All those incredible synth parts on that whole album were almost all the Fairlight C.M.I. & Jupiter 8. Nick was such a Synth Wizard back in the 80's. A true synth Legend. Glad Nick & Duran Duran will finally be in the R&R Hall of Fame this year! Well deserved.
I grew up on the UK music scene made with the sounds from the Fairlight CMI II/III's.... And the music conversatory I went to study at had a CMI III back in Australia... those were the good times! although, by then as the documentary correctly states, the other music instrument manufacturers caught up pretty fast... but the years where the Fairlight was the dominant instrument of choice were the glorious years in popular music!
Around the same time Bill Buxton and others were working at the University of Toronto on a digital synthesizer based on two DEC computers: an LSI-11 and a PDP 11/45. They called it one of the first portable digital synthesizers. If you had a van.
Kate Bush and Pet Shop Boys are two of my favourite artists and I know how much they used the Fairlight. I now live in Australia so great to hear that something that changed the world and my life came from here. I remember PSB using it in stage on Top of the Pops for one of their number ones. (probably You were always on my mind)
Fantastic video! That machine was and still is on nearly every song on my playlist for the last 35 years from countless mixtapes that went with me everywhere to my digital player, through my DAC to my Sennheiser HD600's and those headphones make the Fairlight the star in those recordings! A wee bit dissapointed that no mention of Trevor Horn in the success of that synth. for me he did more than anyone in the success of the Fairlight.
@@delskioffskinov horn was able to program the linn drum. that's it. w/o stephen lipson, andy richards and jj, his company would not have been successful.
I'm thinking you might not know what a producer does in the studio! I never said Trevor played the music in his productions I said he produced the recordings that contained the fairlight therefore he had the final say on what went into recording! If I didn't make that clear I apologize
When Security came out, it was so different than anything else, really unique. The Fairlight was something truly different. Wonderful video - thanks for sharing this!
Great doco. These guys are legends. I was offered Vince Clarke's Fairlight in the late 80s when he was selling it. By then I was already in love with the Roland D50 and lusting after an Emulator.
I remember this item being shown off in 1979 by Bert Newton in an episode of the Don Lane Show. And Bert was sampling a dog sound and playing voicings of it on the keyboard, in different pitches. These early sampling synthesizers used wavetable sample-based synthesis. However shortly thereafter, samplers started using pulse-code modulation (PCM) for digital sampling. And in 1983, the midi standard GM 1 was released. There's also an interesting RUclips video of a 1986 episode of the Computer Chronicles, showcasing MIDI sequences of that era.
Amazing documentation ! I bought in the early nineties a cmi IIx with midi extension from a guy in berlin. it had the same black keyboard as shown hear from Herbie Hancock at 00:35 . I got with the cmi a box with over 100 discs full of samples, also many from Hancock’s future shock. 2-3 years later i sold everything to a french guy…
It’s always frustrating to see pioneers lose out due to money problems while the big companies take the idea and run with it. But without these guys we wouldn’t have the amazing music from that era. They deserve recognition and their place in music history.
This is so cool. Amazing because not only was it a sampler, it was a whole DAW as well. What was Phil Collins' issue with the fairlight? He used a lot of electronic gear, synths, drum machines, etc. You think he would have used something as versatile as this. Although it was before my time, having relistened to Kate Bushes songs, they are mind blowing. Can you imagine the stuff she'd come up with today if you let her loose on a modern DAW.
Ah yes, the digital synthesizer that was used in Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill"! God I couldn't stop listening to that song! Thank you Stranger Things for introducing me to more 80's songs.
It blows my mind thinking that virtually every single part of these instruments were manufactured and assembled by hand. Even if this fact of reality rendered the instrument unaffordable, the cost was justified.
Have you seen that guy who's trying to piece one together and having to remake parts and print parts -- those videos show just how complicated it is. It's like making an airplane cockpit by hand!
At the time, I thought it was shameless profiteering but this really puts me in my place. Must have been a nightmare logistically to produce these things.
Good thing few years later Akai, Roland and Ensoniq released on the marked more affordable samplers, and and we got another major wave of new music styles.
Assembly was the least of costs for these $50,000 machines, with sales volumes in the dozens. It was definitely the R&D costs that was the majority of the price. Rendered obsolete by the introduction of the Atari ST, at one 30th the cost, but they had about a five year window where they were making a mint from every major recording studio.
@@cygil1 Were they making a mint, though? As he said, they were hand-to-mouth all the way through until they went bust. The machines cost a fortune to buy, but that was because they cost a fortune to build, and they had no way of leveraging economies of scale.
