Deadmau5 Buys A Classic Fairlight CMI

US Retro-tastic lux sampler 19/02/13

Snagged the holy grail of all samplers today! Fairlight CMI! Time to bring back the 80s ;)

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If you've been envious of the Deadmau5 setup - his lovely wall of Eurorack modulars and other tasty synths has already featured in his highly viewed "i normally do this on sundays" (approx 1.3 mill views). A great synth spotters training ground - I lost count...

Of course, with his ongoing massive success, the setup has been poshed up a bit, with some cool furniture, cases and the like. There's also been some acquisition going on. The most recent addition being a Fairlight CMI 30A - the sound of Trevor Horn, Peter Gabriel, defining sounds of a generation that was originally yours for the price of a three bedroom house in 1980.

Even after all this time and the fact that technology has moved on so much that your iPhone now has more power than a Fairlight, there's something about the sound and the actual physical presence of the object that makes it say "I'm serious about sound" and of course it looks like it should belong in a laboratory - who could resist?

I must confess, for me though that's where the allure ends, though for some reason the light pen and the laborious step time sequencer of the legendary Page R still get some folks misty eyed. And lets not forget the large, slow loading, hard to source floppies, all this stuff we've left behind in the last century and while I'm a big fan of the physical interface, some things are better consigned to the past for good.

You can if you desire, as Deadmau5 did at NAMM this year, skip all the hassle of buying an antique and get a 21st Century model in the form of the CMI 30A from Peter Vogel Instruments - the original inventor of the Fairlight - a snip at around $20,000 - still way less than the original went for. Or you can get a an iOS App for around $50

I'll be listening out for some Shakuhachi samples on Deadmau5 releases from now on - I wonder if he could slip one in without anyone noticing....

Thanks to Failed Muso for the update - that Deadmau5 bought the CMI 30A.

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