Fairlight CMI IIX Page R demo and overview - The worlds most important sequencer?

The Fairlight CMI was the worlds first commercial sampler, but in the context of how it changed music, probably the most important part was Page R.
The video and audio seem out of sync sometimes. Maybe I'll realign if time allows. Sorry!
This is an awful piece of musical creation on my CMI IIx, but it hopefully shows you how Page R works and I also offer an overview of the other pages available on the CMI system. For nerds only!
My IIx used to belong to Kim Wilde and has been restored by Jean-Bernard Emond in France. An amazing machine and so much fun. The "musical" example here is just that, an example. Hopefully I will post some more musical adventures in the future.

[@Jellybeantiger]

She’s a wonder,I remember as a teenager in the 80’s being in awe of these Instruments,I did not even know it came from my home country at the time.

[@SharpblueCreative]

Well cool. I used to dream about owing one of these back in the 80’s when they were massively expensive. This video makes you appreciate exactly how long it took and how complex and hard it must have been for Jean Michel Jarre to write and produce Zoolook in 1984 which was one hell of a lot of fairlight

[@mrpositronia]

@Walker Brayden Ah, yeah. It does work. I just hacked your Instagram password! xD (Ooh, some dodgy stuff going on in there... reporting to the appropriate authorities.)

[@DavidMorley]

Zoolook is the album of his I listen too. Stunning work

[@J0J0Z]

Jean Michel used Fairlight like a boss that's true, but for me, the best French artist who used Fairlight during 80's is Daniel Balavoine

[@Doctormix]

Love your video!!

[@DavidMorley]

Thanks!

[@andrewjarson2855]

Thank you so much for this video. We need more CMI videos out there, informative and helpful, and the sequences were really great to hear in real time. Side note, I think something really great about Page R is that it quantizes durations (and you have a visualization of it). It's remarkably hard to find that feature in any digital sequencers, I suppose many people wouldn't want that in a sequencer, but it really makes a difference in the "tightness" of a sequence. I use an Alesis MMT-8 purely because it can quantize note lengths.

[@Matthew-ez4ze]

I remember the amazing Fairlight presentation at NAMM Anaheim when I was a kid, and it was mind blowing back then.

[@eccremocarpusscaber5159]

When I got into Kate Bush, decades ago, I started to find out about The Fairlight. I was amazed with what she had done - and later found out on a forum I frequented that she used reverb trials from the cello sample to build the melody for Running Up That Hill. She will always be the most innovative female musician to me. Peter Gabriel (esp on ‘4’) was on par with Kate’s The Dreaming. Just so experimental and truly revolutionary in sonic understanding and worth. Sakamoto also used it in ways that sound both classic and beautiful. I still dig the antialiasing 🙂

[@andrewjarson2855]

My 3 favorite fairlight musicians in your comment! The reverb trails were probably sampled and looped for that drone sound that you can hear throughout especially in the intro. I've used a fairly accurate fairlight emulator (QasarBeach), and you can easily make the recreate the Running Up That Hill melody using a Cello sample, with portamento/pitch envelopes. That's really all it is!

[@arfarfington3563]

Thank you so much for posting this; you explain things so clearly. ...It's interesting to think: what seems so archaic and slow, may have actually helped composers back in the day actually commit to decisions. I can't imagine that Fairlights threw out many 'Happy Accidents' so maybe the process of using Page R was as influential as the crunchy sounds?

[@tamer27antepli]

Very ahead of it's time

[@DavidMorley]

Indeed!

[@J0J0Z]

Priceless masterpiece, just the best KZbin video "tuto" about CMI IIX ! Well done dude, thank you ! Part 2 would be amazing ;)

[@DavidMorley]

thx!

[@J0J0Z]

@@DavidMorley Please, can you tell me what is the "FINE" column and its values in the page 3 please ? I need to know it for a personnal project, I need your lights. Thank you !

[@krystianseibert6610]

Great video! Such a remarkable piece of technology - ahead of its time. Also amazing how it was designed and produced by such a small scale operation in Australia.

[@ian_b]

That was the problem, it was really a cottage industry building them by hand. Such a business never could last long term because bigger companies would make production more efficient and cheaper, which was what happened. Fairlight's only hope would have been to get investment to bring out a mass market implementation, or be bought out by a corporation who could do that.

