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Thread: A short history of the Fairlight & that Orchestra Hit that was ubiquitous in the 80s

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    Studmuffin Scott Bails's Avatar
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    A short history of the Fairlight & that Orchestra Hit that was ubiquitous in the 80s

    Music isn't about chops, or even about talent - it's about sound and the way that sound communicates to people. Mike Keneally

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    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    The Fairlight was revolutionary when it came out, but it was wayyy too expensive for the average musician, and wayyy too hard to program for most of the superstars and grant-funded people who COULD afford it to ever modify the stock sounds.

    So yeah, the orchestra hit got overused.

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    If you want to hear the possibilities of the Fairlight, try Hubert Bognermayr and Harald Zuschrader - Erdenklang


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    Man of repute progmatist's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by rcarlberg View Post
    The Fairlight was revolutionary when it came out, but it was wayyy too expensive for the average musician, and wayyy too hard to program for most of the superstars and grant-funded people who COULD afford it to ever modify the stock sounds.

    So yeah, the orchestra hit got overused.
    It wasn't nearly as expensive as the Synclavier. The Fairlight cost as much as a McMansion, the Synclavier an actual mansion.

    When the GTR album was being made, they used both a Fairlight AND a Synclavier, AND a 32 track digital recorder...also quite expensive at that time.
    "Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama

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    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    The Fairlight CMI Series II was £30,000 in 1982. The Synclavier II in 1982 started at $14,150 (but options could drive the price past $200,000.)

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    Member dropforge's Avatar
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    Mark Shreeve loved the eff out of the Fairlight's orchestra hit on his '85 calling card Legion.

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    Member Top Cat's Avatar
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    Soundcloud page: Richard Hermans, musical meanderings https://soundcloud.com/precipice YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/@richardhermans4457

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    I got to play on a Fairlight CMI for several years back in the 80's and early 90's; they had one (first one west of the Mississippi, I'm told) at the University of Texas Electronic Music Department. While I used some of the sounds from the set of library floppy discs provided by Fairlight (though few of the ones you heard in pop/rock music), I did a LOT of sampling of my voice. One really cool effect the Fairlight could do was having portamento on each individual key, which made my sampled voices go every which way at once. I really never heard that done by pop/rock artists, and I went out of my way back then to check out any albums that had a Fairlight. By 1990, it was getting hard just to boot up the system. and the professor finally retired it; there was nobody who could fix it since the company had gone under by then.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by rcarlberg View Post
    The Fairlight was revolutionary when it came out, but it was wayyy too expensive for the average musician, and wayyy too hard to program for most of the superstars and grant-funded people who COULD afford it to ever modify the stock sounds.

    So yeah, the orchestra hit got overused.
    Well, your second point is kind of unrelated to your third. Yes, the Fairlight was probably difficult to program (I'm not sure since I have zero experience using one). "Difficult to program" seemed to be the byword of the day, as there were lots of digital synths and effects processors that had that same problem.

    A big part of it was the knobless front panels. Instead of having a dozen or more knobs and switches, you had a bank of buttons (maybe a telephone style touch pad) and one data entry device, maybe a knob, or a slider, or a couple buttons. You had to deal with menus and figuring out a rather non-intuitive user interface.

    Another problem was the learning curve. On most analog synths, sounds are generated in relatively simple ways. On something like a Minimoog or Prophet-5, even a modular synth, it's somewhat easy to figure out what all the knobs and switches do, if you're willing to sit there and play with it.

    Something like the DX-7 or the Fairlight used more complex synthesis scenarios, which were very diffcult to understand to anyone who didn't have a degree in four dimensional algebra, or whatever. Same thing with the digital effects units. On analog effects, each unit has a handful of controls that were easy to understand. It was easy to figure out how ot make a phaser or a flanger or whatever do certain things. But things like the Yamaha SPX-90 added extra parameters that you'd never heard of, and you had to sit there and figure out what each one did. Digital reverb was the worst, instead of just having a spring reverb with a wet/dry mix control and maybe one or two tone controls, now you had all these new settings, e.g. decay, pre-delay, reverb time, and assorted "gate" related functions.

    So, it was a pain in the ass to figure out what any of that stuff did, even if you ewre inclined to "look for new sounds". That's why a lot of records suddenly had credits for "programming" on them, especially if something like a DX-7 or Synclavier was used. And in each city (LA, NYC, or London, typically), the studios used the same handful of programmers. That's why a lot of records that were made in let's say LA might have the same synth sounds on them, because they all used the same make and model synth, and the same programmer.

    But a bigger issue is the cookie cutter and copycat approach to record production, and this is something that went back to the 60's, at least. A lot of record producers just copy what's already successful. When (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction came out and took over the airwaves, dozens of records followed that emulated the fuzz guitar riff of that song. Some of them were good, some of them weren't.

    After Switched On-Bach came out and became the biggest selling Bach recording of all time, there was dozens of really lame impersonator records, mostly featuring what were otherwise lounge music level renditions of pop or jazz hits played on synthesizer.

