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132-515: The Fairlight CMI (short for Computer Musical Instrument ) is a digital synthesizer , music sampler , and digital audio workstation introduced in 1979 by Fairlight . It was based on a commercial licence of the Qasar M8 developed by Tony Furse of Creative Strategies in Sydney , Australia. It was one of the earliest electronic music workstations with an embedded sampler and is credited for coining

264-462: A "lethal threat" to its members. In the summer of 1979, Vogel demonstrated the Fairlight CMI at the home of English singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel , where Gabriel was working on his third solo studio album . Gabriel, as well as many other people in the studio, was instantly engrossed, and he used strange sounds such as breaking glass bottles and bricks on the album. One of those present for

396-401: A brief stint at university in 1975, Ryrie asked Vogel whether he would be interested in making "the world's greatest synthesizer" based on the recently announced microprocessor . He recalled: "We had long been interested in computers – I built my first computer when I was about 12 – and it was obvious to me that combining digital technology with music synthesis was

528-722: A censorship apparatus for the inevitability of war. Due to the BBC's advancements in shortwave radio technology, the corporation could broadcast across the world during the Second World War. Within Europe, the BBC European Service would gather intelligence and information regarding the current events of the war in English. Regional BBC workers, based on their regional geo-political climate, would then further censor

660-494: A commercial digital synthesizer, adding improvements such as the "key scaling" method to avoid the introduction of distortion that normally occurred in analog systems during frequency modulation , though it would take several years before Yamaha were to release their FM digital synthesizers. In the 1970s, Yamaha were granted a number of patents, under the company's former name "Nippon Gakki Seizo Kabushiki Kaisha", evolving Chowning's early work on FM synthesis technology. Yamaha built

792-403: A digital synthesizer generates a stream of numbers, often using some form of digital signal processor , which are then converted to sound using a digital-to-analog converter (DAC). A digital synthesizer is in essence a computer with (often) a piano or organ keyboard and an LCD as a user interface. Because computer technology is rapidly advancing, it is often possible to offer more features in

924-406: A digital synthesizer than in an analog synthesizer at a given price. However, both technologies have their own merit. Some forms of synthesis, such as, for instance, sampling and additive synthesis are not feasible in analog synthesizers, while on the other hand, many musicians prefer the character of analog synthesizers over their digital equivalent. The new wave era of the 1980s first brought

1056-561: A factor of 56, even when all channels are in use. Its design, graphics, and editing tools were also improved, such as the addition of a tablet next to the QWERTY keys, using a stylus instead of the on-screen lightpen; this change was made due to complaints from users regarding arm aches from having to hold the pen on the screen. An enhanced version of the Page R sequencer called Composer, Arranger, Performer, Sequencer, or CAPS, as well as Eventsync,

1188-469: A larger brand: in 2003, BBC Choice was replaced by BBC Three , with programming for younger adults and shocking real-life documentaries, BBC News 24 became the BBC News Channel in 2008, and BBC Radio 7 became BBC Radio 4 Extra in 2011, with new programmes to supplement those broadcast on Radio 4. In 2008, another channel was launched, BBC Alba , a Scottish Gaelic service. During this decade,

1320-705: A less costly sampling keyboard, the Emulator , in 1981. In the United States, a new sampler company, Ensoniq , introduced the Ensoniq Mirage in 1984 for the price of $ 1,695, less than a quarter of the price of other samplers. In America, Joan Gand of Gand Music and Sound in Northfield, Illinois was the top salesperson for Fairlight. The Gand organisation sold CMIs to Prince , James "J.Y." Young of Styx , John Lawry of Petra , Derek St. Holmes of

1452-415: A major impact, both innovative and affordable, and thus spelling the decline of analog synthesizers . It used FM synthesis and, although it was incapable of the sampling synthesis of the Fairlight CMI, its price was around $ 2,000, putting it within range of a much larger number of musicians. The DX-7 was also known for its "key scaling" method to avoid distortion and for its recognizably bright tonality that

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1584-607: A news and information service. In 1978, BBC staff went on strike just before the Christmas, thus blocking out the transmission of both channels and amalgamating all four radio stations into one. Since the deregulation of the UK television and radio market in the 1980s, the BBC has faced increased competition from the commercial sector (and from the advertiser-funded public service broadcaster Channel 4 ), especially on satellite television, cable television, and digital television services. In

1716-493: A number of additional channels and radio stations have been launched: Radio 5 was launched in 1990, as a sports and educational station, but was replaced in 1994, with BBC Radio 5 Live to become a live radio station, following the success of the Radio 4 service to cover the 1991 Gulf War . The new station would be a news and sport station. In 1997, BBC News 24 , a rolling news channel, launched on digital television services, and

1848-546: A pair of fast D/A and A/D converters, 12,000 (12k) bytes of core memory ( RAM ), backed up by a hard drive of 32k and by tape storage (DecTape). The earliest digital sampling was done on that system during 1971–1972 for Harrison Birtwistle 's " Chronometer " released in 1975. In 1972–1974, Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer was developed by Dartmouth College Professors Jon Appleton and Frederick J. Hooven, in association with NED co-founders Sydney A. Alonso and Cameron W. Jones. In 1977, Bell Labs Digital Synthesizer

1980-687: A post-production utility based on SMPTE timecode linking, were also added to the Series ;III computer. However, while many people were still using CMIs, sales were starting to diminish significantly due to much lower-cost, MIDI-based sequencers and samplers including the Atari ;ST and Akai 's S612, S900 and 1000 samplers appearing on the market. Paine stopped selling the CMI in the United Kingdom because of this. The Fairlight company

2112-744: A proposal to cut 4,000 jobs, and to privatise parts of the BBC, disrupted much of the BBC's regular programming. In 2006, BBC HD launched as an experimental service and became official in December 2007. The channel broadcast HD simulcasts of programmes on BBC One , BBC Two , BBC Three and BBC Four as well as repeats of some older programmes in HD. In 2010, an HD simulcast of BBC One launched: BBC One HD . The channel uses HD versions of BBC One's schedule and uses upscaled versions of programmes not currently produced in HD. The BBC HD channel closed in March 2013 and