The Fairlight was iconic, Thomas Dolby, Pet Shop Boys, Kate Bush, Yello and The Art of Noise ! Enough said ❤. A beautiful instrument! These guys are legends.
My favorite record in the 1980s was Scritti Politti’s ‘Cupid & Psyche’….which was the first time I became aware of the CMI Fairlight. I knew how groundbreaking it was at the time, but I had no idea how much it would change the industry overall. Amazing.
I worked for a while in recording studios in the UK and have seen many very famous musicians trying out/making music on this revolutionary piece of equipment
I never got the chance to see an actual Fairlight CMI in person although I was aware of it. By the time I got into making music which was 1990, it was all about Akai, Ensoniq, E-mu and Roland samplers. Crazy that I now have the CMI V plug-in by Arturia.
Awesome little documentary. I remember sometimes catching the Fairlight hydrofoil to the city when I was a kid. They were a lot faster than the ferries. Boris Blank from Yello also had a Fairlight CMI, and those guys did some amazing work with it back in the 80s. Apparently he created a massive library of samples he recorded himself too.
Funny how those who could afford to use these machines went on to make their fortunes while the makers struggled and ultimately failed to stay in business. Fairlight shaped the sound of my teens but I always thought the makers would be driving around in Bentleys, given their well-known customers. Here in the UK Trevor Horn and everything he touched had Fairlight all over it with the Art of Noise, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Yes and Grace Jones among others having that distinctive signature. There was a lot of cash flowing in the ‘80s and I expected Misters Ryrie and Vogel would be doing well from a wealthy clientele , certainly didn’t expect them to be making high-end instruments while spending their time largely just trying to keep afloat. Humble people trying to pay their bills while also being pioneers selling the future of sound to those who could afford it. Great story.
I remember the Hancock appearance.. then suddenly you had Matt Broderick showing off a smaller unit (not Farilight) on Ferris buellers day off.. it progressed very fast.. but wow that Fairlight what a robust tool. Art Of Noise pulled off the artistry in a way where I can still listen to things like Moments in Love today .. unlike some of the other Sample stuff. Thanks for sharing.. love the history of this unit
The Emulator II synth in Ferris Bueller was still insanely expensive and would have been the envy of most professional musicians. The irony is that Ferris says he wanted a car but got given the synth instead, when his parents could have bought him a decent used car more cheaply than the synth :)
art of noise had 4 of these on stage! i remember when i got my casio SK-1 ( then the sk5 which i still have) -- the first thing i recorded on christmas day was "helloooooo..." ;-) i played it just like this bloke did!
What an innovative machine !! What I adore about it is that the keyboard and the screen are no bigger than what you would expect nowadays, all the electronics is stuffed in a box than can be put remote, which gives you a very neat workspace all dedicated to creativity For the French (and French 80’s pop lovers) : easy to find on YT videos of Daniel Balavoine using his Fairlight synthesizer somewhere around 1984.
I have one particular memory of the Fairlight: When Mike Oldfield's 1984 Discovery Tour visited Odense, Denmark, condensing humitidy dripped from the ceiling and shortened out Harald Zuschrader's Fairlight keyboard. After having tried to make it work again with the light pen, he had to give up, cover the keyboard with a towel and the monitor with a drum skin, and then grab a sei-acoustic Washburn and play background chords.
@@Mannizilla I wonder if Bremen was before or after Odense. If it was after, either the short wasn't that bad, or they had replaced whatever part that malfunctioned very quickly. Mensch, es is fast 40 Jahre her. Die Zeit läuft zu schnell.
@@sneakyfox4651 Ich weiss auch nicht, ob es davor oder danach war. Aber es war klasse. Vor dem Konzert wurden Teile von The Killing Fields über die Lautsprecher wiedergegeben. Der Soundtrack war zu diesem Zeitpunkt noch gar nicht veröffentlicht worden, herrlich.
It's quite mind-blowing that whatever you could do on a Fairlight back in the day, you could do the same on a "cheap" smartphone through an app. And it would be so epic.
I'm 56 years old. I remember in 1983 at Synergy store in Scottsdale Az., I got to fiddle around with the CMI. I bought a Korg Poly 800 about a year later. That's all my high school budget would allow!
![BabyChiefDoit - Too Slow (feat. STAR BANDZ) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/zayaxws7RPg/mqdefault.jpg)
At the time i did not realize i was part of a music revolution. Fairlight was my first job in Australia I worked there from 1985 photo of the team at 10:53 brings me back lovely memories. The guy with glasses next to the blond girl was me, her name was Petra if i remember right Tuye was our team leader bottom left corner next to him Vivien we walked a lot to Oxford street Darlinghurst to catch a bus . Fairlight etched in my heart for ever.
