1980: The Sound of the FUTURE! With the Fairlight CMI | Tomorrow's World | Retro Tech | BBC Archive

Kieran Prendiville demonstrates the sonic weaponry that is the Fairlight CMI!
The Fairlight was one of the first commercially available digital samplers and could manipulate sounds in all sorts of interesting ways.
There's a whole world of BBC Sound Effects you can explore at sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/
Originally broadcast 27 March, 1980.
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[@steventaylor3789]

So many negative comments?! As a kid in the eighties this stuff was magic. I don’t think it was meant to go into massive detail. It was a programme for the general public and it was very often introducing completely new concepts in a light hearted way. Many happy memories of Tomorrows World. It was a brave new world but perhaps being the youngster I was back then this is just my subjective opinion.

[@MartinHannett_]

This machine is why Martin Hannett and Factory records famously parted ways. He wanted a Fairlight and they wanted a nightclub. We all knew who won out in the end.

[@project-95]

we don't realise how lucky we are having all this tech packed into a tiny laptop

[@4seeableTV]

During the decade that followed this episode, the synthesizer would going on to score many films. We liked it at first because it sounded so new and interesting. The best being Chariots of Fire. Eventually though, many composers went back to using orchestras. But all of those 80's movies still

[@tdcattech]

I feel like these are samples...so recordings. Not synthesized sounds. 🤷🏻‍♂

[@jamesfx2]

Isn't the same without Synthesiser Patel. Notice how the presenter glossed over the fact that this synthesiser couldn't come close to emulating the bassoon.

[@darkdogstudios]

It’s very quaint, but also inaccurate. The Fairlight was a sampling machine, it played little snippets, ie: samples, of recorded audio. It wasn’t a synthesiser as they tell us here. It also cost as much as a small house at the time, now there’s an app for your phone of the Fairlight… 😆

[@onlyme219]

I do enjoy this archive channel thing 👍 I'm 56

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

Many don't seem to understand just HOW BIG of a deal the Fairlight Computer Music Instrument was. THIS thing was the very first Digital Audio Workstation before DAWs were even a thing. And even at its laughably low memory capacity and initial low sampling frequency, it already did let you play polyphonic samples and digitally created Synthetic Waveforms (like the later PPG Wave with the additional Waveterm addon) and letting you arrange it in a rhythm and easily save the samples and project to disc so you could later recall it and continue working on it. Without the Fairlight, the massive sampling Tec of the 90s and 2000s would not have been possible if it wasn't for the groundwork done by this marvel of an instrument.

[@privatename3621]

Why does he keep saying the sounds are "created" by the computer? That is factually incorrect. The computer simply digitally sampled the sound and played it back, with the ability to run it up and down the octave scale by mathematically manipulating the digitally sampled sound. He really tries to make you believe the computers is generating the source content of the sound. Kind of irritating.

[@Respected_Gentleman]

3 things that revolutionised music in the 80s and forged the sound of today:

[@itz2komplikayted207]

I ❤❤❤ how he is still a kid here, he looks like if you locked him up with a Fairlight, you would never see him again, as he would have so much fun, he would become one with the machine!

[@MacXpert74]

It's interesting how he describes the way the Fairlight supposedly works. It's not quite correct. He says the sounds are 'not recordings' and that the 'computer worked out' how the sound should be made. What he's describing is what we today know as 'modelled synthesis' and can indeed now be used for realistic sounding instruments (like the Pianotec VST for modelled piano sounds). However the Fairlight didn't model anything, but was in fact the first digital sampler. It DID use recordings instead of modelles to create the sound. But they were of course digital recordings.

[@zamiadams4343]

The golden age of the sampler, I got my Roland W-30 back in 1990 and the world was mine, its amazing to look back now with all the tech we have these days.

[@mattsan70]

Sample rate 10KHz - the good old days

[@martinvernon4129]

Every part of that episode is a CLASSIC!

[@derrylallen]

such a milestone in literally every piece of eqiupment we have today

[@george.mathieson2]

A classic from Tomorrow's World

[@brianbrino4310]

Excellent!

[@squirrelarch]

“Remember these aren’t recordings...” er...yes it is. That’s exactly what it is. Digital recordings albeit in crunchy 8 bit resolution.