2244-555: A series of strikes; however, the BBC stated that the cuts were essential to move the organisation forward and concentrate on increasing the quality of programming. On 20 October 2010, the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced that the television licence fee would be frozen at its current level until the end of the current charter in 2016. The same announcement revealed that the BBC would take on

2376-418: A synthesized piano sound. He recalled in 2005: It sounded remarkably like a piano, a real piano. This had never been done before ... By today's standards it was a pretty awful piano sound, but at the time it was a million times more like a piano than anything any synthesizer had churned out. So I rapidly realised that we didn't have to bother with all the synthesis stuff. Just take the sounds, whack them in

2508-545: A wide variety of realistic instrument and other sounds such as drums, string instruments and wind instruments to sequence and compose songs, along with popular keyboard instrument sounds such as electric pianos and organs. As there was still interest in analog synthesizers , and with the increase of computing power, over the 1990s another type of synthesizer arose: the analog modeling , or "virtual analog" synthesizer. These use computing power to simulate traditional analog waveforms and circuitry such as envelopes and filters, with

2640-599: Is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London , England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company , it evolved into its current state with its current name on New Year's Day 1927. The oldest and largest local and global broadcaster by stature and by number of employees, the BBC employs over 21,000 staff in total, of whom approximately 17,200 are in public-sector broadcasting. The BBC

2772-451: Is most prominently heard as the lead instrument in the show's theme song – it is the 'Swannee' sample with a low-pass filter applied. Australian singer John Farnham used a Fairlight CMI on his twelfth album, Whispering Jack , in 1985 and 1986. After the success of the Fairlight CMI, other firms introduced sampling. New England Digital modified their Synclavier digital synthesizer to perform sampling, while E-mu Systems introduced

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2904-500: Is obviously of paramount importance." Reith succeeded in building a high wall against an American-style free-for-all in radio in which the goal was to attract the largest audiences and thereby secure the greatest advertising revenue. There was no paid advertising on the BBC; all the revenue came from a tax on receiving sets. Highbrow audiences, however, greatly enjoyed it. At a time when American, Australian and Canadian stations were drawing huge audiences cheering for their local teams with

3036-506: Is responsible for some of the very recognisable preset synthesizer sounds of the late 1980s, such as the Pizzagogo sound used on Enya 's " Orinoco Flow ." It gradually became feasible to include high quality samples of existing instruments as opposed to synthesizing them. In 1988, Korg introduced the last of the hugely popular trio of digital synthesizers of the 1980s after the DX7 and D50,

3168-658: Is set by the British Government , agreed by Parliament , and is used to fund the BBC's radio, TV, and online services covering the nations and regions of the UK. Since 1 April 2014, it has also funded the BBC World Service (launched in 1932 as the BBC Empire Service), which broadcasts in 28 languages and provides comprehensive TV, radio, and online services in Arabic and Persian . Some of

3300-642: The Archbishops of Canterbury and York came to St Paul's to broadcast to the UK and the world on the National Day of Prayer. BBC employees during the war included George Orwell who spent two years with the broadcaster. During his role as prime minister during the war, Winston Churchill delivered 33 major wartime speeches by radio, all of which were carried by the BBC within the UK. On 18 June 1940, French general Charles de Gaulle , in exile in London as

3432-719: The Ars Electronica festival in Linz. In 1984, he released an album by the singer and songwriter Claudia Robot. (Phonogram) Her studio album Alarmsignal consisted of songs written by the female vocalist, with tracks produced by the Fairlight CMI. The first commercially released single in the US made with a computer, a Fairlight CMI, was Ebn Ozn 's "AEIOU Sometimes Y" ( Elektra 1983) - actually recorded in 1981-82 along with their studio album "Feeling Cavalier" ( Elektra Records 1984). Devo 's 1984 studio album Shout heavily featured

3564-598: The BBC Television Service ) started from Alexandra Palace in November 1936, alternating between an improved Baird mechanical 240-line system and the all-electronic 405-line Marconi-EMI system which had been developed by an EMI research team led by Sir Isaac Shoenberg . The superiority of the electronic system saw the mechanical system dropped early the following year, with the Marconi-EMI system

3696-622: The M1 . This heralded both the increasing popularisation of digital sample-based synthesis, and the rise of ' workstation ' synthesizers. After this time, many popular modern digital synthesizers have been described as not being full synthesizers in the most precise sense, as they play back samples stored in their memory. However, they still include options to shape the sounds through use of envelopes , LFOs , filters and effects such as reverb. The Yamaha Motif and Roland Fantom series of keyboards are typical examples of this type, described as 'ROMplers'; at

3828-958: The MediaCityUK development in Salford , with BBC Three moving online only in 2016, the sharing of more programmes between stations and channels, sharing of radio news bulletins, more repeats in schedules, including the whole of BBC Two daytime and for some original programming to be reduced. BBC HD was closed on 26 March 2013, and replaced with an HD simulcast of BBC Two; however, flagship programmes, other channels and full funding for CBBC and CBeebies would be retained. Numerous BBC facilities have been sold off, including New Broadcasting House on Wilmslow Road in Manchester. Many major departments have been relocated to Broadcasting House in central London and MediaCityUK in Salford, particularly since

3960-798: The Ted Nugent band, Al Jourgensen of Ministry , and many private studio owners and rock personalities. Spokesperson Jan Hammer appeared at several Gand-sponsored Musictech pro audio events, to perform the " Miami Vice Theme ". The ubiquity of the Fairlight was such that Phil Collins stated on the sleeve notes of his 1985 studio album No Jacket Required that "there is no Fairlight on this record" to clarify that he had not used one to synthesize horn and string sounds. Swedish warez and Commodore demo scene group Fairlight took its name from this device, which Jean-Michel Jarre used on some of his records. Experimental music group Coil considered

4092-456: The punk rock era: "Page R also gave rise to a flow of quasi-socialist sounding ideology, that hailed the impending democratisation of music creation, making it available to the musically chops-challenged." Graphically depicting editable notes horizontally from left to right, the music programming profession and the concepts of quantization and cycling patterns of bars where instrument channels could be added or removed were also born out of

