The two planned to design a digital synthesizer that could create sounds reminiscent of acoustic instruments ( physical modelling synthesis). They named it Fairlight after the hydrofoil ferry passing before Ryrie's grandmother's home in Sydney Harbour. In December 1975, he and Vogel formed a house-based company to manufacture digital synthesizers. He recalled: "We had long been interested in computers – I built my first computer when I was about 12 – and it was obvious to me that combining digital technology with music synthesis was the way to go." After his classmate, Peter Vogel, graduated from high school and had a brief stint at university in 1975, Ryrie asked Vogel if he would be interested in making "the world's greatest synthesizer" based on the recently announced microprocessor.
Ryrie was frustrated by the limited number of sounds that the synthesizer could make. In the 1970s, Kim Ryrie, then a teenager, had an idea to develop a build-it-yourself analogue synthesizer, the ETI 4600, for the magazine he founded, Electronics Today International (ETI). Problems playing this file? See media help. It rose to prominence in the early 1980s and competed with the Synclavier from New England Digital.Īn excerpt from Arpegiator (recorded October 1981), highlighting the use of the Fairlight CMI
It was one of the earliest music workstations with an embedded sampler, and is credited for coining the term sampling in music. It was based on a commercial licence of the Qasar M8 developed by Tony Furse of Creative Strategies in Sydney, Australia. The Fairlight CMI (short for Computer Musical Instrument) is a digital synthesizer, sampler, and digital audio workstation introduced in 1979 by Fairlight.
73 keys non-weighted, velocity sensitive.