Step by step

4. Having fun with Arturia CMI V

1 The original Fairlight CMI gave us our first big alternative to analogue synthesis. Not only did it offer a clever digital synthesis engine, it complemented it with a then little-known thing called sampling. Let’s fire up the CMI V and listen to the default patch. That could be the most familiar vocal sound in music!

2 The default interface presents all of the original Fairlight’s components. We can tweak the presets quite a lot with just what’s on hand here. The MIDI Controller panel on the keyboard’s left offers a number of controls to tweak for this preset. We’ll increase both the Attack and Damping 1 sliders to create a pad.

3 To really get into the patch, we can click on the CRT monitor. This will zoom into the display and provide access to various pages of the CMI V’s software. We can see the sample waveform up top, and tweak the synthesis parameters below. Go to the Tune/Filter section and reduce the Octave and Filter sliders for a darker pad sound.