The Birth of the Fairlight CMI – When Computers Took Over Music

Since I first saw it demonstrated on the BBC TV programme ‘Tomorrow’s World’ in 1980, I have been fascinated and obsessed with the Fairlight CMI, a remarkable machine that changed the way we make music and whose DNA remains in the way we use computers in music to this very day.

Its inventors should, in my very humble opinion, be held in the same regard as Bob Moog, Tom Oberheim, Dave Smith, Ikutaro Kakehashi, et al, such was their impact on the way we make music and how it shaped modern culture.

Since 2013, I’ve been involved with restoring and repairing Fairlight CMIs and have become somewhat intimately knowledgeable about them. I’ve also been incredibly fortunate to meet and befriend its inventors and many of the people who brought this game-changing instrument to life...

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