[@6502phreak]

I could be mistaken, but I'm almost certain that the Japanese software company Zoom INC, used a Fairlight on the soundtrack for their game Lagoon (礁湖傳說, ラグーン as it know in Japan) released on the Sharp X68000 in the 90's.

[@DavidMorley]

Thanks for the info! I must try and find it..

[@gcoudert]

This is THE BEST Fairlight video ever made. I'm still hoping to be able to play around with one someday.

[@mycosys]

TYSM for this concise and information packed demo. Gorgeous machine

[@chenguefer156]

This is a very cool video, going into details. Congratulations and many thanks for sharing!

[@FEDADEN-]

excellent demo ! merci beaucoup !

[@mulilu9528]

Wonderful demonstration, thank you!

[@DavidMorley]

Mulilu 🤗 🌹 too kind More. 🙏

[@gush4119]

Nice. Now I understand how Chris Lowe program PSBs first hits.👍😀

[@retro-dademusic6403]

Very cool. Thanks for sharing.

[@MarkoDeLaVoota]

revisiting your video...still great

[@synthetic88]

Very cool video, thanks for this.

[@companyofquail]

I would love to see more CMI videos from you walking through the list one video at a time. that would be great!

[@moogfooger]

Wow I am blown away. I always loved the idea behind this. Little did they dream at the time that the music world would adopt this concept totally. Unfortunatly the developers go unsubg (pardon the pun). It remibds me a little of the AtariST but no lightpen. How much does Apple owe these guys for that development too. As Harrison said “It’s All Too Much” Lovely presentation sir. You are a great man. Why have the manufacturers taken this concept and run with it? There are software emulations but I would like to see Arturia take on a hareware version with a touchscreen iPad. Cheers

[@DavidMorley]

Thank you so much. It's an amazing machine. I wish there was something in hardware like this being made today.

[@Doctormix]

subbed

[@akshaydabhadkarofficial5104]

Now I know where Steve Jobs got the idea for the first macintosh from!😂🤣🤣 awesome video!

[@100ThingsIDo]

Great! :D Thats a nice trick with the 8/4 timing. Please take a look at MCL and I would love to see if you get any value from Harmonic\Wave editor !

[@DavidMorley]

I'll try! MCL is fab. But time consuming 😁

[@qasarbeach5]

Excellent demo of Page R. I used some of what you showed to update QasarBeach. Lets see more please :)

[@chenguefer156]

QuasarBeach is amazing!!! Many thanks!

[@AlexBallMusic]

This must have been absolute wizardry in 1978. It's really not a million miles from a modern DAW. Thanks for showing this David!

[@DavidMorley]

Thanks Alex! It's a lovely machine. As you know, working on special synths makes creating so much more fun and this is probably my favourite machine ever. I remember the 80s 🤣 and it was always a dream machine. I think the first one was sold.in 1979, but they must have started in the mid to late 70s. Crazy!

[@mrdali67]

True, it is lightyears away. I think most of us musicians were totally blown away what this thing could do back then, and it was so totally out of the reach of mere mortals. Taking into account that these were actually on the market at the same time we saw the first rush of personal computers they were absolutely State of the art wich is mind blowing as normal Music tech usually been about a decade behind in tech than the current computer tech for the last 4 decades. But for what is available today, I dont think many of us older souls would go back the cumbersome ui these things had, and the younger generations today should appreciate how easy it is to make music and sounds today. Just think of all the work it took people like JMJ to make their music before midi and daws

[@RTCLR123]

@@mrdali67 It is wierd, but i more and more feel like i need to dumb down on everything including DAW production and such, it is almost like my brain knows that i have too much options and it wont do the best it can. Maybe i am more on the simple side, but basically last part of your reply does not apply in my case so there must be a mine field that comes with being "easy" these days. My observations are, i had more creativity on an old Dual core laptop and a few VSTs, after i upgraded to a serious workstation and got all those U-He and Waves and such i got stuck, everything is too fast, rendering too fast, no time to think and be allive. Now i did a downgrade to an older pc where i need to wait for rendering to complete, sold newish USB interfaces for a old 2005 E-mu PCI one, i also explored Cubase 4.0 and 5.0 for some time. Just my two cents, looking for a workflow does not get me any closer to a modern production workflow, and i do not chase any sound outhere, mostly looking back on things and videos like these. Cheers

[@thomaskolb8785]

Yes, amazing to think that this is from an age when you couldn't just walk into your local Media Markt and buy a laptop.