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4224-523: The 2025–26 season of the Women's Super League campaign. The BBC is a statutory corporation , independent from direct government intervention, with its activities being overseen from April 2017 by the BBC Board and regulated by Ofcom . The chairman is Samir Shah. The BBC is a state owned public broadcasting company and operates under a royal charter . The charter is the constitutional basis for

4356-467: The BBC announced a BBC News savings target of £80 million per year by 2022, involving about 520 staff reductions. The BBC's director of news and current affairs Fran Unsworth said there would be further moves toward digital broadcasting, in part to attract back a youth audience, and more pooling of reporters to stop separate teams covering the same news. In 2020, the BBC reported a £119 million deficit because of delays to cost reduction plans, and

4488-515: The BBC has played a prominent role in British life and culture. It is sometimes informally referred to as the Beeb or Auntie . In 1923 it launched Radio Times (subtitled "The official organ of the BBC"), the first broadcast listings magazine; the 1988 Christmas edition sold 11 million copies, the biggest-selling edition of any British magazine in history. Britain's first live public broadcast

4620-585: The BBC is subject to an additional 'Agreement' between it and the Culture Secretary , and that its operating licence is to be set by Ofcom, an external regulatory body . It used to be that the Home Secretary be departmental to both Agreement as well as Licence, and regulatory duties fall to the BBC Trust , but the 2017 charter changed those 2007 arrangements. The charter, too, outlines

4752-707: The BBC released minutes of the board meeting which led to Greg Dyke's resignation. Unlike the other departments of the BBC, the BBC World Service was funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office . The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, more commonly known as the Foreign Office or the FCO, is the British government department responsible for promoting the interests of the United Kingdom abroad. A strike in 2005 by more than 11,000 BBC workers, over

4884-440: The BBC suddenly became the primary source of news for the duration of the crisis. The crisis placed the BBC in a delicate position. On the one hand Reith was acutely aware that the government might exercise its right to commandeer the BBC at any time as a mouthpiece of the government if the BBC were to step out of line, but on the other he was anxious to maintain public trust by appearing to be acting independently. The government

5016-480: The BBC was granted sufficient leeway to pursue the government's objectives largely in a manner of its own choosing. Supporters of the strike nicknamed the BBC the BFC for British Falsehood Company. Reith personally announced the end of the strike which he marked by reciting from Blake's " Jerusalem " signifying that England had been saved. While the BBC tends to characterise its coverage of the general strike by emphasising

5148-536: The BBC", was priced at tuppence (two pence ) on newsstands, and quickly sold out its run of a quarter of a million copies. Mid-1925 found the future of broadcasting under further consideration, this time by the Crawford committee. By now, the BBC, under Reith's leadership, had forged a consensus favouring a continuation of the unified (monopoly) broadcasting service, but more money was still required to finance rapid expansion. Wireless manufacturers were anxious to exit

5280-464: The BBC's airwaves. In 1937, a MI5 security officer was given a permanent office within the organisation. This officer would examine the files of potential political subversives and mark the files of those deemed a security risk to the organisation, blacklisting them. This was often done on spurious grounds; even so, the practice would continue and expand during the years of the Cold War. There

5412-540: The BBC's censorship office, which surveilled and edited American coverage of British affairs. By 1940, across all BBC broadcasts, music by composers from enemy nations was censored. In total, 99 German, 38 Austrian and 38 Italian composers were censored. The BBC argued that like the Italian or German languages, listeners would be irritated by the inclusion of enemy composers. Any potential broadcasters said to have pacifist, communist or fascist ideologies were not allowed on

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5544-516: The BBC's revenue comes from its commercial subsidiary BBC Studios (formerly BBC Worldwide ), which sells BBC programmes and services internationally and also distributes the BBC's international 24-hour English-language news services BBC News , and from BBC.com, provided by BBC Global News Ltd. In 2009, the company was awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise in recognition of its international achievements in business. Since its formation in 1922,

5676-522: The BBC, and sets out the BBC's Object, Mission and Public Purposes. It emphasises public service , (limited) editorial independence , prohibits advertising on domestic services and proclaims the BBC is to "seek to avoid adverse impacts on competition which are not necessary for the effective fulfilment of the Mission and the promotion of the Public Purposes". The charter also sets out that

5808-586: The British government's asylum policy on social media. Lineker was suspended from his position on Match of the Day before being re-instated after receiving overwhelming support from his colleagues. The scandal was made worse due to the connections between BBC's chairman, Richard Sharp, and the Conservative Party. In April 2023, Richard Sharp resigned as chairman after a report found he did not disclose potential perceived conflicts of interest in his role in

5940-506: The CBBC Channel and CBeebies Channel. In addition to the television channels, new digital radio stations were created: 1Xtra , 6 Music and Radio 4 Extra . BBC 1Xtra was a sister station to Radio 1 and specialised in modern black music, BBC 6 Music specialised in alternative music genres and BBC7 specialised in archive, speech and children's programming. The following few years resulted in repositioning of some channels to conform to

6072-532: The CMI Series ;IIx, which now allowed for MIDI , until the release of Series III in 1985. The sampler of the Series III featured many improvements on its predecessors. It was capable of 16-bit sampling, with a maximum sample rate of 44.1 kHz, across 16 channels. This was enabled by the increase in sample memory from 16 kB per channel to 14 MB across all channels, an increase by

6204-701: The Corporation's governance and regulatory arrangements as a statutory corporation, including the role and composition of the BBC Board. The current Charter began on 1 January 2017 and ends on 31 December 2027; the Agreement being coterminous. The BBC Board was formed in April 2017. It replaced the previous governing body, the BBC Trust, which itself had replaced the board of governors in 2007. The board sets

6336-458: The Fairlight CMI at the expense of analog instruments. Gerald Casale later stated that Shout was the biggest regret of his career, "because the Fairlight [synthesizer] just kind of took over everything on that record. I mean, I loved the songwriting and the ideas, but the Fairlight kind of really determined the sound." Frontman Mark Mothersbaugh later used the CMI in the soundtrack of the 1991 children's television show Rugrats . The instrument

