Putting a Fairlight Series III CMI quickly through its paces...

This video is a real gem. Love the coughing sounds and horrible sound that starts playing around 11 minutes.

Fascinating how technology has made life easier, brilliant video

I was in awe when I first saw one in action back in the day. What a game changer it was.

the III series really was the best :) But they all had their charme. Even the first 2 revisions. I still have nothing but the upmost respect for the Fairlight, its designers and everyone who used it back then and even today. The Mother of all DAWs. A real beauty even without the lightpen and CRT. The Touchpad stylus model definitely must have been a lot better to use over a long time in the studio. I would absolutely love to use one of these even today.

a beautiful machine and interesting piece of music history, thanks for sharing

Interesting to see that the CMI basically did by then what a modern DAW does now.

I always wanted to play with one of these after seeing Peter Gabriel sampling junkyard noises. I'm grateful i live in a time where a laptop, DAW, audio interface, and midi controller can do a majority of what this can do. I would have never been able to afford one of these had I been an adult when they first came out.

fascinating video! Thankyou for sharing this.

I purchased my Series III from Syco Systems in 1988 through Andrew, sold it in 2005 and wished I hadn't!

what a lovely video ! I even learned a couple of keyboard shortcuts :)

Bloody impressive for its time. No wonder it was so sought after and so bloody expensive

The instrument of my youth, all the cool bands had a Fairlight!

Interesting stuff, I just subbed to the channel

Very interesting! I’d never seen a Series III in action before. It’s quite a bit more advanced than the previous versions, and it’s clearly well on its way to what DAWs eventually became.

Just to make sure no one thinks I'm a Fairlight programmer first and musician second(?!), here's a recent real 'live' string quartet arrangement that I had to also do in double quick time. Yep, used Cubase to play each part in, then scored it out in Musescore. Fortunately I managed to get a couple of Grade 8s when 17 years old at Marlborough College on the 4-manual Church Organ there and also on violin. Need to blow the dust of my fiddle cases one day, I guess, but will have to get past my drum kit in the bedroom first :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iiVTqmwIMg&feature=youtu.be

Hey Roger, whaddaya mean "most of the commands weren't in the manual"??? We eventually whipped those manuals into pretty decent shape! Haha. I refuse to be held accountable for the deficiencies of your photocopied cheat sheet!

That was the best explained I ever herd.

Interviewed Kim Ryrie last month. Fantastic fellow.

Them was the days😊

A couple of 'typos', sorry, the looped SMPTE out to input (not sample cable from the Mix output to sample input) creates Steve Rance's large timecode display on ESC 1, requested by Steve Levine. Sample the outputs back in when the RS Page is running is only possible if Voice Card 1+2 is not being used, as that's the card which 'clocks' the sample rate, and 'hit' records on the Series III is roughly correct, I think. However, if we include the predecessors, the Fairlight Series I, Series II (with updated sampling capability) and the Series IIx (with a very early Midi) that adds from 1979 to 1984 which was 8-bit. The Series III CMI arrived in 1985. The earliest Series III System 'boot' disk is dated 20 / 11 / 1985 which was copied by Mr Adrian Bruce, probably for the first trade fair outing in Tokyo. Someone really should / could make a fun documentary about all this, maybe? ;-)