Herbie Hancock Behind The Scenes in 1983!

By: Bre Pettis

April 06th, 2008

“The computers don’t write their own programs… yet!” Herbie Hancock shows Quincy Jones his computers… in 1983! Check out the old-skool touchscreen!

4 comments

http://www.thumbuki.com/20080406/old-school-sequencing-with-herbie-hancock-and-quincy-jones.html thumbuki » Blog Archive » Old-School Sequencing with Herbie Hancock and Quincy Jones

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http://www.treefarmcreative.com Brian Chamberlain

I believe the old-skool touchscreen you mentioned is actually a Fairlight.
Here’s a link: http://egrefin.free.fr/eng/fairlight/cmi2E.php

Flipin’ sweet.
http://illudium.blogspot.com/ nick

Yes, that’s an Australian made Fairlight CMI II (or perhaps IIx?) and that’s a light pen not a touch screen. It tended to cost in the mid 5 figure$ back then. It’s interesting that both the Fairlight and even more expensive rival the Synclavier were intended to be digital synthesizers but the allure and commercial potential as just a sampler. They hung on a while, but most people got samplers at a tenth or less the price when they came out.

Later on he’s playing an analog synth, the Rhodes Chroma, it was the ahead of it’s time it did away with individual knobs and hooked into an Apple II before MIDI existed. It was designed by ARP who went bankrupt and sold the design rights.

Anyway props to the two gentlemen and their music skills.

“The computers don’t write their own programs… yet!” line reminds me that soon Jan Hammer was using algorithmic composing programs for generating some of the incidental music on Miami Vice
http://luislocalnews.iifree.net/herbiehancock.html herbie hancock

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