6468-483: The Fairlight CMI extensively on side one of his 1983 studio album Crises. The first classical album using the CMI was produced by Folkways Records in 1980 with composers Barton McLean and Priscilla McLean . Peter Gabriel's 1982 studio album also featured the CMI. In 1981, Austrian musicians Hubert Bognermayr and Harald Zuschrader composed a symphony, Erdenklang – Computerakustische Klangsinfonie . This work premiered live on stage, using five music computers, during

6600-529: The Fairlight CMI or the Synclavier, its lower cost and portability made it popular. With the addition of sophisticated sequencers on board, now added to built-in effects and other features, the ' workstation ' synthesizer had been born. These always include a multi-track sequencer , and can often record and play back samples, and in later years full audio tracks, to be used to record an entire song. These are usually also ROMplers, playing back samples, to give

6732-439: The Fairlight CMI, Series II, was released at a price of £30,000 in 1982. The sampler's maximum sample rate was increased to 32 kHz, allowing a reduction of aliasing, but only for short samples, as its sample memory was not increased. The bit depth of the sampler also remained 8 bits. The CMI's popularity peaked in 1982 following its appearance on a special of the arts magazine series The South Bank Show that documented

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6864-660: The GPO and the BBC had become deadlocked and the Postmaster General commissioned a review of broadcasting by the Sykes Committee. The committee recommended a short-term reorganisation of licence fees with improved enforcement in order to address the BBC's immediate financial distress, and an increased share of the licence revenue split between it and the GPO. This was to be followed by a simple 10 shillings licence fee to fund broadcasts. The BBC's broadcasting monopoly

6996-469: The Page ;R sequencer. CMI user Roger Bolton recalled: "By definition, its sampling limitations and the Page R sequencer forced the composer to make high-quality decisions out of necessity. The CMI II was a high-level composition tool that not only shaped the sound of the 80s, but the way that music was actually written." Fairlight kept making updates to the system, such as a 1983 upgrade called

7128-505: The Prime Minister, maintained the censorship of editorial opinions on public policy, but allowed the BBC to address matters of religious, political or industrial controversy. The resulting political "talk series", designed to inform England on political issues, were criticised by members of parliament, including Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George and Sir Austen Chamberlain . Those who opposed these chats claimed that they silence

7260-501: The UK's first Independent local radio station, LBC came on-air in the London area. As a result of the Pilkington Committee report of 1962, in which the BBC was praised for the quality and range of its output, and ITV was very heavily criticised for not providing enough quality programming, the decision was taken to award the BBC a second television channel, BBC2 , in 1964, renaming the existing service BBC1 . BBC2 used

7392-554: The US, Bruce Jackson demonstrated the Series I sampler for a year before selling units to Herbie Hancock and Stevie Wonder in 1980 for US$ 27,500 each. Meat-packing heir Geordie Hormel bought two for use at The Village Recorder in Los Angeles. Other early adopters included Todd Rundgren , Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran , producer Rhett Lawrence and Ned Liben of Ebn Ozn , the owner of Sundragon Recording Studios who served as

7524-530: The United States, the GPO proposed that it would issue a single broadcasting licence to a company jointly owned by a consortium of leading wireless receiver manufacturers, to be known as the British Broadcasting Company Ltd , which was formed on 18 October 1922. John Reith , a Scottish Calvinist , was appointed its general manager in December 1922 a few weeks after the company made its first official broadcast. L. Stanton Jefferies

7656-429: The advantage of a performance-friendly user interface (physical controls like buttons for selecting features and enabling functionality, and knobs for setting variable parameters). On the other hand, software synthesizers have the advantages afforded by a rich graphical display. With focus on performance-oriented keyboards and digital computer technology, manufacturers of commercial electronic instruments created some of

7788-602: The advent of high-speed microprocessor and digital signal processing technology. Two other early commercial digital synthesizers were the Fairlight CMI , introduced in 1979, and the New England Digital Synclavier II, introduced in 1979 as an upgrade to the original Synclavier. The Fairlight CMI was the one of the earlier sampling synthesizers, while the Synclavier originally used FM synthesis technology licensed from Yamaha, before adding

7920-629: The air and forced the British government finally to regulate radio services to permit nationally based advertising-financed services. In response, the BBC reorganised and renamed their radio channels. On 30 September 1967, the Light Programme was split into Radio 1 offering continuous "Popular" music and Radio 2 more "Easy Listening". The "Third" programme became Radio 3 offering classical music and cultural programming. The Home Service became Radio 4 offering news, and non-musical content such as quiz shows, readings, dramas and plays. As well as

8052-462: The broadcast of baseball, rugby and hockey, the BBC emphasised service for a national rather than a regional audience. Boat races were well covered along with tennis and horse racing, but the BBC was reluctant to spend its severely limited air time on long football or cricket games, regardless of their popularity. John Reith and the BBC, with support from the Crown , determined the universal needs of

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8184-631: The challenge of better reflecting and representing a changing UK". Since 2017, the BBC has also funded the Local Democracy Reporting Service , with up to 165 journalists employed by independent news organisations to report on local democracy issues on a pooled basis. In 2016, the BBC Director General Tony Hall announced a savings target of £800 million per year by 2021, which is about 23% of annual licence fee revenue. Having to take on

8316-469: The closure of BBC Television Centre in March 2013. On 16 February 2016, the BBC Three television service was discontinued and replaced by a digital outlet under the same name, targeting its young adult audience with web series and other content. Under the new royal charter instituted in 2017, the corporation must publish an annual report to Ofcom, outlining its plans and public service obligations for

8448-408: The corporation began to sell off a number of its operational divisions to private owners; BBC Broadcast was spun off as a separate company in 2002, and in 2005, it was sold off to Australian -based Macquarie Capital Alliance Group and Macquarie Group Limited and rebranded Red Bee Media . The BBC's IT , telephony and broadcast technology were brought together as BBC Technology Ltd in 2001, and

8580-669: The demonstration representative for Fairlight for the U.S. east of the Mississippi. The first commercially released studio album to incorporate the Fairlight was the third Peter Gabriel album (1980) which includes a credit for Peter Vogel as technician for the "Computer Musical Instrument" (CMI), and was released in May 1980, and also featured Kate Bush . The second album was Kate Bush 's Never for Ever (September 1980), programmed by Richard James Burgess and John L. Walters . Wonder took his Fairlight out on tour in 1980 in support of

