JonDent - Exploring Electronic Music: Fairlight CMI - Page 3

Sunday 21 April 2019

Fairlight CMI - Page 3 - Keyboard Control

Page 3 is really important.
You won't be able to use Page R, untill you have set up Page 3 correctly.

This page is how you make an "instrument" on a Fairlight CMI.
The instrument has the potential to have 8 voices.
Each voice can use the same one sample, or up to 8 different samples.
Page 3 also allows you to determine keyboard splits, so sounds can be allocated different keyboard regions.

This is a typical page 3 showing voice, keyboard and tuning allocation.

Here you can see which voices are coming out of the 8 audio channels.

Any voice can be tuned to +/- 0.01 of a semitome (+/- 6 octaves).
Stability is really good ... quartz crystal.

You can see a master tuning section in the lower right of the screen.
Here you can control the pitch of all the loaded voices.
These tunings can be saved as an instrument file (.IN) for future use.

You need to allocate a voice to each register.
Each register is in effect a virtual keyboard.
You can have up to 8 registers (but not more)
The registers are labelled A - H.

NPHONY = polyphony

The CMI will allocate a max NPHONY of 8.
In the above pic an NPHONY of 1 has been allocated to each channel or register.

Here I have an file loaded into registry A with a NPHONY of 7.
(one of my sound cards is not working for now so I have a max of 7 voices)
By default, the CMI will allocate a NPHONY of 8 when you load up a single voice file (.VC).

To allow different sounds to be loaded, more registers have to be opened.
To do this move the cursor (via the lightpen or the arrow key) to the NPHONY numbered 7.

Type : 1<set>
This gives register A one voice, and automatically opens up register B.

In a similar way, I've just allocated the remaining 6 channels.

So far no voices have been allocated to the remaining 6 channels.

This is a pic of my loaded "floppy" with the available voice files:

To allocate voices use the commands:
L,n,voicefile<enter>
(where n = voice allocation table )

For example, to allocate GONG.VC to register B, use this command:
L,B,GONG<enter>

Nice :-)

Use the same method to allocate more voices.

Now that we have got this far, it's a good time to save your work as an instrument file.

To do this type:
S,filename.IN<return>
or
S,IN,filename<return>

I'm saving this as JONO1.IN
S,JONO1.IN<return>

Yes there it is on my virtual floppy disc.
--------------------------------------------
To load an instrument file type:
L,filename.IN<return>
or
L,IN,filename<return>

----------------
To set the NPHONY of a register use the arrow keys to tab to NPHONY
type: n<set>
Where n is the the desired polyphony

To delete a register type
0<set>
-------------------------------
Setting the mode of a voice.

Each voice has two modes: 1 or 4