Fairlight CMI App For iPad & iPhone
By Paul Dakeyne
| Posted in Feature, Music Technology
The ongoing and developing friendship between music production and the Apple iPhone/iPad continues – this time, please welcome the return of an iconic (and initially quite unaffordable) machine, the Fairlight CMI keyboard/sampler.
For the young whippersnappers amongst our readers, the Fairlight CMI was one of the original ‘Big 3′ of early 80s samplers that included the EMU Emulator, the Synclavier and the Fairlight itself. At around £20,000 a pop (comparable to a small house purchase then), the Fairlight was enjoyed by the super rich music icons of the day such as Kate Bush, Jean-Michel-Jarre, Duran Duran, Peter Gabriel and Stevie Wonder etc. It’s sounds however became synonymous with the time period, and were subsequently reborn with the advent of more affordable and readily available sampling technology appearing in the early 90s.
Fast forward to today then, and now anyone with an iPhone or preferably (size wise, for fingers etc) an iPad can relive the sounds, user experience and quirky essence of what the Fairlight was, bringing all this to a contemporary users music production palette.
There are two versions of the app – the first is a ‘standard’ one which has all the CMI version II sounds (in 8 bit), numbering around 500 in total and playable via 8 voice polyphony on the Apple devices.
This polyphony is expandable by the way, if connected to a MIDI keyboard/controller in effect turning the iPad into a standalone Fairlight sound module. The second, ‘Pro’ version adds an extra 100+ CMI series III sounds, coming in at 16 bit quality this time, plus the ability to perform edits on existing and newly generated sequences along with importing of a users own sounds too.
This app looks fun and quirky to use and really tries to capture the original 80s user experience. Some very kitsch sound effects emulate the switchable functions, such as loading a floppy disk drive with even adjustable load accuracy, generating a ‘struggling’ drive sound – kinda fun though possibly your next best waste of time!
On a more serious and productive vibe however, the app faithfully recreates the main program pages of P1 (Default), P2 (file access), P3 (play/modify instrument), PR (compare/play songs) and the expected settings, history and help options. Farlight CMI basics are carried to the new app too – that a’voice’ is a single sound, an ‘instrument’ is a collection of up to 8 sounds and a ‘song’ is an 8 track, pattern based sequence (using a single instrument).
More authentic CMI goodness is brought into the 21st century as the app illustrates one of the most unique features of the original machine – the infamous page ‘D’. This screen shows an initially ‘flattened’ 3D waveform of the selected sound, then the iPad’s motion sensors come into play here as moving the unit forward/back and side to side enhances the waveform view – cool, and if the authentic sound of the 80s rocks your particular music production boat, why not try this new app out?
Tags: CMI, Fairlight, iPad, iPhone, series 2, series 3