Lindsay Blue plays the Qasar synth. 1974

Published on Jul 24, 2014 Farkle Berry

"aka Lindsay Bourke. 1974"

via peterg in the comments of The First Synth to... post.

The Fairlight Qasar

Note this is the Qasar II.  See candor chasma for a pic and additional details on the Qasar 1.

Top: "The Fairlight CMI was based on the architecture of the Qasar M8 (Multimode 8), created by Tony Furse in 1975. In the early 70's, Tony Furse created his first prototype of hybrid analog/digital synthesizer, the Qasar I."

Bottom: "In 1972-1973, Furse created his second prototype, the Qasar II, with the financial help of both the Federal Government of Australia and Don Banks, composer and director of the Canberra School of Electronic Music."

And via the comments of The First Synth To post: "What about the Quasar, (c.1975) predecessor of the Fairlight or the RMI digital keyoboard? (c.1974) Also one of the first additive/wavetable machines was the PPG 340/380 System, around late 70's I think. Wavetable synthesis become famous and widely available by the PPG Wave series starting with the wavecomputer 360 (c.1979) Also don't forget the Crumar CDS.

Also: First sampling keyboard: the Chamberlain and first speech synthesis modeler: the Voder! Also first 16 voice analogue synth would be the EMU Audity if it had be released.
Nick the space_nerd"


via Deviant Synth

The Qasar II

This is actually part two of the article posted below on the EMS VCS1. I'm putting up a separate post so there is not confusion with EMS.

"The Qasar II & M8 - towards the Fairlight CMI
Around 1965, Tony Furse became interested in the digital synthesis of sound. His early experiments in this field were small flip-flop circuits. These experiments soon advanced and by the early 1970s Tony had completed a prototype digital/analog hybrid synthesiser - the Qasar. Unfortunately the completion of this prototype coincided with the release of the minimoog synthesiser, a cheaper analog synthesiser. Because the Qasar relied upon expensive microprocessor technology, any ideas for a production model of the Qasar were effectively squashed."