[@mycosys]

Worth noting page R wasnt introduced til 1982

[@CrisBlyth]

This is great ! I’m in the middle of setting up to do the same type of video with a Series III :)

[@jbfairlight]

Excellent David :) A la fin de cette calamité de COVID, je passe te voir pour finaliser !

[@DavidMorley]

Merci Jean Bernard, et merci pour le rénovation!

[@bennylloyd-willner9667]

Gotta love YT algorithms sometimes, just watched a "song documentary" of Sledge Hammer, leading me to Peter Gabriel showing his Fairlight (the first series I in the UK), and eventually leading me to this! 👌 I'm not musical at all, but nerdwise I'm a King! Brill Vid Mate!🙏

[@DavidMorley]

Cheers! Nerds unite!

[@wolfgangschaltung]

Thanks very much for doing this, very informative. But one thing puzzled me: When you played a keyboard key (e.g. the kick around 5:25), there seemed to be somewhat of a latency between when you hit a key and the actual sound. Is this correct?

[@DavidMorley]

Sync between sound and video wasn't perfect. No latency when playing luckily. It seemed weird because sometimes the video is in sync.. I have no idea what I did. But the machine is very tight. Thanks for the kind words! David

[@chenguefer156]

10:38 Yeah, Copy/Paste in 1982 baby!!!

[@acidjack]

Thanks :-)

[@Mancheguache]

Enjoyed this - Glad things have moved on though lol....I love my Ableton Live suite lol - have you a time machine set up in that lab so I could go back to, say, 1981 with my DAW and...yeh...look forward to the next vid!

[@cmath8577]

THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO. Best overview of the basic Page R workflow Iv'e seen. I have a series II(NOT X)Still wrapping my head around Page R and this video really helped. I noticed, Your mainframe has near zero physical noise . Do you have it located in a machine room OR Did you have the fans replaced or do the SD upgrade?These mainframes are usually quite loud

[@DavidMorley]

Thx! The mainframe was restored and had quieter fans installed i believe. It still makes some noise, but it's under the desk so quite quiet. My series III had.all.thenfans replaced and CF cards instead of hard disks and 32mb ram instead of multiple smaller ram cards and its also so much quieter. For the series III that's a huge difference.

[@cmath8577]

Ok! Hello again David. I just found some newer 8 inch drives that were formerly from a laboratory that was liquidated and they are working and much quieter. I’m now on to the fans. -Thank you for this video once again. . I refer to it often !

[@cannadineboxill-harris2983]

Hi There this is Mr C. T. Boxill-Harris, I was wondering if they need to do the exact same version of Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime, why don’t they just Replace the Synthesiser String Sound to an Musette Accordion sound, and also Replace the Xylophone Sound to an 3 Times More Deeper Chime Bell or Even a 4 Times More Deeper Still Drum Sound, Because it is Still my Very Very Very Very Very Very Very Favourite Song Ever Since I was about 11 Years of Age Thank You 😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏😉👍😉👏👏

[@tschak909]

One important thing that wasn't covered here is the meaning of the tempo value used in page R. This is measured in a division of the machine clock cycles (and has to do with how the voice cards are interfaced with the computer). Tempo is calculated as (314140.625 / bpm).

[@DavidMorley]

Good point! Also I love that you can clock the sequencer with a tone. Means if you want smooth tempo changes you simply sweep the tone up or down.

[@lotus30com]

Great to see it running, David! Your light pen is different than mine. Is it non-factory?

[@DavidMorley]

I think there were different models used. I don't know tbh.

[@darksaintparker]

Am I the only one freaking out about the ARP 2600 just chilling in the back

[@DavidMorley]

🤣

[@cameron_fairchild]

All the big producers had "programmers" for these things. I see why.

[@DavidMorley]

The business model was buying one and renting yourself out with it for silly money per day. For what most people wanted it for, it's pretty easy to use tbh.

