SynthFest U.K. 2019 – First Thoughts

Well, it is nearly midnight on Tuesday October 8th as I begin to type this and it dawned on me that I hadn’t posted anything about my exploits at this year’s SynthFest U.K. 2019 which, if you may recall, involved me delivering a seminar on the Fairlight CMI with a very special guest, Mr Steve Levine!

I arrived home on Sunday afternoon and even now, some 54 hours later, I am still feeling the effects. A croaky voice, tired leg muscles, a bit of a back ache! But boy was it worth it!

I will, in due course, share the official video of the seminar as soon as Jason from Geosynth, who did all the major filming on the day for Sound On Sound, completes the edits and publishes on YouTube. There are a few audience-shot clips floating around here and there if you want to go looking for them, but I’d wait for the official version as the sound and picture quality will be much better.

However, what I can tell you is that the whole event was a complete and amazing success! We literally packed the seminar hall out to capacity, with barely an empty seat of the 300 available, and people lining the walls at the back too! The Fairlight, a rack-mount Series III, behaved impeccably and never once gave cause for concern, unlike the AV gear at the venue which dropped the proverbial bollock just as I was about to start. After drafting in a new mixer, we eventually got going and the whole hour flew by, with a fantastic chat with Steve about his exploits with the machine. After some audience questions, there was a thunderous round of applause and that was it! All the stress and panic was worth it and it was time to pack everything up and head back to the main show hall where I set up the CMI next to the IK Multimedia stand where I was helping out once again.

Throughout the afternoon, I had what seemed like a constant stream of people, some of them serious industry big-hitters, coming up to me to tell me how much they had enjoyed the seminar, which was incredibly humbling and rewarding in equal measure.

And, as always, I barely got any pictures of the event! So, if you were there and can share some good shots of the seminar or the CMI on the stand, I’d be incredibly grateful! My email is at the top of the page.

Watch this space for the full seminar broadcast soon. And if you made it along on the day, thank you so much for attending and I hope you had as great a day as I did 🙂