    Bernie Krause once lamented that when he and Paul Beaver finally got people interested in using synths, they'd go into the studio and set up patches on the synth for a session, typically intending to offer some of the "new sounds you've never heard before" the instrument could make. But producers would say "Could you give me this sound", and then name some record. He said they'd want Stevie Wonder's synth bass sound, or they'd want something like what I Feel Love by Donna Summer. The producers weren't interested in being on the forefront of doing "something new" with the synth, the way people like Wendy Carlos or Morton Subotnick or even Brian Eno were. They just wanted to make a record that sounded like something that was already popular.


    And so it was in the 80's. Once certain records, say something like In The Air Tonight or 1999 came out and took off up the charts, producers were saying "I have to have that drum sound". Producers were making records that were attempting to sound like something like Prince (does anyone here remember Oh Sheila by Ready For The World? Musician magazine crowned it "Best Prince knock off of the year" for whichever year it came out).

    How many records are there with the same synth bass sound? It could be the Minimoog bass or the Taurus pedals or the DX-7 "slap bass" sound (aka the "Seinfeld bass" patch). I think one of the best things about Night Shift by The Commodores (which I Heard at work today, incidentally) is that it doesn't have the slap bass sound. I think someone told me it was still the DX-7, but it was a patch called "Wood bass", I believe.

    So the reason the orchestra hit got overused was less a matter of "I can't figure out how to get an original sound on this thing" and more a matter of "We gotta have that sound from that number one hit on our record".

    Mind you, the orchestra hit does manage to appear on a lot of records made by people where "lack of creativity" typically wasn't a problem.

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    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    Didn’t the Fairlight also have the limitation — I think I read this once — that while you were programming a sound you couldn’t hear anything until you were done programming it? Unlike a Mini where you can sweep a filter until just the right amount of buzz remains, with a digitally programmed synth you set up a program, try it, and if you want to tweak it you have to go back into programming mode again, make your changes, and then try it again. Back and forth and back and forth, until you find what you want (or give up trying).

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by rcarlberg View Post
    Didn’t the Fairlight also have the limitation — I think I read this once — that while you were programming a sound you couldn’t hear anything until you were done programming it? .
    I know when you did the thing where you drew waveforms with the light pen, that was the case. You had to spend a couple minutes doing that, then you had to wait for the computer to process what you drew and turn it into a sound.

    I remember about 10 or 12 yeas ago, I saw the Tony Levin Band, which included Larry Fast. During the meet and greet after the show, someone asked Larry if he still used a Fairlight. Larry said he didn't, explaining that it was good for the time, but what's available now is better, cheaper, easier to use, more portable, etc. I made the comment that the Fairlight was 1979 technology, and Larry explained the computer was actually designed in the 70's for, I think he said controlling a telephone system, and it was one of the engineers working on that project who repurposed it as a musical instrument.

    re: prices, some years back, I read a piece about Al DiMeola in Guitar Player, and at one point, he was asked about the Synclavier. He said the chief drawback to the thing was you had to re-mortgage your house every time NED put out a new update that "you just had to have".

    At one point in the mid 80's, Keyboard magazine gave away a Fairlight. It wasn't the (at the time) latest model, I thikn it was the preceding revision that had just been discontinued or something like that. The thing about those contests is, you ever read the fine print, where they say the contest winner is responsible for paying the taxes and duties on the prize? I heard once they had to draw I don't know how many "winners" for the Fairlight giveaway, because nobody could afford to even pay the taxes on a Fairlight, forget about actually buying the instrument itself.

    I remember Keyboard magazine also gave away a Kurzweil sampler (which Bob Moog was apparently involved in R&Ding...I forget the model name, but Paul Shaffer continued to keep one in his keyboard rig on the Letterman show, right up to when Dave retired), and both Keyboard and Guitar Player both did their share of "mega giveaways" where they give away like $20,000 worth of gear all to one "lucky winner". I wonder if they had similar problems with finding someone who could afford the taxes on those deals too.

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    Member dgtlman's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by rcarlberg View Post
    Didn’t the Fairlight also have the limitation — I think I read this once — that while you were programming a sound you couldn’t hear anything until you were done programming it? Unlike a Mini where you can sweep a filter until just the right amount of buzz remains, with a digitally programmed synth you set up a program, try it, and if you want to tweak it you have to go back into programming mode again, make your changes, and then try it again. Back and forth and back and forth, until you find what you want (or give up trying).

    This reminds me of when I bought a Kurzweil K2500S back around 1999 or so. The programming was complex & had many pages of layered menus. On top of that I added every expansion board, KDFX, sample memory, external hard drive & CDROM for maximum capability. I used to spend hours & hours on this board going thru hundreds of samples & creating unbelievable combinations which made for some amazing filmscape atmospheres. It was an amazing keyboard. However, the biggest drawback IMO was after loading in all those "amazing" external samples & spending all those hours, sometimes days creating sounds, if the keyboard was powered off external sample memory was erased & my hard work was lost. I went to extraordinary measures to keep my work alive by keeping the keyboard on for days at a time, putting in power conditioners, surge protectors & a UPS since we lived on a side of town where the power was prone to spikes & outages. After losing my work for the umpteenth time I finally couldn't take it anymore & sold it. It was a great board & I miss it sometimes, but I always have to remind myself of all the bullshit I went thru when using it which justifies the decision to get rid of it.

  13. #13
    Can't add anything, but just chiming in to say this is a fascinating thread. Loving the hell out if it and one of the reasons I log in here almost every day.
    As you were.

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