Fairlight

The first sampler — Peter Gabriel's secret weapon

The Fairlight CMI was the instrument that made the future arrive early. Before affordable samplers, before personal computers could handle audio, this Australian machine gave musicians the power to capture any sound on Earth and play it from a keyboard. It cost as much as a house, it weighed as much as a refrigerator, and it changed everything.

History

The Fairlight CMI grew out of an attempt to build something else entirely. Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie, two young Australians with a passion for electronics and music, initially set out to create a digital synthesizer that could generate any sound through additive synthesis. When that approach proved computationally overwhelming for the technology of the time, they pivoted to a radical idea: instead of synthesizing sounds from scratch, why not simply record real sounds and play them back digitally? The sampler was born.

The Fairlight CMI Series I, released in 1979, was one of the first commercially available digital sampling instruments. It was a complete computer system — dual Motorola 6800 processors, a video monitor, a light pen for drawing waveforms directly on screen, and a music keyboard. At around $25,000 AUD (roughly $18,000 USD at the time), it was staggeringly expensive, but for the wealthy studios and artists who could afford it, the CMI was nothing less than a revolution.

Peter Gabriel was one of the first major artists to adopt the Fairlight, using it extensively on his third and fourth solo albums. His hit "Sledgehammer" — with its sampled orchestral hits, breathy flute sounds, and layered vocal textures — became a showcase for the instrument's capabilities. Kate Bush was another early champion; she composed Never for Ever and The Dreaming using the Fairlight's sampling and sequencing tools, creating layered, textural compositions that were decades ahead of their time.

The Series II, released in 1982, improved the sampling quality and introduced the Page R — a revolutionary pattern-based sequencer that allowed musicians to build compositions by arranging looped patterns on a grid. This was, in effect, the first step toward the loop-based, grid-based music production workflow that would eventually become the standard in every DAW. The Page R's influence on how we think about composing electronic music cannot be overstated.

The Series III, released in 1985, brought 16-bit sampling and dramatically improved audio quality. But by then, the market was shifting. E-mu's Emulator II offered respectable sampling at a fraction of the price, and the Akai S900 was about to make affordable sampling mainstream. Fairlight struggled to compete on price and eventually pivoted to post-production and broadcast technology. The company survives today as a manufacturer of digital audio and video systems for broadcast, but its place in music history was secured by those extraordinary early CMI systems.

Notable Instruments

Fairlight CMI (Series I & II)

Using a Fairlight CMI was unlike using any other musical instrument. You sat before a monitor, light pen in hand, and you could literally draw waveforms on the screen — sketching the shape of a sound with your hand and hearing it played back instantly. You could sample any sound through the built-in microphone or audio input, map it across the keyboard, and layer multiple samples into complex timbral constructions. It was, in 1979, essentially a modern DAW in embryonic form.

The instrument's 8-bit sampling gave everything a distinctive, slightly crunchy character that became a sonic hallmark of the early 1980s. The "ORCH5" orchestral hit preset — a sampled orchestral stab that came loaded in the factory library — became one of the most recognized sounds in pop music, appearing on records by Yes, Duran Duran, and dozens of other artists. Art of Noise built their entire aesthetic around creative Fairlight sampling. Trevor Horn used it as the backbone of his revolutionary productions for Frankie Goes to Hollywood and ABC.

Fairlight CMI Series III

The Series III was the technological pinnacle of the Fairlight line — 16-bit sampling, 14 voices of polyphony, a hard disk recording system, and audio quality that finally matched professional studio standards. It arrived in 1985 at a price north of $70,000, making it the most expensive musical instrument most people would ever encounter. But for the elite tier of producers who could afford it — Trevor Horn, Hans Zimmer, Jean-Michel Jarre — the Series III was an unparalleled creative tool.

Hans Zimmer, still in the early stages of his career, used the Fairlight III extensively on his early film scores, developing the sample-layering techniques that would later define his orchestral-electronic hybrid scoring style. The instrument's ability to handle complex, layered arrangements in real time made it a favorite in film and television scoring, and many Series III units found permanent homes in post-production facilities where they continued working long after the consumer music market had moved on to cheaper alternatives.

All Models in Archive (2)

Samplers

• CMI - 1979-1985
• CMI Series III - 1985-1992