Fairlight-CMI

--- In Fairlight-CMI@yahoogroups.com, "Peter Connelly"
<peter.yahoogroups@...> wrote:
>
> Hi and welcome to the group.

Thanks!

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

So it's just Sarah singing "aaaaaah" into a mic? No manipulation,
editing or anything? 
Is it the 8 bit sampling and the rest of the Fairlight circuitry
itself that changes the voice to become "airy" and "synthesized"?


> 2) 
> on the example you supplied just sounds like a voice played at a low
pitch,
> with added Chorus or something.

I've heard similar voices on several recordings where I think the
musician has a Fairlight. 
Using the light-pen and the edit functions, can sounds be pitch-shifted?
Excuse my ignorance (again), but can someone please explain to me what
the light-pen/edit functions on the Fairlight can do? 
Is anything like that available on modern computer systems? All I've
ever edited when it comes to audio waveforms is cutting/splicing and
cropping.


> 3) Quite possibly Fairlight manipulated, but also quite possible
these drums
> came from their original source.

No, I was talking about the percussively-played "ahhh" voice, not the
drums from my example (drums1.mp3)


> 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.

I have to start doing some serious experimenting when I get my gear
set up (no room here right now).
I believe people were much better at experimenting back in the days
when all of this technology was new (and much more expensive and out
of reach to most people than now), as opposed to today when people
seldom use samplers for anything else than playing back the
bog-standard instruments that others have made.

But back to the Fairlight; is there a library called "farrar" for it?
I've heard that some of the sounds in my examples may come from it,
but I don't know if it's a Fairlight library, Emulator II or what.


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

How much do they go for these days?
Apart from the collector's appeal, what does a Fairlight have going
for itself these days? Should I see it more a "sampling synthesizer
workstation" than a sampler (where the latter is supposed to duplicate
as close to the original as possible, the sampled sound)?