Fairlight Instruments 50th Anniversary: The Origin Of Sampling and Music Workstations

 

Fairlight Instruments just turned 50! In August (or September) 1975, Fairlight Instruments Pty Ltd was incorporated. Then other stuff happened.

To mark this occasion, many of the Fairlight alumni are gathering in Sydney on Friday the 19th of December to celebrate formation of this remarkable and influential company.

We have over seven (and probably more) original employees who will be joining the event virtually from all corners of the earth. Dozens more will be there in person, including many special invited guests. In many cases, these Fairlight alumni will not have seen each other in decades. Remarkably, in many other cases, we remain in constant personal and business contact, 40 years after working together in our early careers.

A website, fairlight50.au has been set up and (hopefully in the coming days) there will be an opportunity leave greeting messages and a place to share stories and memories.

We will be recording the event and compiling a video that will be posted on the website, along with photos and other media from the occasion.

If you worked at Fairlight or had a close association with Fairlight Instruments, especially in the early days and have not already been contacted, we'd love to hear from you! Please get in touch ASAP.

 

Let's all join in celebrating the golden jubilee of Fairlight.

So there will a get together in Sydney at Cicada Innovations December Friday 19th 2025 to celebrate the company and what it became with staff, customers and well wishers.   

I will be ZOOMing in from Kyoto, as will a few others, I have been told. Not the most interesting way to attend a party I expect and I have never been a party person either.

I am proud of what I did there 1981 till 1986.  But it was only 6 years early in my career. Forgotten many of the details of what I worked on now too.  But I achieved far more technically than I did in 15 years at Roland Japan... 

I threw away all the memorabilia like copies of my hand drawn schematics and lab note books 7 years ago now during downsizing to move back to Japan. So I have nothing much to show or jog my memory of what happened when, other than a few photos, unsorted in a box.

Had kept the info for so long and found no one cared, until now. Too late.

There are a few people very nostalgic for the machines, but I am not like that at all. Even when I worked there, I had little access to a machine and never used one once my initial year involved in testing and assembling customer machines was over.  What I used for development was just the computer part of a CMI in a RACK, never a whole CMI. 

Loved what artists like Jean Michel Jarre, Mike Oldfield and everyone else did with them though, and collected those albums. 

A 4 track cassette recorder, guitar, bass, drum machine and synth were my own musical direction then.  Not really so much different from now, other than being all in for PC based music production using the Reaper DAW.

But the first products Fairlight made were things like the SLEEPING DOG CAR ALARM. Not as glamorous as later things were to be. 

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