The Fairlight CMI
Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 2:44 am
For some reason, I decided to hit Youtube in search of any and all videos featuring the Fairlight CMI and its descendents. I found a lot more than I thought I would, including a presentation on the Fairlight Series III by Bob Moog, back in 1984, I think it was.
It was quite an inspiring instrument, wasn't it? It makes me want to track one down to play with it. Even though in terms of raw sampling power and space, modern samplers outdo it by a large margin, it had synthesis and sample processing capabilities modern samplers still don't touch.
In one video, a guy showed how you can animate along 128 single cycle "slots" over time to create a sound. He drew waveform 0 one the screen, then he drew waveform 127, then he asked the system to interpolate all of the points in between. The result was an amazingly organic and expressive sound, which wasn't bad considering he just scribbled the start and end point.
The other thing the Fairlight could do was to play back 32 individually-controlled summed partials. Boob Moog showed a cool trick, where he applied envelopes to each partial so that The low partials faded out just as the higher partials faded in, sweeping up the range. The result was a cool resonant sweep effect I've never heard before.
Of course, now we can increase the number of interpolated waves, and the number of partials, and probably even add support for non-harmonic partials as well, and still have a real-time instrument.
Anyway, I found those videos inspiring, and definitely food for thought.
It was quite an inspiring instrument, wasn't it? It makes me want to track one down to play with it. Even though in terms of raw sampling power and space, modern samplers outdo it by a large margin, it had synthesis and sample processing capabilities modern samplers still don't touch.
In one video, a guy showed how you can animate along 128 single cycle "slots" over time to create a sound. He drew waveform 0 one the screen, then he drew waveform 127, then he asked the system to interpolate all of the points in between. The result was an amazingly organic and expressive sound, which wasn't bad considering he just scribbled the start and end point.
The other thing the Fairlight could do was to play back 32 individually-controlled summed partials. Boob Moog showed a cool trick, where he applied envelopes to each partial so that The low partials faded out just as the higher partials faded in, sweeping up the range. The result was a cool resonant sweep effect I've never heard before.
Of course, now we can increase the number of interpolated waves, and the number of partials, and probably even add support for non-harmonic partials as well, and still have a real-time instrument.
Anyway, I found those videos inspiring, and definitely food for thought.