Fairlight-CMI

It's not a stupid question at all. First, the Series II and IIx had three sequencers, Page 9, MCL, and Page R. There was no way to "sync" any of the sequencers together (apart from multi-tracking one to tape, then loading and syncing the other). If you think about it, it wouldn't make much sense anyway, as the Fairlight could only play 8 voices altogether. Having those voices shared between two sequencers at once would be of limited value. 

Page R, as has been said, is a rhythmic composition page. You have 8 monophonic lines that you can repeat, transpose, and so forth. You use patterns to represent, say, parts of a song, and then you can arrange them in different orders to make up that song. Really, just think glorified drum machine and you've basically got it.

Page 9 (or Keyboard Sequencer) is altogether different. It is a straight record and overdub page. It's basically useful as a scratchpad for recording a performance but there are no editing features of any kind. No quantize either(!). You can overdub lines with another sound in the Fairlight's memory and change the tempo and such but that's about it. You play it in, it plays it back. That's it. It does have a facilty for importing MCL sequences, for easy playback.

MCL (or Music Composition Language) is also quite different. It doesn't using the music keyboard at all. Commands and note events are step-entered from the QWERTY keyboard using codes for pitch, length, velocity, controllers and so on. Unless you are experienced, composing a song in this way takes a pretty long time. However, you can achieve results that are not possible with the other sequencers. I think many power users in the early 80s must've used this quite a bit on records. Incidently, this is the only one of the sequencers in which you can record and play back controller data that has not been assigned to one of the Fairlight's physical controls, if that makes any sense. :-)

By the way, the Series III is totally different in many, many ways. Not only do you have 16 voices, but you have another sequencer, CAPS, that is a bit more modern and supports polyphonic recording and such. I would imagine that many people used that.

Hope that helps.

Laurence


----- Original Message ----
From: Andrew <taoist.hermit1@virgin.net>
To: Fairlight-CMI@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 4, 2006 5:46:47 AM
Subject: Re: [Fairlight-CMI]Re: Page R — What Made It So Unique and How Can I Emulate It?


I hope this isn't a stupid question.  I don't have a Fairlight so I'm just 
on this list for gathering information.

As I recall (from many years ago :D), the Series II had Page R as a rhythm 
programmer, but also Page 9 as a sequencer.  I would have expected if that 
was the case that Page R would usually be used for rhythm events - 
percussive stuff - and Page 9 for note sequences.

But that doesn't seem to be what's being said here, which refers to Page R 
being used for rhythmic note sequences.  Is this because - as many people 
complained at the time - there wasn't a way to link Page R and Page 9?  I 
always assumed (dangerous, I know) that Fairlight would fix that with a 
software update, or sort it with the Series III, but it doesn't sound that 
way from what's being said.  So I'm curious about Page 9 and why people 
didn't use it for sequencing.



 
Yahoo! Groups Links