Maybe you had a part in building my Fairlight CVI!
Amazing! What did you do after?
Did you have a chance to meet Alan Galt? I’ve had a pleasure to know him, very briefly though. He was a real gentleman. He was also very modest and only briefly mentioned his role in the Fairlight development. I am just trying to piece together what his role really was, as something is telling me it may have been more significant that he had told me. There is photo on the web of the Fairlight team reunion for his funeral. That’s one sign of it.
Very cool
Nice 💻
THE sacred grial of the synth pop music of 80`s. awesome.
I bought and restored a Series IIx and a Series III around 2010 because I was a child of the 80s in awe of these incredible machines used by my favorite artists like Nick Rhodes and Trevor Horn. I of course could never afford one as a kid but it was such a treat to be able to own them and work on them later on. These were futuristic machines with their massive CPUs and light pen interface that provided endless hours of fun an experimentation. And a huge shoutout to Peter Wielk (featured in this video) for his dedication to and continued support of the Fairlight CMI community. In addition to selling me numerous parts for my restoration, he was always willing to chat and provide tips and advice about my Fairlights (and tell some great stories about working with artists back in the day). This is a great video highlighting the history of two visionaries and their amazing invention that completely transformed music.
I was expecting a low grade YT documentary. Instead I got a bite size insight into a story of magical times and monumental significance. Inspiring.
YT documentaries, believe it or not, are actually getting much higher in grade than a lot of stuff on TV.
Just two humble Aussie guys, who transformed modern music.
Love their understated style.
"nbd we just reshaped ALL OF POP MUSIC FOR DECADES"
Except they weren't the first, or the only ones...
(see: Soundstream Digital Editing System, released in 1977, several years before the Fairlight)
@@looneyburgmusic That's incorrect. Soundstream created digital recording systems to digitise music. They didn't create musical instruments using analogue samples which were converted to digital, which could then be modified on the unit, to create other sounds and played, at different tones on a piano keyboard. There was a small cross-over in basic digitising technology.
@@anniedarkhorse6791 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
"Small"?
How about massive crossover.
Samplers, at their very core, are nothing more than digital recorders, which can then modify and playback what has been recorded.
As you have already admitted
@@looneyburgmusic Are you 10 years old? Seriously, what a childish way of communicating. I recognise your type. The entire world knows that Fairlight made an incredible contribution to synthesiser development and history and you're going to be the one angry little incel who thinks he knows what the rest of the world, including the documentary film makers, do not. No technology is created in complete isolation, as any intelligent person knows. No one's impressed with you. I suspect that's why you started your bullshit in the first place. I won't bother replying. I've got a life.
Brilliant! Wish this was 3 times longer! ❤🧡💛
You can play it at .25 speed and it will be 4 times longer.
I wish this was more about the digital internals of this device.
These guys are still hugely under recognised for the tectonic shift they created in music.
It makes me incredibly proud of them as an Aussie.
I reckon they should be immortalised in bronze somewhere prominent.
Hugely unrecognized... did you happen to view this short documentary......??????????
@@pressureworks What a stupid, bitchy remark. Most synth-players and beat makers etc. know little about those guys.
Fairlight CMI was featured in an original song that I recorded back in 1986 in Brisbane, Australia. It was such a big deal to have that instrument on our modest little production.
Where's the link to the song? :)
Buffalo NY ?
What was it called , Was it a hit?
link please
@@toberius1 I don't even think I have a digital version of this song. Still on cassette.
Mid 80’s Stevie Wonder was playing a concert in the round at Wembley Arena, in the middle of a 3+ hour set the rest of the band went off for a break while Stevie stayed on to have a play with his new toy - a Fairlight. I remember him loving the wild electric guitar sound he was getting out of it.
P E A C E : )
As definitive as you’re ever likely to get in under 20 minutes. Great work from Tom and lovely to see the two Peter’s and Kim.
This was very well done and interesting. Hats off to whoever made this as it must have taken a lot of research.
These pre - MIDI machines are truly works of art at a time where most people couldn't even turn a computer on.
As a budding teenage keyboardist growing up in 1980's England, the Fairlight was held in such esteem, that even knowing someone who'd used one, was like knowing one of Jesus's disciples. It was nice to see the story told. At the forefront of a music revolution, two guys with a dream.