8712-407: The demonstration, Stephen Paine, recalled in 1996: "The idea of recording a sound into solid-state memory and having real-time pitch control over it appeared incredibly exciting. Until that time everything that captured sound had been tape-based. The Fairlight CMI was like a much more reliable and versatile digital Mellotron . Gabriel was completely thrilled, and instantly put the machine to use during

8844-436: The design while creating office computers for Remington Office Machines, which Ryrie described as "a horrendous exercise, but we sold 120 of them". In addition to the keyboard, processing, computer graphics and interactive pen borrowed from Furse's synthesizer, the pair added a QWERTY keyboard, and a large 1×1.5×3-foot box stored the sampling, processing and ADC / DAC hardware and the 8-inch floppy disk . The biggest problem

8976-505: The device unique and unsurpassed, describing using the Fairlight as "An aural equivalent of William Burroughs cut-ups ". In 2015, the Fairlight CMI was inducted into the National Film and Sound Archive 's Sounds of Australia collection. Citations Sources Digital synthesizer The very earliest digital synthesis experiments were made with computers , as part of academic research into sound generation. In 1957,

9108-401: The digital synthesizer to the public ear. Bands like Talking Heads and Duran Duran used the digitally made sounds on some of their most popular albums. Other more pop -inspired bands like Hall & Oates began incorporating the digital synthesizer into their sound in the 1980s. Through breakthroughs in technology in the 1990s many modern synthesizers use DSP . Working in more or less

9240-561: The division was later sold to the German company Siemens IT Solutions and Services (SIS). SIS was subsequently acquired from Siemens by the French company Atos . Further divestments included BBC Books (sold to Random House in 2006); BBC Outside Broadcasts Ltd (sold in 2008 to Satellite Information Services ); Costumes and Wigs (stock sold in 2008 to Angels Costumes ); and BBC Magazines (sold to Immediate Media Company in 2011). After

9372-410: The earliest digital synthesizers for studio and experimental use with computers being able to handle built-in sound synthesis algorithms. In 1973, the Japanese company Yamaha licensed the patent for frequency modulation synthesis (FM synthesis) from John Chowning , who had experimented with it at Stanford University since 1971. Yamaha's engineers began adapting Chowning's algorithm for use in

9504-407: The facilitation of a loan to Prime Minister Boris Johnson . Dame Elan Closs Stephens was appointed as acting chairwoman on 27 June 2023, and she would lead the BBC board for a year or until a new permanent chair has been appointed. Samir Shah was subsequently appointed with effect from 4 March 2024. In October 2024 it was announced that the BBC along with Sky Sports signed a deal to broadcast

9636-488: The first programming language for computer music , MUSIC , was developed by Max Mathews on an IBM 704 at Bell Labs in 1957. It generates digital audio waveforms through direct synthesis. c.  1969 , EMS MUSYS 3 system was developed by Peter Grogono (software), David Cockerell (hardware and interfacing) and Peter Zinovieff (system design and operation) at their London (Putney) Studio. The system ran on two mini-computers, Digital Equipment PDP-8 's. These had

9768-447: The first fully electronic television system in the world to be used in regular broadcasting. The success of broadcasting provoked animosities between the BBC and well-established media such as theatres, concert halls and the recording industry. By 1929, the BBC complained that the agents of many comedians refused to sign contracts for broadcasting, because they feared it harmed the artist "by making his material stale" and that it "reduces

9900-611: The first prototype digital synthesizer in 1974. Released in 1979, the Casio VL-1 was the first low budget digital synthesizer, selling for $ 69.95. Yamaha eventually commercialized their FM synthesis technology and released the company's first FM digital synthesizer in 1980, the Yamaha GS-1, but at an expensive retail price of $ 16,000. Introduced in 1983, the Yamaha DX7 was the breakthrough digital synthesizer to have

10032-429: The following year, BBC Choice was launched as the third general entertainment channel from the BBC. The BBC also purchased The Parliamentary Channel, which was renamed BBC Parliament . In 1999, BBC Knowledge launched as a multimedia channel, with services available on the newly launched BBC Text digital teletext service (later rebranded as BBC Red Button), and on BBC Online . The channel had an educational aim, which

10164-458: The forthcoming ending of the remaining £253 million funding towards pensioner licence fees would increase financial pressures. In January 2021, it was reported that former banker Richard Sharp would succeed David Clementi , as chairman, when he stepped down in February. In March 2023, the BBC was at the centre of a political row with football pundit Gary Lineker , after he criticised

10296-506: The four national channels, a series of local BBC radio stations were established in 1967, including Radio London . In 1969, the BBC Enterprises department was formed to exploit BBC brands and programmes for commercial spin-off products. In 1979, it became a wholly owned limited company, BBC Enterprises Ltd. In 1974, the BBC's teletext service, Ceefax , was introduced, created initially to provide subtitling, but developed into

10428-633: The full cost of running the BBC World Service and the BBC Monitoring service from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and partially finance the Welsh broadcaster S4C . Further cuts were announced on 6 October 2011, so the BBC could reach a total reduction in their budget of 20%, following the licence fee freeze in October 2010, which included cutting staff by 2,000 and sending a further 1,000 to

10560-647: The government. Throughout the 1930s, political broadcasts had been closely monitored by the BBC. In 1935, the BBC censored the broadcasts of Oswald Mosley and Harry Pollitt . Mosley was a leader of the British Union of Fascists , and Pollitt a leader of the Communist Party of Great Britain . They had been contracted to provide a series of five broadcasts on their parties' politics. The BBC, in conjunction with The Foreign Office of Britain, first suspended this series and ultimately cancelled it without

10692-405: The higher resolution 625-line standard which had been standardised across Europe. BBC2 was broadcast in colour from 1 July 1967 and was joined by BBC1 and ITV on 15 November 1969. The 405-line VHF transmissions of BBC1 (and ITV) were continued for compatibility with older television receivers until 1985. Starting in 1964, a series of pirate radio stations (starting with Radio Caroline ) came on

