With Phil Collins credits No jacket required You will receive the disclaimer saying “There are no fair lights on this record.” Cryptic may have appeared in most of the many buyers of its album, but technology-oriented musicians would have got it. At half the price since its introduction, Fairlight computer instruments, or CMI, had formed pop music created by sounds of pop music, or at least acts that could afford it. This device may cost you as much as a home, but for those who understand the possibility of playing and manipulating the sounds of real instruments (or other things) digitally, money is the best. It wasn’t the purpose.
History of Fairlight CMI It is said in Above video Sydney Morning Herald and yearIncludes interviews from Australian inventors Peter Vogel and Kim Reilly. According to Riley No jacket required In fact, one of the musicians actually used Fairlight in the sense that they sampled the sound from the Fairlight library. For musicians, using technology that is not yet widely known as digital sampling would have felt magical. For listeners, it meant a full range of sounds they had never heard before, or at least never used that way. Takes an “orchestra hit” originally sampled from a Stravinsky record Firebird (And that story is told Vox video right above), quickly became virtually inevitable.
It may be called an orchestra hit Fairlight’s “killer app,” but it is known as a breathtaking, faint voice sample “arr1” There was also a lot of action across the genre. These specific desires for effects took many musicians and producers to the bandwagon throughout the ’80s, but it was the early adopters who used Fairlight the most creatively. The earliest of these was Peter Gabriel. Clips from the French documentary above It makes a sample noise, blows wind through the pipes, and destroys the TV in the junkyard. Kate Bush embraced Fairlight with special enthusiasm, using not only sampling capabilities but also groundbreaking sequencing software (included in Series II and later) to create a hit of 1985. “Run up that hill.” It made a surprising return to popularity just a few years ago.
Famous American users of Fairlight included Stevie Wonder, Toddland Glenn and Herbie Hancock. The above documentary clip. With a green-on-black monitor, a huge floppy disk, and a futuristic “light pen” (a device where pointing devices are natural, just like in the days when most humans never looked at the mouse), It doesn’t look much like instruments than early personal computers with piano keyboards attached. There are troublesome qualities, and some people were leaning too badly on the packed sounds, but as Hancock points out, tools are tools, and humans are in control. , you can get pleasant results. It’s not plugged in. I haven’t programmed it yet…I haven’t programmed it yet. ” To this, Jones, who is always favored: “But it’s on the way.”
Related content:
Watch Herbie Hancock demo on Sesame Street
How did the Yamaha DX7 digital synthesizer define the sound of music in the 1980s?
Thomas Dolby explains how synthesizers work on the Jim Henson Kids Show (1989)
How Moog Synthesizers Changed the Sound of Music
Everything you wanted to know about synthesizers: Vintage 3-hour crash course
History of Electronic Music, 1800-2015: Free Web Project Catalogs Theremin, Fairlight and Other Instruments that Revolutionize Music
Based in Seoul Colin marshall Write and broadcasting stationTS about cities, languages, and culture. His projects include the Substack Newsletter Books about cities And the book The Stateless City: Walking through 21st century Los Angeles. Follow him on social networks previously known as Twitter @colinmarshall.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