My absolute favorite Factory sound (and in my opinion the most iconic and most defining sound) of the Fairlight will always be the breathy enigmatic "Aar1" sound. This sound is so much engraved into my musical memory since my earliest childhood, it always gives me goosebumps and i feel like being a child again. The sound really cuts and brings your attention to a new layer and when i was a kid i was always blown away by it and it made me wonder HOW it was made and with what kind or Synthesizer. It both made me dream but also feel like being taken to a journey. You can't imagine the sheer impact it had on that little child born in 1984 east germany, that i was. Thank you Peter and Kim and ALLLL you amazing folks who put together and programmed all the Fairlight CMIs and the CVIs 💕
❤️ This is extraordinary ! These guys are light years ahead everybody. That's why their names are written on the history. I lived that time and I saw everything happening. 🙏🙏👍❤️
Briliant! We used a Fairlight on our first recording working with Tony Mansfield in 1983, the song was 'Cccan't You See' released in 1984. We used it on lot's of our records, with Tony as our producer and later used one with Gary Moberley as our producer. The Fairlight was a real game changer!
I am always wondering if this Fairlight is used in 'Message to my Girl'.
(Split Enz).
I think it is, just not sure ...
Lovely little doc celebrating the amazing era-defining creation of two nice Ozzies who are now part of music history! Brilliant!
FYI - We Aussies call ourselves "Aussies" and sometimes refer to ourselves as coming from "Oz". It's an Aussie thing...
Thank you Kim and Peter for making the 1980's for what they were. Also thank you Peter and Kate for helping the Fairlight CMI become the success that it was. I am still astounded that you managed to ever get a machine built at all. You touched on how these machines were hand built. From the monitors to the lettering on the keyboards to the fabrication of the circuit boards everything was made by hand. You had no choice as Australia's thriving computer manufacturing base was non existent. From what I can see there is more assembly line automation in the construction of a Rolls Royce of the same era. No wonder the Fairlights costed a bomb. Considering that even today Running up that hill still manages to be one of the most popular songs ever says something not just about Kate Bush but also to the instrument that allowed the magic happen.
I had the privilege of working on a couple of series 3 fairlights back in the day. Such impactful sessions as I was so in awe and never wanted to leave ha.
Would love to have a go on one of these. Doing it through a dAW is a bit soulless. I can see why people (such as Depeche Mode) went out and about with a mic and just recorded what they found as they wandered. !
Peter Vogel - You are the man! This instrument was very inspiring. People could finally see some of the textbook audio principles actually working in real life. It was figuring out what the waterfall plot on a IIx was that made me want to learn about FFTs and DSP in the first place. We all wish that the CMI30A didn't get shut down by the current Fairlight.
I loved how peter gabriel used the fairlight on his 4th album, security. Specially on family and the fishing net, i absolutely adore how the flute hits are sincopated in the intro, the utilization of the sample is just genius
that was my first cassette purchase ever. I still have it on my shelf behind me. such a timeless album, as was his 3rd self titled "melt".
I'll never forget hearing family and the fishing net for the first time with my brother. Yes. the flute, the percussion, ha ha haaaaah!
I so wanted a Fairlight as a musician after watching Nick Rhodes on stage using it! Wonderful and bittersweet story..
I *LOVE* the sound of floppy disk drives spooling up. Reminds me vividly of the IBM PC that my dad used for work in about 1987 onwards.. RIP dad❤
Awesome doco. My dad used to help finance these for artists and studios and I remember him telling me that the soundtrack to Crocodile Dundee was totally recorded on Fairlight. Dad was a huge fan of Jean Michelle Jarre who I think was also a fairlight fan.
As a keyboard player growing up in the 80’s I found this utterly fascinating. Amazing story and part of musical history.
the fairlight was true game changer.. well done Tom for creating another great doco.. Saw the AC/DC one also which was great..
Here's a couple of bits of trivia for you, firstly the Fairlight CMI actually used two Motorola 68000 CPUs which were interleaved to enable rapid processing of all the data, secondly the DACs (Digital to Analog Converters) were 8-Bit DACs, but the instrument was still capable of producing sounds with remarkable fidelity.
Interesting as the 68000 is a 16-bit data bus so it wouldn't be too difficult to go there DAC-wise. Just a bunch of resistor bridges. I suppose memory limitation was the issue.
Actually, the Series I & II ran 6800/6809 (not 68000) CPUs and had the 8-bit DACs. The Series III had the 68000 CPU and also had 16-bit DACs...
@@v12alpine Memory was very much the issue for the Series 1. The Series III on the other hand had up to 14Mb of memory. Not huge by today's standards but when I was handed my development machine after joining Fairlight featuring 8M of memory, 10 6809 CPU's, 2 68000 CPUs and 256K of program memory and 120M hard disk I was comparing it to my similar vintage (1984) fully decked out PC with 256K and 20M hard drives running at 4.7 MHz.