10824-549: The late 1980s, the BBC began a process of divestment by spinning off and selling parts of its organisation. In 1988, it sold off the Hulton Press Library, a photographic archive which had been acquired from the Picture Post magazine by the BBC in 1957. The archive was sold to Brian Deutsch and is now owned by Getty Images . In 1987, the BBC decided to centralize its operations by the management team with

10956-686: The leader of the Free French, made a speech, broadcast by the BBC, urging the French people not to capitulate to the Nazis. In October 1940, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret made their first radio broadcast for the BBC's Children's Hour , addressing other children who had been evacuated from cities. In 1938, John Reith and the Government of the United Kingdom , specifically the Ministry of Information which had been set up for WWII, designed

11088-497: The loss-making consortium, and Reith was keen that the BBC be seen as a public service rather than a commercial enterprise. The recommendations of the Crawford Committee were published in March the following year and were still under consideration by the GPO when the 1926 United Kingdom general strike broke out in May. The strike temporarily interrupted newspaper production, and with restrictions on news bulletins waived,

11220-410: The making of Peter Gabriel's fourth self-titled studio album , where he used 64 kilobytes worth of samples of world music instruments and sequenced percussion. The Fairlight CMI Series II became widely used in popular music recordings of the early to mid-1980s, and its most commonly used presets included an orchestra hit ("ORCH 5") and a breathy vox ("ARR 1"). The popularity of Series II

11352-776: The material their broadcasts would cover. Nothing was to be added outside the preordained news items. For example, the BBC Polish Service was heavily censored due to fears of jeopardising relations with the Soviet Union . Controversial topics, i.e. the contested Polish and Soviet border, the deportation of Polish citizens, the arrests of Polish Home Army members and the Katyn massacre , were not included in Polish broadcasts. American radio broadcasts were broadcast across Europe on BBC channels. This material also passed through

11484-428: The memory and away you go. Vogel and Ryrie coined the term sampling to describe this process. With the Fairlight CMI, they could now produce endless sounds, but control was limited to attack, sustain, decay and vibrato . According to Ryrie, "We regarded using recorded real-life sounds as a compromise – as cheating – and we didn't feel particularly proud of it." They continued to work on

11616-534: The modest, church-going elderly or a member of the Clergy . Until 1928, entertainers broadcasting on the BBC, both singers and "talkers" were expected to avoid biblical quotations, Clerical impersonations and references, references to drink or Prohibition in the United States , vulgar and doubtful matter and political allusions. The BBC excluded popular foreign music and musicians from its broadcasts, while promoting British alternatives. On 5 March 1928, Stanley Baldwin,

11748-581: The most popular examples of this type of instrument including the Nord Lead and Access Virus . Digital synthesizers can now be completely emulated in software (" softsynth "), and run on conventional PC hardware. Such soft implementations require careful programming and a fast CPU to get the same latency response as their dedicated equivalents. To reduce latency, some professional sound card manufacturers have developed specialized Digital Signal Processing ([DSP]) hardware. Dedicated digital synthesizers have

11880-413: The new corporation adopted the coat of arms , including the motto "Nation shall speak peace unto Nation". British radio audiences had little choice apart from the upscale programming of the BBC. Reith, an intensely moralistic executive, was in full charge. His goal was to broadcast "All that is best in every department of human knowledge, endeavour and achievement.... The preservation of a high moral tone

12012-477: The next year. In its 2017–18 report, released July 2017, the BBC announced plans to "re-invent" its output to better compete against commercial streaming services such as Netflix . These plans included increasing the diversity of its content on television and radio, a major increase in investments towards digital children's content, and plans to make larger investments in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to "rise to

12144-413: The notice of the public. Less radical politicians faced similar censorship. In 1938, Winston Churchill proposed a series of talks regarding British domestic and foreign politics and affairs but was similarly censored. The censorship of political discourse by the BBC was a precursor to the total shutdown of political debate that manifested over the BBC's wartime airwaves. The Foreign Office maintained that

12276-559: The opinions of those in Parliament who are not nominated by Party Leaders or Party Whips, thus stifling independent, non-official views. In October 1932, the policemen of the Metropolitan Police Federation marched in protest at a proposed pay cut. Fearing dissent within the police force and public support for the movement, the BBC censored its coverage of the events, only broadcasting official statements from

12408-407: The people of Britain and broadcast content according to these perceived standards. Reith effectively censored anything that he felt would be harmful, directly or indirectly. While recounting his time with the BBC in 1935, Raymond Postgate claims that BBC broadcasters were made to submit a draft of their potential broadcast for approval. It was expected that they tailored their content to accommodate

12540-435: The positive impression created by its balanced coverage of the views of government and strikers, Seaton has characterised the episode as the invention of "modern propaganda in its British form". Reith argued that trust gained by 'authentic impartial news' could then be used. Impartial news was not necessarily an end in itself. The BBC did well out of the crisis, which cemented a national audience for its broadcasting, and it

12672-482: The post, with a note saying 'We regret, etc.'" In the 1930s music broadcasts also enjoyed great popularity, for example the friendly and wide-ranging BBC Theatre Organ broadcasts at St George's Hall , London by Reginald Foort , who held the official role of BBC Staff Theatre Organist from 1936 to 1938. Television broadcasting was suspended from 1 September 1939 to 7 June 1946, during the World War II , and it

12804-504: The pressure from these quarters and uneasiness among the staff of the licensing authority, the General Post Office (GPO), was sufficient to lead to a ban on further Chelmsford broadcasts. But by 1922, the GPO had received nearly 100 broadcast licence requests and moved to rescind its ban in the wake of a petition by 63 wireless societies with over 3,000 members. Anxious to avoid the same chaotic expansion experienced in

12936-466: The public should not be aware of their role in the censorship. From 1935 to 1939, the BBC also attempted to unite the British Empire's radio waves, sending staff to Egypt, Palestine , Newfoundland , Jamaica, India, Canada and South Africa. Reith personally visited South Africa, lobbying for state-run radio programmes which was accepted by South African Parliament in 1936. A similar programme

