David Pescovitz has been publishing an amazing series of posts over at BoingBoing focused on the Fairlight synthesizer. I suspect a few Mind the Gap readers are going to want to check those out.
Many of the accompanying videos are coolly instructional in nature, but the one linked via the image below (sorry–embedding disabled) has been my favorite so far purely in terms of the aural nostalgia factor. This will take you back. Musically and (wow, was that a 5’1/4 floppy?!) otherwise. They’re just not programming them like that anymore.
Video complete with keytar interlude and, wait, is that a hand gun on top of the synth? TV theme song arrangers were a tough, if questionably dressed, lot back then.
Plenty more demos where that came from, including this one:
[via]
Actually, the creator of the Fairlight restarted his company and is building 100 units on some more modern hardware (but the UI is pretty much identical). I got to check one out at the NAMM show in Anaheim a few weeks ago.
Only $17000 (Australian dollars)
http://fairlightinstruments.com.au/