@@v12alpine The DAC's on the series 1 were 8 bit chips and pretty high quality for their day. On the series III, they were 16 bit and were absolutely state of the art for the time. The post processing analogue circuitry was so closely guarded that the service manual did not include the schematic for the channel cards but included every other schematic. A resistor ladder discrete DAC would unlikely meet the required specifications. On the other hand, Peter Vogel created the original 8 bit ADC used for sampling from discrete chips. It was pretty limited in the sample rate as a result. The machine could play back faster than it could record - something that was fixed with the Series II.
Two 6800 CPUs not 68000 CPUs. This was an 8 bit system not a 16-bit one.
To me this is THE definition of a DAW. Everything integrated. And it has the imho best sounding sampler of the early digital Sampling Era because of the way the CMI Sampler worked that didn't cause a lot of nasty aliasing to be heard. Which is why i am always amazed at what people pulled off with just 32Khz 8 bit in the early models. The whole architecture of the CMI oozes such a special type of sound signature that i really never heard on any other Digital Audio Workstation. As a kid the sounds made on this thing, followed me everywhere. And i bow in respect to the achievements of these aussie geniuses who had the right idea at the right time. Even sadly at a price that only the 5 wealthiest kings of the world could afford....
This is The Very First DAW
@@Helios824 it really is. And in my opinion it still does things better than modern DAWs. Especially on the Operating System aspect and how the sampler worked.
Always nice to see documentaries like this!
Jean Michel Jarre deserves to be mentioned in this as well. His 1984 album Zoolook shows some real creative use of the CMI…
It’s weird that ZOOLOOK is rarely listed when Fairlight is talked about. Perhaps it’s not as mainstream as it’d to be remembered ? I still think that even today it’s very difficult to « redo » Ethnicolor where, for instance, it’s quiet easy to « redo » The Art of Noise Love track (which is great !)
I had a friend who was a keen synthesist and Jarre fan. I remember the day we drove in to the city and picked up "Zoolook." I feel like he had a security cordon around him walking back to the car with it. His precious. At which point he had no idea how it would be.
It was Jarre, so even I was able to enjoy it, but homes was blown away.
And Herbie Hancock too!!
@@jimbim4405 True, there’s some great footage of Herbie Hancock using the CMi on RUclips!
Boris Blank/Yello were forgotten as well. This docu, while otherwise brilliant, is a bit british biased.
Great documentary! Such an amazing story of Australian innovation.
Wow- insightful and inspiring right there! I think I should at least say thank you to those two innovators - THANK YOU!
I worked my first music trade show in Sydney 1979 and there was a constant crowd at the stand near ours. I caught glimpses of a keyboard and screen and heard real world sounds at different pitches. It was Fairlight of course.
And there it is at the top of the charts today with “Running Up That Hill” number one again courtesy of Stranger Things - who knew?
Absolutely brilliant. I am an ‘80s child and vividly remember pretty much every song this was used on.
I make this bow, publicly: if I’m ever a billionaire, I’d get the creators to make an app for creators, with every single bell and whistle - literally- they ever wanted.
Thank you!
I saw that Tomorrow's World episode when it first aired and I was blown away by the "hello" part. As a tyro musician I realised instantly that such a machine would very likely remain out of my price range. Technology has changed and I can do all the sampling I want now using a laptop, but the Fairlight was the first one to take that step and it is still out of my price range!
Here is a bit of trivia: Al Jourgensen from Ministry once got a hold of one of those, completely reinvented the sound of the band, irreversibly influencing the genre that would later become industrial-metal. This piece of gear was a true game changer for sure. The thing was, all people at his studio were so high on all kinds of drugs, they couldn't really figure out the way how to leave the initial sequencer screen. So they built all of the songs around four bar loops they could fit on that one screen. That is how most of the album The Land Of Rape And Honey got made. True story, believe it or not. Priceless.
I can't tell you how much I love coming across bits of info online telling about how some of my favorite music & other forms of entertainment are made!
This sounds like me when i first started working with a DAW, totally clueless but I made my music whether I knew how to properly utilize the program or not lol!
