The Fairlight CMI

While happy with the outcome of the project, Kim was frustrated with the unnatural sound and limited functionality of the instrument. Around this time, powerful digital microprocessors were becoming more affordable and widely available which gave Kim the idea that something else was possible for a musical instrument. At this time, however, not even machines like Apple I were a reality, let alone a dedicated playable digital musical instrument. Kim got in touch with his old school friend and fellow electronics engineer, Peter Vogel, with a bold suggestion, "How about we build the world's greatest synthesiser?". With both Kim and Peter being at loose ends and with nothing better to do, they decided to set up shop in the basement of Kim's grandmother's house, situated on the iconic Sydney Harbour waterfront, and get to work.

Kim and Peter’s aim was to create a playable electronic instrument that sounded “natural”, and, after initially pursuing Kim’s idea for how they may be able to do this, quickly realised that it was unfeasible. At this time, Kim and Peter were introduced to Tony Furse who had also been working on a musical instrument that sought to use digital technology to model and create realistic sounding waveforms.

Tony Furse has worked as an electronics engineer in computing since the 1960s. He developed his own electronic instruments to the point where he founded his own company and produced two innovative analogue/digital hybrid synthesisers, the Quasar I and Quasar II. While these rare instruments were praised at the time for their design, they fell short of Furse’s ambition for a realistic-sounding instrument.

The QASAR M8 (Multimode 8) is a machine with its own rich and unique history, worthy of its own story. Based on a revolutionary design using Motorola 6800 microprocessors, the QASAR M8 featured a piano keyboard, a light pen, and an extensive system for sound generation & music control. In 1974, after a lecture and demonstration of the prototype machine, Don Banks commissioned Furse to build a QASAR M8 for the Canberra School of Music.

In 1979, after many years of development and innovation, Furse became less involved with the project and licensed his intellectual property to Fairlight to allow Peter and Kim to continue to develop the system. Recordings with examples of the M8 can be heard in Peter Vogel's audio archive.

Of the many major innovations introduced in the Fairlight CMI, arguably the most significant was its “sampling” sound generation method.

By feeding the sound of a real instrument from a live microphone or recording into the computer, a digital representation of this sound could be stored in the computer's memory and played back via a piano keyboard or other control source. The idea was that you could take a small section of a sound, a “sample”, and use the computer to digitally store, playback, and manipulate this sound in real-time.

It was this innovation that made the Fairlight CMI sound remarkably like an authentic instrument and unlike the sound of any other commercial electronic instrument at that time.

In the interview excerpt below, we pick up the story of the CMI at the point where Peter and Kim have a working prototype of the CMI but no real sense of who the customers might be, how the instrument would be sold, or even if the idea itself was original.

This aspect of the Fairlight story details how the instrument became known to the world and involves a chance meeting with an old friend of Kim's, Elvis, Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, and Peter Gabriel.

It was Page R in the CMI that set the course for the music software we use today. Computer-based MIDI sequencers and DAWs (Digital Audio Workstation) systems that are the mainstay of contemporary music production, all share a lineage with Page R from the Fairlight CMI.