Fairlight-CMI

Hi and welcome to the group.

I'll try to answer some of your questions...

1) AFAIK this was recorded direct using a Fairlight employee, called Sarah Cohen

2) Earlier Fairlights didn't have any special pitch shifting function, although I believe the MFX2 had a time stretch card option. The sound I hear on the example you supplied just sounds like a voice played at a low pitch, with added Chorus or something.

3) Quite possibly Fairlight manipulated, but also quite possible these drums came from their original source. The voice in example Voice3.mp3 sounds like the same breathy Fairlight voice but treat with effects. It's easy to forget a lot of artists / producers sampled their own sounds and / or manipulated factory samples with external effects, sometime beyond point of recognition. Very rarely will you hear a dry version of the original sample, but on the other hand a lot of presets are easily distinguishable.

Hope this helps! Anyone, please correct me if I'm wrong :-)

First opportunity you can get one of these, go for it. They're awesome and inspiring to work with.

Kind regards,

Peter

On 12/5/06, my_list_address <my_list_address@yahoo.no> wrote:

Unfortunately I don't own a Fairlight myself, but I joined this group
because I've always been fascinated by the CMI. I have some (hopefully
not too stupid) questions:

1) How was that fantastic and famous Fairlight-voice preset
(http://www.ghservices.com/gregh/fairligh/examples/aahh.wav) made?
In my opinion it doesn't sound quite like a human voice because of
that added "breathy" quality.

2) Does the Fairlight CMI have some sort of special pitch-shifting
feature (which not even my Yamaha sampler from the late 80s had)? I'm
asking because I've heard some very deep voices in songs where I
believe the Fairlight has been used. I have an example here:
http://home.c2i.net/w-460389/audio_snippets/deep_voice.mp3

3) Getting back to my initial question, I've heard voices with similar
qualities and wonder if these are Fairlight disks, or voices that
could have been manipulated with the Fairlight:

a) http://home.c2i.net/w-460389/audio_snippets/drums1.mp3 (the
percussive "ahh" that starts about 8 seconds into the song)

b) the same song, but about 16 seconds into the song.

c) http://home.c2i.net/w-460389/audio_snippets/voice3.mp3 (the
background choir/voice -has some of the same qualities as that first
Fairlight preset voice I mentioned).

Thanks.