| Description |
| FAIRLIGHT |
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| 1979 saw the biggest revolution ever to hit the hi-tech music industry,with the launch of the Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument,Australia's best-known(only)music company turned the theory of digital sound sampling into commercial reality,with a computer-based system featuring separate music keyboard,QWERTY(typewriter)keyboard,monitor with light-pen,and disk storage units.Subsequent models,the Serial II and III,featured increased sound quality,hard disk storage,improved software,MIDI,more |
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| fairlight - continuation |
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| voices,SMPTE and more.Why then is the Fairlight worth the 40,000 pound plus which an average system can cost ?Because it's a true 'workstation',almost a studio in a box;capable of sampling,editing,harmonic synthesis,arranging,sequencing,score printing,video synchronising,MIDI control,and practically anything else you can imagine wanting to do with a musical instrument.A favourite of artists from Art of Noise to The Pet Shop Boys,hardware expansions and software updates guarantee that the |
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| fairlight - continuation |
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| Fairlight will never become obsolete.Strangely,Fairlight's only other products,the Voicetracker pitch-to-MIDI convertor and Computer Video instrument,seem to have sunk without trace. |
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| FILTER |
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| In analogue synthesis,the circuit which determines the tone colour of the overall sound by subtracting certain harmonics.For instance 'low-pass','hi-pass' or 'band-pass'.Filters usually have their own envelope controls,plus a Resonance(or 'Q')setting.The performance of a filter is measured in decibels per octave;24 dB/octave is good(old Minimoogs for instance),12dB/octave is more common but less powerful.Many digital synths,such as the DX series and Kawai K1,have no filters,a feature which |
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