Fairlight CMI Series I

The Fairlight CMI Series I was the first of the Fairlight CMI digital samplers and early workstation synthesizers, introduced in 1979. It was used by Peter Gabriel and Larry Fast.

Peter first worked with the Fairlight CMI Series I on the Peter Gabriel 3 album - also known as Melt. received one of first Fairlights off the production line, and he experimented with it on songs such as "No Self Control". Peter Vogel (inventor of the Fairlight) was photographed with Peter's Fairlight at The Townhouse studios by Larry Fast.

Gabriel also had the distinction of being the first ever Fairlight owner in the UK. He became incredibly fascinated with the Fairlight and its possibilities, that he co-founded Syco Systems with cousin Stephen Paine to distribute the Fairlight in the UK. He worked with the Fairlight CMI Series I to great effect on the Peter Gabriel 2 album (a.k.a. Security), experimenting with sampling his own sounds. He even wrote songs like "Rhythm Of The Heat" on the Fairlight.

Gabriel later upgraded to the Fairlight CMI Series IIx.

Quotes on the Fairlight
Peter Vogel on how the Fairlight got to Peter Gabriel: "'I think the first stop was in LA—it might have even been a Stevie Wonder session, when he was recording Journey Through ‘The Secret Life of Plants’ He immediately latched on to it: “we can put nature sounds in here that will work really well with this concept.” From there we went all over the place, but the next major connection was that someone knew Larry Fast, who was working for Peter Gabriel. He was Gabriel’s synthesizer player and he was recording in New York at the time, and they said “can you come up to New York and we’ll have a look at it”. So we went up to New York and he looked at it and then he rang someone else at another studio and that’s how it went. And then I delivered the first machine to Peter Gabriel in the UK.' "

"'Yeah, it is amazing. It's something I've dreamt of for a very long time. I never thought I'd actually get my hands on one. It generates sound internally, which I never use at all, or you can get external sounds fed into it. So you can take just one note, like a tap on this paper cup (taps a cup) and the computer will then show it on a TV screen, in its wave form. Then you can manipulate that and then send it back out of the computer to a keyboard. You can then play a tune on the tapped plastic cups. The options are amazing. There are two or three other machines now that do that. They're now the price of a small house, but when the Japanese get to them and they become add -ons to the home computer, they'll be as common as pianos.' (Recording & Music'', June 1983)"