[@alphabeets]

Love the video. And now GarageBand does almost all this (and better and quicker) and it runs on an iPhone.

[@DavidMorley]

It’s crazy the power we have these days even in a phone. But I can promise you the fun and sound is still winning on the CMI. But for sure there are easier ways to do the same kind of thing these days.

[@mycosys]

you can even get the CMI on an iPhone, by Peter Vogel one of the original creators

[@Magnus_Loov]

Can you edit the recorded instruments pitches like in "key edit" i modern sequencers/DAW:s? (like for the Bass in the demo or the chords) Or can you only change the timing and otherwise make a new recording or overdub them to change the pitches? I mean, it looks like Page R is more or less a "drum edit" grid. If it was possible to edit the key/pitch for the individual notes (pre midi in 1982) then it would be mindblowing! Still, with only single note timings (not pitch) for self contained sounds/samples in a song that can be stored (like in modern DAWS:s) , it's still way more powerful than anything around then...

[@DavidMorley]

Hi Magnus Yes you can. You can change pitch and duration by moving the cursor through the notes and typing whatever you want for each step. Extremely fast. There are also key commands for changing entire sequences etc. You are right that it’s basically a drum sequencer but where notes and duration can be adjusted. I like to look at it as 8 monophonic sequencers. Cheers, David.

[@andrewjarson2855]

@@DavidMorley using Page R on QasarBeach (fairlight emulation software) I was struck by how similar it felt to using a Tracker. 8 Monophonic sequencing tracks and extremely easy to jump around and edit. But I can only imagine the light pen makes everything even faster. Page R is really an extremely fun and addicting sequencer, I dream one day of using the real thing.

[@MarkoDeLaVoota]

I like it better than any modern DAW , simple and easy , perhaps I am too old for modern DAW

[@DavidMorley]

MarkoDeLaVoota it’s efficient and fun. And if you use a tape machine for multitracking, the possibilities are fantastic.

[@aylasthyston611]

Looks weird. To be honist it looks like someone trying to get data off a computer. I'm sorry I love Art Of Noises music especially paranoimia and max headroom even if it way before my time but the 90s and possible moden dance music will always be the best. I was born in the 90s

[@magnusvanttinen7855]

If it will be for sale, I will buy your CMI

[@DavidMorley]

If that happens, I'll mention it!

[@EBMZEQUENZER]

I was always fascinated by this instrument when I was a kid ... discovering synth music - is there a polyphony limitation on this ? Cheers

[@FEDADEN-]

8 voices on this one it seems

[@DavidMorley]

Yes, 8 voices.

[@EBMZEQUENZER]

​@@FEDADEN- thank you : are those expandable it terms of voicing ......

[@lotus30com]

@@EBMZEQUENZER only 8 voices max.

[@bennylloyd-willner9667]

​@@EBMZEQUENZER According to Wikipedia, you'd need the series III: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairlight_CMI#Series_III:_1985%E2%80%931989

[@magmasunburst9331]

Are these easy to maintain? Are they repairable?

[@DavidMorley]

If sorted fully they are fine but they need a lot of work to be perfect. Mine has an issue right now and I also have a series III where the power supply just died. In the end a fully restored one will be reliable.

[@nielswil]

Great video. Btw, looks like there is a delay between playing a note and hearing it, 5:25.

[@DavidMorley]

Thx Yes, a slight error in synchronising Sound to video.

[@nielswil]

@@DavidMorley Sorry to read this. I hope you solved this. This video was helpful with my Fairlight vst. Thx.

[@nielswil]

It has 8 tracks?

[@DavidMorley]

Yes. 8 monophonic tracks. The series III has 16 in page R

[@nielswil]

@@DavidMorley Also monophonic?

[@DavidMorley]

@@nielswil in theory yes, but you can link tracks to make them polyphonic on the III. Each track is tied to one voice. But link 4 tracks and you have 4 note poly for example. It’s one reason why the timing is spot on.

[@gruponemesis]

pretty cool machine...i can imagine it was like sex when using it. however...by todays standards...FKN SLOWWWWWWWWWWWW

[@DavidMorley]

TBH it's quick in many ways. Boot up and you can have a groove going within seconds. Make a few patterns and arrange them in minutes. Page R for that is quicker than most things.