What you speak of is completely true but it was Revolting Cocks album Big Sexy Land a Ministry side project that was made under those circumstances with that instrument
@@DizzleFitzpizzle4eva I stand corrected then. Always thought it was a hilarious story, though. Cheers, mate 👍
Although I never had the opportunity to use the amazing Fairlight. It will always have a high status and almost mythic quality in my life, because of the music it helped generate, which I grew up with. I think as an older high schooler, I eventually purchased and Emulator II, but, Wow, I just wish I could have afforded the Fairlight. Great job guys on bringing this story and its creators to RUclips ❤❤🎹
the fact it has a touch screen pen in the 80s is minding blowing
Technically a "light pen". It works by noticing the timing of the scanning beam on the CRT and capturing the values of the counters in the video card. In fact you didn't have to touch the screen at all. The light pen works up to about 1cm away from the screen.
Home computer magazines in the 80s often had articles about adding a light pen to your Commodore/Sinclair/Atari/Acorn very inexpensively. Like Paul says, then pen simply sends a signal to the computer when it sees the monitor's beam fly past its tip, and since the computer knows roughly where the beam is at any given time, the computer can tell which part of the screen the pen is pointing at.
@@patrickjhogan I remember seeing some of those articles. The hardware on the graphics card of the CMI had a special trick where it would invert the video signal whenever the light pen saw the scanning beam. That resulted in a kind of "cursor" appearing as a roughly 'D' shaped spot on the screen directly under the tip of the pen. Depending on the brightness setting of the monitor, this would even work on the dark parts of the raster creating a bright spot but more often it was used over the bright part of the screen to create a dark spot for the cursor. That is why the screen drawing controls (sliders, waveform drawing etc) were preferentially rendered with black on green, rather than green on black whenever it was expected the user could interact with the screen element. Text mostly worked okay (it had enough white/bright/green bits for the light-pen to pick up but "button" type controls were frequently rendered in inverse text to make them easier for the light-pen to pick up.
I guess it's tough to license all the music you'd want, great job getting so much in. I'm ready for part 2 where you focus on the Art of Noise!
And Jean-Michel Jarre.
Yep, when I think Fairlight I think AON, they did wonders with that machine.
Nick Rhodes REALLY showed off the potential of the Fairlight on the Arcadia album "So Red the Rose"- just brilliant! The tracks "The Promise" , "Goodbye is Forever" & "The Flame" with David Gilmour & Sting are stunningly good.
All those incredible synth parts on that whole album were almost all the Fairlight C.M.I. & Jupiter 8. Nick was such a Synth Wizard back in the 80's. A true synth Legend. Glad Nick & Duran Duran will finally be in the R&R Hall of Fame this year! Well deserved.
I grew up on the UK music scene made with the sounds from the Fairlight CMI II/III's.... And the music conversatory I went to study at had a CMI III back in Australia... those were the good times!
although, by then as the documentary correctly states, the other music instrument manufacturers caught up pretty fast... but the years where the Fairlight was the dominant instrument of choice were the glorious years in popular music!
Around the same time Bill Buxton and others were working at the University of Toronto on a digital synthesizer based on two DEC computers: an LSI-11 and a PDP 11/45. They called it one of the first portable digital synthesizers. If you had a van.
Kate Bush and Pet Shop Boys are two of my favourite artists and I know how much they used the Fairlight. I now live in Australia so great to hear that something that changed the world and my life came from here.
I remember PSB using it in stage on Top of the Pops for one of their number ones. (probably You were always on my mind)
Fantastic video! That machine was and still is on nearly every song on my playlist for the last 35 years from countless mixtapes that went with me everywhere to my digital player, through my DAC to my Sennheiser HD600's and those headphones make the Fairlight the star in those recordings! A wee bit dissapointed that no mention of Trevor Horn in the success of that synth. for me he did more than anyone in the success of the Fairlight.
> Trevor Horn did more than anyone
> in the success of the Fairlight.
nah, it was jj jeczalik who did the fairlight programming for ztt.
@@woodyforrest313 who hired JJ and paid for his drugs? lol
@@delskioffskinov horn was able to program the linn drum. that's it. w/o stephen lipson, andy richards and jj, his company would not have been successful.
I'm thinking you might not know what a producer does in the studio! I never said Trevor played the music in his productions I said he produced the recordings that contained the fairlight therefore he had the final say on what went into recording! If I didn't make that clear I apologize
Best demo I know has been done by Herbie and Quincy in their studio. Epic video.
When Security came out, it was so different than anything else, really unique. The Fairlight was something truly different. Wonderful video - thanks for sharing this!
What an amazing documentary
Great doco. These guys are legends. I was offered Vince Clarke's Fairlight in the late 80s when he was selling it. By then I was already in love with the Roland D50 and lusting after an Emulator.
I still love the D-50 :)
Though I don't own one any more, I'm using it in VST form...
Thanks to those two for their hard work- it’s provided a lifetimes worth of wonderful music and ideas!
