Interest in Fairlight for Kontakt? (completed)

[cosmosis]

Hi cosmosis,
I am glad that you like my song "Dreamchild".
To your question: No it is not a Les Paul guitar.
Unfortunately I cannot play guitar.
It is a preset from the new tubeohm synth Bruno 2.
A fantastic synth I think.

Wow, I hear it now. Very nice patch indeed, and great programming/playing on your part!

I'll start a new thread for the Emax so I don't keep derailing this one..

[matt1314]

Call it like "Interest in Emax for Kontakt?".

[cosmosis]

LOL yes actually.

[cosmosis]

One last bit of spam. Today, after like three months, I got my guitar and sound card back. I gotta say I did get a lot better at playing the keys these last few weeks, but it's time to get strumming again!

I wanna thank again everyone that downloaded, and double-thanks to all that generously donated and triple-thanks to Steve @ Synth Magic for the help in scripting, spreading the word, donating and for the beautiful Kontakt synths I hope that everybody at least finds these Fairlight patches fun.

[matt1314]

I hope that everybody at least finds these Fairlight patches fun.

Who doesn't?

[Sweep1]

Just a couple of late comments as I've just been made aware of this topic.

Kate Bush's first use of the Fairlight was on the Never For Ever album, where it was introduced to her by another musician. As stated, she later got her own. In fact she owned three of them. I don't know if she still does, but I'd expect so as to my knowledge no-one has ever identified their Fairlight as having once belonged to Kate.

Regarding Jarre's Zoolook, as I recall he sampled Laurie Anderson's voice, which would presumably explain the voice samples someone mentioned. I remember he said at the time when interviewed that he worked quite hard on the sound quality of those samples.

I have little interest in Jarre and even less in Laurie Anderson, so I may not be remembering entirely accurately, but I have information on this if anyone wants it. There was an article in Electronics and Music Maker about Zoolook at the time, anyway, and I should still have my copy of that.

[Sweep1]

This post was edited. I've left the original post but corrected it at the end.

Correction to my last post. I've just looked at the E&MM magazine from 1985 that discussed JM Jarre and Laurie Anderson.

I always thought the two of them had collaborated on Zoolook, because the cover feature links them and the two interviews are back to back and appear to be linked.

As I said above, I have little interest in either of them, so I hadn't ever read these interviews apart from quickly skimming through them. For the last 25 years I took the format the magazine editors had chosen to mean there was a connection between these two. It now looks like there isn't.

The irony is that this copy of the magazine was personally handed to me by the editor. Anyway, sorry for the misinformation. I'll read the Jarre interview and see if it throws any light on where he got the voice samples from.

EDIT: I've now read the JMJ interview, and it seems I was at least partly right the first time - there is a collaboration with Laurie Anderson, and some of the voices are hers on one track, Diva. There are also samples from all over the place, collected by different people, including voice samples.

According to Jarre there's something on the album that sounds like aliens, with no meaning but with emotion as if it has some meaning. Apparently that's Laurie Anderson. Reading what she says I'd conclude he must have sampled her voice, not just recorded it for the track, as she talks about him manipulating it. Not having heard the album as far as I know, I don't know if that's only one point in the track 'Diva,' or all of it.

[LBN]

I always thought Zoolook sounded more like a corporate Fairlight CMI Page R demo than an album put out by a famous artist. Maybe it's just because I'm so familiar with the CMI sounds now. Maybe it's because the album wasn't very creative and mostly used the factory library. It just sounds incredibly dated now like so many songs from the '80s did where the artist just relied on on the presets rather than getting into the instrument and pushing it.

To me, a more creative album that feature heavy use of the Fairlight CMI is Big Sexy Land by Revolting Cocks. It makes use of Al Jourgensen's then-new CMI IIx. They also used many of their own samples so it sounds fresh today to my ears. Political, comedic, irreverent...I still don't think they topped it with any subsequent albums. Definitely recommended listening for Fairlight fans who want to hear more than the factory sounds being pitch shifted up and down the keyboard.

[cosmosis]

To me, a more creative album that feature heavy use of the Fairlight CMI is Big Sexy Land by Revolting Cocks. It makes use of Al Jourgensen's then-new CMI IIx. They also used many of their own samples so it sounds fresh today to my ears. Political, comedic, irreverent...I still don't think they topped it with any subsequent albums. Definitely recommended listening for Fairlight fans who want to hear more than the factory sounds being pitch shifted up and down the keyboard.

Wow, I love that album, since before I started to mess with music software and learned about the synth and sampler classics, which put a new perceptive on the listening experience.

Listening to it now with new ears. Wish I still had the vinyl and the old Rega

[Gonga]

A really great Fairlight album is Al DiMeola's Scenario. Jan Hammer uses a ton of Fairlight on there and it's beautiful. Lots of great tunes and great playing too. It's my favorite Al DiMeola album.

[wwjd]

will these load into Kontact Free Player? If so, how?

[thared33]

Hey guys. I don't know what is included in the paid version of the Bitley Fairlight instrument. They've got like 3000 patches but that's for the XXL version which includes other synths. Does the Bitley version contain much more than the standard factory library which is for free right here?

I'm wondering if the only extra Fairlight stuff that's included in the Bitley version is re-programmed and layered stuff. There's some other IIx sample libraries out there that are difficult to find and I want to get my hands on them, but Bitley doesn't do a good job of telling us exactly what's included in their releases.

I'd rather just stick with the Fabel version if it has basically everything the Bitley version does.

[thared33]

Man this is really amazing! You are a hero creating that library! ;D Thank you a lot! I really would like to make a donation but I'm still at school so I don't earn my own money. But you will get a donation from me when I'll be able to do one, I promise! Here's a little demo song I created just now to show some animal samples and the famous "Arr" lead as the melody, check it out if you want and forgive me my lousy playing:

Fairlight CMI IIx - Animals (Improvisation)

What arpeggiated bass patch is that?

[Shy]

but Bitley doesn't do a good job of telling us exactly what's included in their releases.

Everything from their hardware and more, or in other words "90-95% of all the factory sounds Fairlight made" plus additional non-Fairlight stuff.

[thared33]

Yeah, it's the additional stuff that I want to know about. As in, if there were any 3rd party Fairlight libraries included. Information about those is just about impossible to find.