
The Wonder from Down Under: The Fairlight CMI Digital Sampling Synthesiser - empressplay
https://paleotronic.com/2018/10/16/the-wonder-from-down-under-the-fairlight-cmi-digital-sampling-synthesiser/
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paulgerhardt
If anyone has one of these gorgeous machines (or knows someone that has one),
please get in touch (email in profile). Through a very circuitous process I
managed to score some of those 8" floppys Vogel made for the CMI in 1979 -
would love to rip them for the Internet Archive and hear them in their
original glory.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
As well as Vogel's own CMI app, Arturia make a VST called Fairlight V which
has most of the original sounds and does an excellent job of capturing the
audio character of the instrument.

Chances are good the floppies are part of the original sample library, which
is widely available.

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paulgerhardt
They came with an invoice from Deram Limited in London sent to Roger Linn in
Hollywood. Signed by Gloria Calbrath and John Styx. The invoice says the
producer was Vic Coppersmith. Artist: Europeans. Invoice line items says it
includes "ENC DEMO SAMPLES FOR LINN ELECTRONICS". Dated January, 1982.

The three disks are labeled:

1) "Ultranox drum sounds, Simmons Drums Sounds, Tom Severetts Drum Sounds"

2) "Freddie Perren's Drum Sounds"

3) "Audio Disk: Vic Coppersmith / Europeans"

All three disks are BASF 128 Bytes(!), 25 Sectors.

If you can point me in the direction of those original sample libraries I
would be appreciate it, as it gives me a space to start parsing these!

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flyinghamster
"However, despite its deficiencies, Australian distributors and consumers were
interested, so much so that the Musician’s Union warned that such devices
posed a “lethal threat” to its members, afraid that humans in orchestras could
be replaced!"

Funny how the music business in general can be such a bunch of Luddites.
Player pianos, the phonograph, the Hammond organ, magnetic tape, synthesizers,
digital recording... all of them were going to just kill music.

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yesenadam
? But it happened. Older musicians tell me about a time (1960s and before)
when they had several gigs each day - playing in dance halls, radio stations,
clubs, tv stations, studio work.. Now venues can just turn on the radio or CD
etc. People write music on their computers. How many places where people dance
has a live band with actual musicians? (No, DJs don't count) By the sound of
it, there's virtually no gigs nowadays compared to back then. Those things you
mentioned didn't kill music, but live music, actual musicians, have a vastly
reduced role in society (in the West at least) compared to 50 or 100 years
ago. I understand why the Musician's Union would be worried.

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jacquesm
> People write music on their computers

I'm perfectly fine with that. Computers can be musical instruments and even if
they don't take years to master to get a tone or a riff out that does not
diminish the accomplishment, which is all about creating original sounds, not
about _how_ those sounds are made.

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williamdclt
People creating "computer music" are a mix of composers and producers, but not
players which is a totally different piece of work. Apart from live DJs, but
there's very few of them doing anything on stage that could be called "playing
an instrument".

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userbinator
It turns out the demo/warez group of the same name, which I'd guess far more
users here have probably heard of, did get its name from the synthesiser:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairlight_(group)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairlight_\(group\))

The group and its members also have an interesting history.

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cmroanirgo
I was sold when I saw the early version of the touch screen:

"a light-sensing 'pen' which can tell its location on the CRT by synchronising
with the video signal"