Amazing insight. I always remember Duran using the Fairlight heavily on Seven and the Ragged Tiger album.
I love this thing. I have the entire (30 mb) CMI library and I always try to sneak in a sample from it here and there in my jams.
I remember this item being shown off in 1979 by Bert Newton in an episode of the Don Lane Show. And Bert was sampling a dog sound and playing voicings of it on the keyboard, in different pitches.
These early sampling synthesizers used wavetable sample-based synthesis. However shortly thereafter, samplers started using pulse-code modulation (PCM) for digital sampling. And in 1983, the midi standard GM 1 was released.
There's also an interesting RUclips video of a 1986 episode of the Computer Chronicles, showcasing MIDI sequences of that era.
Amazing documentation !
I bought in the early nineties a cmi IIx with midi extension from a guy in berlin. it had the same black keyboard as shown hear from Herbie Hancock at 00:35 .
I got with the cmi a box with over 100 discs full of samples, also many from Hancock’s future shock.
2-3 years later i sold everything to a french guy…
Superb video. Thank you for your work.
I remember, our first producer in the late 80ies had one. It looked so cool!!!
Thank you for this :) it's wonderful.
It’s always frustrating to see pioneers lose out due to money problems while the big companies take the idea and run with it. But without these guys we wouldn’t have the amazing music from that era. They deserve recognition and their place in music history.
Just about all the synth pioneers had companies that went bust. That's what happens when you're way ahead of your time..
What a great video. Thanks for sharing.
👏Greetings from Puebla, México.
This is so cool. Amazing because not only was it a sampler, it was a whole DAW as well. What was Phil Collins' issue with the fairlight? He used a lot of electronic gear, synths, drum machines, etc. You think he would have used something as versatile as this. Although it was before my time, having relistened to Kate Bushes songs, they are mind blowing. Can you imagine the stuff she'd come up with today if you let her loose on a modern DAW.
Ah yes, the digital synthesizer that was used in Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill"! God I couldn't stop listening to that song!
Thank you Stranger Things for introducing me to more 80's songs.
LOVE THIS. Use to Love the CMI
and page R ;-)
This is what I needed rt now. Thank you
It blows my mind thinking that virtually every single part of these instruments were manufactured and assembled by hand. Even if this fact of reality rendered the instrument unaffordable, the cost was justified.
Have you seen that guy who's trying to piece one together and having to remake parts and print parts -- those videos show just how complicated it is. It's like making an airplane cockpit by hand!
At the time, I thought it was shameless profiteering but this really puts me in my place. Must have been a nightmare logistically to produce these things.
Good thing few years later Akai, Roland and Ensoniq released on the marked more affordable samplers, and and we got another major wave of new music styles.
Assembly was the least of costs for these $50,000 machines, with sales volumes in the dozens. It was definitely the R&D costs that was the majority of the price. Rendered obsolete by the introduction of the Atari ST, at one 30th the cost, but they had about a five year window where they were making a mint from every major recording studio.
@@cygil1 Were they making a mint, though? As he said, they were hand-to-mouth all the way through until they went bust. The machines cost a fortune to buy, but that was because they cost a fortune to build, and they had no way of leveraging economies of scale.
Great documentary !
great work Tom, this really encapsulates the story in an interesting and informative way. I wish it was longer though ! :) part 2 perhaps ?
The Fairlight was iconic, Thomas Dolby, Pet Shop Boys, Kate Bush, Yello and The Art of Noise ! Enough said ❤. A beautiful instrument! These guys are legends.
Absolutely brilliant 😀
My favorite record in the 1980s was Scritti Politti’s ‘Cupid & Psyche’….which was the first time I became aware of the CMI Fairlight. I knew how groundbreaking it was at the time, but I had no idea how much it would change the industry overall. Amazing.
Thank you so much for your great efforts Fairlight ... We owe you a great debt ... So many hours of listening pleasure thanks to you!
I worked for a while in recording studios in the UK and have seen many very famous musicians trying out/making music on this revolutionary piece of equipment
This is what made the 80's the best YEAR of Humanity in terms of greatest music developed.
I never got the chance to see an actual Fairlight CMI in person although I was aware of it. By the time I got into making music which was 1990, it was all about Akai, Ensoniq, E-mu and Roland samplers. Crazy that I now have the CMI V plug-in by Arturia.
What a stunning story! They built a computer themselves with a touch screen way ahead of everyone!! Unbelivable.
The Fairlight team was brilliant and changed music without a doubt. The Art of Noise album's alone sealed their legacy.
Brilliant stuff! 👊👊👊
I own over 50 Synths. Years of collecting. Feck! It would be so amazing to finally actually own a fairlight x
Very good story!!