13068-423: The radio and television divisions joining forces together for the first time, the activities of the news and currents departments and coordinated jointly under the new directorate. During the 1990s, this process continued with the separation of certain operational arms of the corporation into autonomous but wholly owned subsidiaries , with the aim of generating additional revenue for programme-making. BBC Enterprises

13200-443: The sales of OBs and costumes, the remainder of BBC Resources was reorganised as BBC Studios and Post Production , which continues today as a wholly owned subsidiary of the BBC. The 2004 Hutton Inquiry and the subsequent report raised questions about the BBC's journalistic standards and its impartiality. This led to resignations of senior management members at the time including the then Director General, Greg Dyke . In January 2007,

13332-463: The same time, they are also examples of "workstation" synthesizers. As the cost of processing power and memory fell, new types of synthesizers emerged, offering a variety of novel sound synthesis options. The Korg Oasys was one such example, packaging multiple digital synthesizers into a single unit. An analog synthesizer creates sound using electronic circuitry, such as voltage-controlled oscillators and voltage-controlled filters . In contrast,

13464-537: The same way, every digital synthesizer appears similar to a computer . At a steady sample rate, digital synthesis produces a stream of numbers. Sound from speakers is then produced by a conversion to analog form. Direct digital synthesis is the typical architecture for digital synthesizers. Through signal generation, voice and instrument-level processing, a signal flow is created and controlled either by MIDI capabilities or voice and instrument-level controls. BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation ( BBC )

13596-625: The soundtrack album Stevie Wonder's Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants" to replace the Computer Music Melodian sampler he had used on the recording. Geoff Downes used the Fairlight on Yes ' 1980 studio album Drama and its subsequent tour. Downes later used the Fairlight on the Buggles ' 1981 studio album Adventures in Modern Recording , and both in the studio and live with Asia . Mike Oldfield used

13728-427: The strategy for the corporation, assesses the performance of the BBC's executive board in delivering the BBC's services, and appoints the director-general. Ofcom is responsible for the regulation of the BBC. The board consists of the following members: The executive committee is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the broadcaster. Consisting of senior managers of the BBC, the committee meets once per month and

13860-596: The term sampling in music. It rose to prominence in the early 1980s and competed with the Synclavier from New England Digital . In the 1970s, Kim Ryrie , then a teenager, had an idea to develop a build-it-yourself analogue synthesizer , the ETI 4600, for the magazine he founded, Electronics Today International (ETI). Ryrie was frustrated by the limited number of sounds that the synthesizer could make. After his classmate, Peter Vogel , graduated from high school and had

13992-563: The value of the artist as a visible music-hall performer". On the other hand, the BBC was "keenly interested" in a cooperation with the recording companies who "in recent years ... have not been slow to make records of singers, orchestras, dance bands, etc. who have already proved their power to achieve popularity by wireless." Radio plays were so popular that the BBC had received 6,000 manuscripts by 1929, most of them written for stage and of little value for broadcasting: "Day in and day out, manuscripts come in, and nearly all go out again through

14124-508: The way to go." In December 1975, Ryrie and Vogel formed a home business to manufacture digital synthesizers . They named the business Fairlight after the hydrofoil ferry passing before Ryrie's grandmother's home in Sydney Harbour . The two planned to design a digital synthesizer that could create sounds reminiscent of acoustic instruments ( physical modelling synthesis ). They initially planned to make an analogue synthesizer that

14256-416: The week that Peter Vogel stayed at his house." Gabriel was also interested in selling the CMI in the United Kingdom, and he and Paine formed Syco Systems to distribute it for £12,000. The first UK customer was Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones , followed by musicians including Boz Burrell , Kate Bush , Geoff Downes , Trevor Horn , Alan Parsons , Richard Wright and Thomas Dolby . The Fairlight CMI

14388-419: The world's first 16-bit, real-time hard drive streaming sampler later in 1982. The Fairlight CMI and the Synclavier were both expensive systems, retailing for more than $ 20,000 in the early 1980s. The cost of digital synthesizers began falling rapidly in the early 1980s. E-mu Systems introduced the Emulator sampling synthesizer in 1982 at a retail price of $ 7,900. Although not as flexible or powerful as either

14520-519: The £700 million cost for free TV licences for the over-75 pensioners, and rapid inflation in drama and sport coverage costs, was given as the reason. Duplication of management and content spending would be reduced, and there would be a review of BBC News . In September 2019, the BBC launched the Trusted News Initiative to work with news and social media companies to combat disinformation about national elections. In 2020,

14652-442: Was a widely reported urban myth that, upon resumption of the BBC television service after the war, announcer Leslie Mitchell started by saying, "As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted ..." In fact, the first person to appear when transmission resumed was Jasmine Bligh and the words said were "Good afternoon, everybody. How are you? Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh ... ?" The European Broadcasting Union

14784-499: Was adopted in Canada. Through collaboration with these state-run broadcasting centres, Reith left a legacy of cultural influence across the empire of Great Britain with his departure from the corporation in 1938. Experimental television broadcasts were started in 1929, using an electromechanical 30-line system developed by John Logie Baird . Limited regular broadcasts using this system began in 1932, and an expanded service (now named

14916-401: Was also a commercial success in the United States, used by acts such as Stevie Wonder , Herbie Hancock , Jan Hammer , Todd Rundgren and Joni Mitchell . Musicians came to realize that the CMI could not match the expressiveness and control that could be achieved using acoustic instruments, and that sampling was better applied as imaginative sound than pure reproduction. The second version of

15048-418: Was becoming more focused on post-production products, a market Paine had a hard time getting used to, and when HHB Communications Ltd took over distribution for the United Kingdom, they failed to sell any. Peter Gabriel was the first owner of a Fairlight Series I in the UK. Boz Burrell of Bad Company purchased the second, which Hans Zimmer hired for many recordings during the early part of his career. In

15180-405: Was criticised as being too difficult for empirical users. Other primitive aspects included its limited amount of RAM (208 kilobytes) and its green-and-black graphics. Nonetheless, the CMI garnered significant attention from Australian distributors and consumers for being able to emulate sounds of acoustic instruments, as well as for its light pen and three-dimensional sound visualisation. Still, Vogel

