Fairlight CMI Series I Playing Frogman Demo by Mars Lasar

Music starts at 1:09 if you don't want to hear the disks loading.

This is my Fairlight CMI Series I. Serial number 25, which was reportedly Bob Moog's demo machine for a while before it was sold to an ad agency in North Carolina.

The system came with many disks, several of which have custom samples and Page R sequences used for various demos. One of them is this demo disk with sequences by Australian composer Mars Lasar.

[DavidMorley]

Gotta love the Fairlight. I'm a bit of an addict. Thanks for posting this.

[lotuscom]

Thanks for putting that up! I love Fairlight tracks, and I've never heard this one so that was extra cool!

[timdowns]

Are you sure it is series 1? It has page r rythem composer I though that was only with series 2?

[nekogen]

wow this is still the best after all these years

[blueeyedsoulman]

Even the sound of it loading is musical and should be sampled!

[paulfreeman]

Sounds like its eating itself from within when it is reading the disk and like a dream when you push PLAY. Truly great machine. Check out the Fairlight App!!

[CrisBlyth]

very clean machine you have there ! nice !

[ChrisCebelenski]

Wow, I had forgotten how loud (mechanically) these series 1 machines were. Fans, drives all make for a loud environment. Also the CMI has a very distinctive quality to it - low bit rate sampling and the page-R techniques makes for a very mod-tracker like sound (years before a mod tracker was even possible of course.) I think this is why I never really liked whole productions on the fairlight, but just used as a some spice for early-80s flair is a good thing.

[tschak]

Was this upgraded to a series II? I ask because the original CMI did NOT have Page R.

[Ancaja]

this is really rad, would still kill to jam around especially w the R Page

[annother]

I thought the song had started but it was just the disk drive!

[cornoc]

you OWN this beast? damn son, must have cost you an arm and a leg. what a magical piece of tech. have you used it for anything? love your airwolf cover btw, very well made.

[MoCheez]

Epic! Can you do a quality audio grab sometime?