The Fairlight will always have a special place in my heart.
Awesome little documentary. I remember sometimes catching the Fairlight hydrofoil to the city when I was a kid. They were a lot faster than the ferries.
Boris Blank from Yello also had a Fairlight CMI, and those guys did some amazing work with it back in the 80s. Apparently he created a massive library of samples he recorded himself too.
I am a total Yello fan. I had no idea of the Fairlight connection.
Funny how those who could afford to use these machines went on to make their fortunes while the makers struggled and ultimately failed to stay in business. Fairlight shaped the sound of my teens but I always thought the makers would be driving around in Bentleys, given their well-known customers. Here in the UK Trevor Horn and everything he touched had Fairlight all over it with the Art of Noise, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Yes and Grace Jones among others having that distinctive signature. There was a lot of cash flowing in the ‘80s and I expected Misters Ryrie and Vogel would be doing well from a wealthy clientele , certainly didn’t expect them to be making high-end instruments while spending their time largely just trying to keep afloat. Humble people trying to pay their bills while also being pioneers selling the future of sound to those who could afford it. Great story.
Gone but not forgotten!
The thing is brilliant!
it's amazing how fast technology advances ... time flies. It was a huge machine at the time ... 👍
I remember the Hancock appearance.. then suddenly you had Matt Broderick showing off a smaller unit (not Farilight) on Ferris buellers day off.. it progressed very fast.. but wow that Fairlight what a robust tool. Art Of Noise pulled off the artistry in a way where I can still listen to things like Moments in Love today .. unlike some of the other Sample stuff. Thanks for sharing.. love the history of this unit
The Emulator II synth in Ferris Bueller was still insanely expensive and would have been the envy of most professional musicians. The irony is that Ferris says he wanted a car but got given the synth instead, when his parents could have bought him a decent used car more cheaply than the synth :)
art of noise had 4 of these on stage!
i remember when i got my casio SK-1 ( then the sk5 which i still have) -- the first thing i recorded on christmas day was "helloooooo..." ;-) i played it just like this bloke did!
So much to unpack. Thank you.
What an innovative machine !! What I adore about it is that the keyboard and the screen are no bigger than what you would expect nowadays, all the electronics is stuffed in a box than can be put remote, which gives you a very neat workspace all dedicated to creativity
For the French (and French 80’s pop lovers) : easy to find on YT videos of Daniel Balavoine using his Fairlight synthesizer somewhere around 1984.
Just stumbled on this today. Way too cool!! These guys deserve way more credit! Enough that I would’ve already known!
Great video! Told me a bunch of things I didn't know
Awesome to watch this life changer.. I’m still into sequencing and sampling in home studio since 79
Amazing and awesome machine
Great history!!
The Fairlight now lives on through Arturia, thank God!!!
I have one particular memory of the Fairlight:
When Mike Oldfield's 1984 Discovery Tour visited Odense, Denmark, condensing humitidy dripped from the ceiling and shortened out Harald Zuschrader's Fairlight keyboard.
After having tried to make it work again with the light pen, he had to give up, cover the keyboard with a towel and the monitor with a drum skin, and then grab a sei-acoustic Washburn and play background chords.
I saw the Discovery Concert in Bremen and I'm happy everything worked 🤗.
@@Mannizilla I wonder if Bremen was before or after Odense. If it was after, either the short wasn't that bad, or they had replaced whatever part that malfunctioned very quickly.
Mensch, es is fast 40 Jahre her. Die Zeit läuft zu schnell.
@@sneakyfox4651 Ich weiss auch nicht, ob es davor oder danach war. Aber es war klasse. Vor dem Konzert wurden Teile von The Killing Fields über die Lautsprecher wiedergegeben. Der Soundtrack war zu diesem Zeitpunkt noch gar nicht veröffentlicht worden, herrlich.
It's quite mind-blowing that whatever you could do on a Fairlight back in the day, you could do the same on a "cheap" smartphone through an app. And it would be so epic.
Thank you
An incredible and game changing piece of technology that was crucial to everything that followed. These guys deserve so much more credit.
God, such a great documentation and then these commercials!!!! It makes watching videos a major pita!I
Amazing....changed the world
Half a megabyte and it makes wonders... Amazing!
I'm 56 years old. I remember in 1983 at Synergy store in Scottsdale Az., I got to fiddle around with the CMI. I bought a Korg Poly 800 about a year later. That's all my high school budget would allow!
there's a glimpse of my kate bush remake with qasarbeach(fairlight cmi emulation) at 9:49 .
suberb video thank you so much for this piece of history