15312-492: Was developed by Hal Ales at Bell Labs . In 1977, New England Digital (NED) released the Synclavier , the first commercial synthesizer to use purely digital sound generation and also the world's first commercial FM synthesizer. Early commercial digital synthesizers used simple hard-wired digital circuitry to implement techniques such as additive synthesis and FM synthesis . Other techniques, such as wavetable synthesis and physical modeling , only became possible with

15444-439: Was digitally controlled, as the competing Moog synthesizer was difficult to control. By 1978, Vogel and Ryrie were making "interesting" but unrealistic sounds. Hoping to learn how to synthesize an instrument by studying the harmonics of real instruments, Vogel recorded about a second of a piano piece from a radio broadcast. He discovered that by playing the recording back at different pitches, it sounded much more realistic than

15576-519: Was divided on how to handle the BBC, but ended up trusting Reith, whose opposition to the strike mirrored the PM's own. Although Winston Churchill in particular wanted to commandeer the BBC to use it "to the best possible advantage", Reith wrote that Stanley Baldwin 's government wanted to be able to say "that they did not commandeer [the BBC], but they know that they can trust us not to be really impartial". Thus

15708-468: Was established under a royal charter , and operates under an agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport . Its work is funded principally by an annual television licence fee which is charged to all British households, companies, and organisations using any type of equipment to receive or record live television broadcasts or to use the BBC's streaming service, iPlayer . The fee

15840-671: Was followed by the Government's acceptance of the recommendation made by the Crawford Committee (1925–26) that the British Broadcasting Company be replaced by a non-commercial, Crown-chartered organisation: the British Broadcasting Corporation. The British Broadcasting Corporation came into existence on 1 January 1927, and Reith – newly knighted – was appointed its first director general. To represent its purpose and (stated) values,

15972-479: Was formed on 12 February 1950, in Torquay with the BBC among the 23 founding broadcasting organisations. Competition to the BBC was introduced in 1955, with the commercial and independently operated television network of Independent Television (ITV) . However, the BBC monopoly on radio services would persist until 8 October 1973 when under the control of the newly renamed Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA),

16104-480: Was in large part due to a new feature, Page R, their first true music sequencer . As a replacement for the complicated Music Composition Language (MCL) used by Series I, Page R helped the Fairlight CMI Series ;II become a commercial juggernaut. Page R expanded the CMI's audience beyond that of accomplished keyboard players. Audio Media magazine described it as an echo of

16236-509: Was its first director of music. The company was to be financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved domestic manufacturers. To this day, the BBC aims to follow the Reithian directive to "inform, educate and entertain". The financial arrangements soon proved inadequate. Set sales were disappointing as amateurs made their own receivers and listeners bought rival unlicensed sets. By mid-1923, discussions between

16368-400: Was largely considered to be the small 16 kB sample memory. To accommodate sample lengths from approximately a quarter of a second to an entire second, a low variable sample rate between 24 kHz and 8 kHz was used. The low sample rate introduced aliasing ; however, Vogel felt that the low quality of the sounds gave them their own character. The Music Composition Language feature

16500-596: Was left to BBC Radio broadcasters such as Reginald Foort to keep the nation's spirits up. The BBC moved most of its radio operations out of London, initially to Bristol , and then to Bedford . Concerts were broadcast from the Bedford Corn Exchange ; the Trinity Chapel in St Paul's Church, Bedford was the studio for the daily service from 1941 to 1945, and, in the darkest days of the war in 1941,

16632-543: Was made explicit for the duration of its current broadcast licence, as was the prohibition on advertising. To avoid competition with newspapers, Fleet Street persuaded the government to ban news bulletins before 7 pm and the BBC was required to source all news from external wire services. The Radio Times , the world's first and longest-running radio and television listings magazine, was launched by Reith in September 1923. The first edition, subtitled "The official organ of

16764-699: Was made from the factory of Marconi Company in Chelmsford in June 1920. It was sponsored by the Daily Mail ' s Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe and featured the famous Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba . The Melba broadcast caught the people's imagination and marked a turning point in the British public's attitude to radio. However, this public enthusiasm was not shared in official circles where such broadcasts were held to interfere with important military and civil communications. By late 1920,

16896-400: Was modified later on in its life to offer documentaries. In 2002, several television and radio channels were reorganised. BBC Knowledge was replaced by BBC Four and became the BBC's arts and documentaries channel. CBBC , which had been a programming strand as Children's BBC since 1985, was split into CBBC and CBeebies , for younger children, with both new services getting a digital channel:

17028-580: Was partly due to its high sampling rate of 57 kHz. It became indispensable to many music artists of the 1980s, and would become one of the best-selling synthesizers of all time. In 1987, Roland released its own influential synthesizer of the time, the D-50 . This popular synth broke new ground in affordably combining short samples and digital oscillators, as well as the innovation of built-in digital effects (reverb., chorus, equalizer ). Roland called this Linear Arithmetic (LA) synthesis. This instrument

17160-461: Was reorganised and relaunched in 1995, as BBC Worldwide Ltd. In 1998, BBC studios, outside broadcasts, post production, design, costumes and wigs were spun off into BBC Resources Ltd. The BBC Research & Development has played a major part in the development of broadcasting and recording techniques. The BBC was also responsible for the development of the NICAM stereo standard. In recent decades,

17292-479: Was replaced by BBC Two HD in the same month. On 18 October 2007, BBC Director General Mark Thompson announced a controversial plan to make major cuts and reduce the size of the BBC as an organisation. The plans included a reduction in posts of 2,500; including 1,800 redundancies, consolidating news operations, reducing programming output by 10% and selling off the flagship Television Centre building in London. These plans were fiercely opposed by unions, who threatened

17424-508: Was unsure whether there would be enough interest in the product. The CMI's ability to emulate real instruments made some refer to it as an "orchestra-in-a-box", and each unit came with 8-inch, 500-kilobyte floppy disks that each stored 22 samples of orchestral instruments. The Fairlight CMI also garnered publicity in the science industry, being featured on the BBC science and technology series Tomorrow's World . The Musicians' Union described it as

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