The sound of glass breaking in Kate Bush's Babooshka, the 'chica-chichaaah' in Yello's Oh Yeah, the popped-collar electronic beats of Jan Hammer's Miami Vice Theme.
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These iconic sounds in such major pieces of international musical culture were only made possible through the work of two Australian men – Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie – and their landmark 1979 invention, the Fairlight CMI (or Computer Musical Instrument).
Ryrie and Vogel and their Fairlight CMI invention were inducted into the National Film and Sound Archive's 'Sounds of Australia' registry last year, among such other iconic Australian people and sounds as Peter Dawson's 1931 Along the Road to Gundagai, Joy King's 1938 The Areoplane Jelly Song, and AC/DCs 1975 hit It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock/n/Roll).
Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie will be in Canberra next Friday 2 September for an evening of discussion (and most likely a little bit of musical tinkering) on stage with NFSA Sound Curator Thorsten Kaeding, talking about their technology and the musicians who used it to change the way music sounded in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Among these musicians were Peter Gabriel (on Sledgehammer and Shock the Monkey), Michael Jackson (on Thriller), U2 (on The Unforgettable Fire), as well as the likes of Stevie Wonder (on Happy Birthday) and Jean-Michel Jarre (on Magnetic Fields).
The Fairlight wasn't just a synthesiser, but also a sound sampler, and the direct ancestor of the kinds of fun tools we can play with (for free) on our iPhones today in Apps like Garage Band.
As teenagers, the young Sydney-siders Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie were inspired by the new music made possible by Robert Moog's synthesiser (most recognisable as providing those long electronic keyboard sounds on The Doors' Light My Fire or The Beatles' Here Comes The Sun).
"I was first blown away by the potential of synthesisers when I heard Wendy Carlos's Switched on Bach, made on one of the earliest Moog analogue synths in 1968," recalls Kim Ryrie.
Ryrie soon started the DIY electronics magazine ETI, whose engineers would write a number of articles teaching and encouraging people to create their own synthesisers.
However, he says, "my frustration was its (the synthesiser's) inability to make natural or classical instrument sounds."
"The first microprocessors had just been released and I contacted school friend Peter Vogel, a far more capable electronics designer than me, to ask if he'd be interested in starting a company to make "the world's best synthesiser using these new microprocessor things" or words to that effect."
Working from Ryrie's grandmother's Point Piper waterfront basement (where lunch and rent were free) the pair soon met another Aussie, Anthony Furse, who'd already designed some earlier sound synthesisers.
"While the personal computer would be another decade away, the work these guys were doing was groundbreaking," says Thorsten Kaeding, Sound Curator at the National Film and Sound Archive.
"Furse's work looked at a mathematical approach to creating sound manipulations, and he had developed one of the world's first microprocessors" Kaeding says, "but then when Vogel and Ryrie put their own ideas into it, the outcome was this sound sampler edited on an early computer screen with a light pen, really years ahead of its time."
This early model of the Fairlight allowed the user to sample sounds (through a microphone) and use these sounds to build a comprehensive music composition language, and the fact they were stored digitally meant the musician wasn't dependant on tape.
"I didn't really have any idea of how it would end up being used because, for me, I was personally interested in designing something that would capture and play musical sounds, orchestral sounds," Kim Ryrie says.
"So some of those earlier compositions blew us away," Ryrie says, recalling a German music producer who came to Australia for a canoe trip up the Murrumbidgee, sampling river sounds along the way and producing a composition that sampled the river.
With much of the rhythm in contemporary music provided by the melody of previously released musical works (think Eminem rapping over Elton John or Dido), it's hard to remember a time when this was a brand new concept, and one, again, made possible by the Fairlight CMI.
"I never thought about the idea of it being used to sample other people's music," Ryrie says, "never dreamed anyone would dare to do that."
When the team's Fairlight company released the Fairlight CMI onto the market in 1979, the pricetag was a hefty $25,000.
"We were lucky took off by itself," Ryrie laughs, "because we were no good at marketing didn't have any money for it anyway, but we ran into a lot of influential musicians who effectively did publicity for us."
Chief among these were Peter Gabriel who not only bought a CMI from Vogel and Ryrie but had his family pick up the UK distribution rights for the product, selling them to the likes of Kate Bush, Alan Parsons, Thomas Dolby, and others.
From Ryrie's grandmother's basement, the team moved to an office in Rushcutters Bay, to two floors of an office building with a staff of 100.
Their next evolution of the Fairlight, released in 1982, included their 'Page R' software – one of the first musical sequencers (much like the cut & pasting of audio and vision tracks we can use in software like Adobe Premier Pro or Windows Movie Maker).
This new technology opened up new sorts of musicians and artists, including Art of Noise, and the company continued development of a series of related products including a video effects device the 'Computer Video Instrument.'
In time, as multinational companies released similar products, the Fairlight company moved into music post-production, and continues to develop and release a range of products.
Kim Ryrie and Peter Vogel will share their story in person at the National Film and Sound Archive next Friday evening, discussing the inspiration and challenges of the Fairlight revolution.
NFSA Sound Curator Thorsten Kaeding has been approaching some of the high-profile artists who have used the Fairlight to contribute video messages to Ryrie and Vogel for the evening, and looks forward to sharing a few video testimonials from the music world including UK musician Howard Jones and Australian composer David Hirschfelder.
The NFSA sound team will also be spinning some iconic '80s tracks that were recorded using the Fairlight.
The NFSA will also be hosting its monthly Vinyl Lounge eventon Friday, September 2, from 5.30pm where the public can bring in their own vinyl albums and play tracks on the NFSA's turntables.
Cris Kennedy is manager of education and community engagement at the National Film and Sound Archive.
Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie in conversation. National Film and Sound Archive, Friday, September 2. 7pm. Tickets $10 available at www.trybooking.com/MCDA
