What was the Fairlight CMI?
The Fairlight CMI, or Computer Musical Instrument, was one of the first digital sampling synthesisers, developed in Sydney by Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie and released in 1979. It changed pop music in the 1980s.
Vogel and Ryrie founded Fairlight in 1975, naming it after a Sydney Harbour ferry. With designer Tony Furse, they created a machine that could record real sounds, store them digitally and play them back at different pitches on a keyboard.
The Fairlight had a computer screen and a light pen, which let musicians draw sound waves and edit sounds visually. Its Page R sequencer allowed users to program rhythms and patterns.
Famous users
The instrument was expensive, but it was used by leading artists such as Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock and Jean-Michel Jarre. Its sounds appear on many famous 1980s recordings.
The Fairlight helped make sampling a standard part of music production, paving the way for modern digital audio workstations and samplers.
Later, cheaper samplers from other companies reduced Fairlight's market, but the original CMI is remembered as a landmark of Australian technology and is held in museum collections.
Did You Know?
The famous orchestra hit sound used in many 1980s pop songs came from a Fairlight sample.