Fairlight CMI Song List
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Table of Songs featuring CMI Fairlight
| Artist | Song | Year | Notes | Reference | Media URL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Afrika Bambaataa | Planet Rock | 1982 | Orchestral stab; ORCH5 (from 15secs). Arthur Baker, producer: 'Strangely enough there was also a Fairlight there. You can probably do what the Fairlight did on a $1,000 computer now. Back then the Fairlight was probably worth over $100,000 or more. It was taking up a lot of space, but it had a few sounds in it, one being this sort of explosion sound, which we used in the break, and the orchestra, the infamous orchestra.' | Arthur Baker interview | YouTube |
| Aha | Take On Me | Tony Mansfield used the Fairlight on the production and sampled parts from the original demo. | Interview with band & producer | YouTube | |
| Art Of Noise | Close to the Edit | 1983 | "From a composition point of view, for me exclusively the Fairlight" - JJ Jeczalik. Features a variety of own-sampled sounds and factory sounds. | Music Technology 1989 | YouTube |
| Chick Corea | Touchstone | 1982 | Electric Piano [Fender Rhodes], Synthesizer [Yamaha Gs-1, Minimoog, Ob-xa] – Chick Corea Album: Touchstone. Fusion / Latin Jazz | Reference | YouTube" |
| Depeche Mode (Vince Clarke) | 1984 | x2 for touring, and then in the studio. | Reference | ||
| Duran Duran | Rio | 1982 | "songs such as 'Rio' featured bird-like sounds which were achieved to great effect using the Fairlight." | Electronic Soundmaker 1984 | |
| Jan Hammer | Crockett's Theme | 1986 | Lead melody & pads. (ARR1 lead) Layered vocal patch with pluck; pad sounds from Fairlight according to the reference video: | YouTube | YouTube |
| Jan Hammer | Miami Vice Theme | 1986 | Reference | YouTube | |
| Jean-Michel Jarre | Magnetic Fields & ZooLook | 1981 | The Fairlight arrived in 1981 just in time for Magnetic Fields | Music Technology (1988) | YouTube |
| Kate Bush | Running Up That Hill | 1985 | A convincing piece of sound design research by Desmond of the SoundOnSound forums seems to prove that cello2 was the source of the main (and very distinctive) sounds of Running Up That Hill. Kate Bush has been quoted that the song was written around one sound from the Fairlight. | SOS 2010 | YouTube |
| Kate Bush | The Dreaming | 1982 | Orchestal Stab: ORCH5. An earlier adopter of the CMI, Kate Bush also used the famouse ORCH5 sample in the title track of the album of the same name. | Academia.net | YouTube |
| Klaus Shulze | Dreams (album) | 1986 | Synthesizer [Roland JX-10P Super JX, Roland MKS-80/MPG-80 Super Jupiter, Roland MKS-30 Planet S, Korg DW-8000 Waveform], Sequencer [Korg SQD-1], Sampler [Akai S-612/MD-280], Drum Machine [Oberheim DMX], Effects [Korg DVP-1 Digital Voice Processor, Publison Infernal Machine 90, Disk Drive], DAW [Fairlight] – Klaus Schulze | Discogs | YouTube |
| Michael Jackson | Beat It | 1984 | Intro/bell: BEATGONG [Doc on the making of Take On Me.. Doesn't specify the sounds | YouTube | YouTube |
| Nick Rhodes | n/a | 1986 | "Anyway, it seems that Nick is a Fairlight man, preferring it both to the Emulator, and the Synclavier: "The great thing about the Fairlight is the way it's laid out, not six different boxes like the Synclavier... I got mine halfway through Seven and the Ragged Tiger, and having worked with it for such a long time, I find it very quick to use.”” | Reference | |
| Tears For Fears | Shout | 1984 | Ah' vocal sound; ARR1 [Doc on the making of Take On Me.. Doesn't specify the sounds | Reference | YouTube |
| The Art of Noise | Close (To The Edit) | 1982 | The Art of Noise’. (Dudley and Trevor Horn, her main collaborator, may well have known first-hand from Vorhaus whence the sample came; in any case, the final moments of their 1984 hit single ‘Close (to the Edit)’ wittily close the loop, mixing ORCH5 back into a congeries of sampled orchestral blasts from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.) | Reference | YouTube |
| OMD | Live 1986 | Played by Paul Humphreys. Runs the live set. | Music Technology | ||
| Herbie Hancock | Perfect Machine | 1988 | Synthesizer [Yamaha DX1, DX7, DX7IIFD, Kurzweil K-250, Fairlight Series II And Series III, Roland Super Jupiter, Rhodes Chroma, Oberheim Matrix 12, Yamaha TX 8/16], Sampler [Akai 900-S], Vocoder, Producer – Herbie Hancock. Electronic / Future Jazz / Electro | Discogs | YouTube |
| Herbie Hancock | Perfect Machine | 1988 | Synthesizer [Yamaha DX1, DX7, DX7IIFD, Kurzweil K-250, Fairlight Series II And Series III, Roland Super Jupiter, Rhodes Chroma, Oberheim Matrix 12, Yamaha TX 8/16], Sampler [Akai 900-S], Vocoder, Producer – Herbie Hancock Electronic / Future Jazz / Electro | Discogs | YouTube |
| Yes | Owner Of A Lonely Heart | 1983 | Fairlight used for the sampled interludes heard at various parts. See Trevor Horn demo those exact sounds on the linked Sound On Sound video. (It's combined with Synclavier, because having just one £100,000 proto-sampler is just not enough!) | SOS 2019 (Trevor Horn) | YouTube |
