DESCRIPTION:
"Firato" was the name of an exhibition, once every two years. I made this tune for the exhibition in 1986 to welcome people to our stand. We put on a show to let people know what we could accomplish. The SVEM (Studio for Verbosonics and Electronic Music) was not just a music studio, because we did all kind of other things, like experimental radio plays and "soundscapes".

The heart of the studio was a CMI Fairlight music computer. First the IIx and from 1986 de Fairlight III. The samples of the III were 16 bit and fully equalized wave-files sometimes seconds long and sometimes every key had its own sample. It took a lot of power and memory which was not cheap at the time. It was a very expensive instrument, The MIDI sequences could be stored on (large) floppy discs, but the samples were stored on streaming tapes.
Although I was a sound engineer, I also made several compositions on the Fairlight.

The Fairlight on the two photo's of our studio is still a IIx, which means it was taken before august 1986. The people you see on the photo's are: Herco de Boer (me), Theo Rijsdijk, Fred de Beer, Joost Brands and John van Waes (left to right on the last photo).
Joost Brands (also calls himself Joost Vuurs) is very active on Twitter with his own project called Piano Tweets. He uploads a piano tweet (a composition of 144 notes) every day.
I helped set up the SVEM studio with Theo Rijsdijk and Fred de Beer in 1982 and worked there from 1983 till 1989.
We had several synthesizers and you can also see the famous Lynn drums, a Neeve mixing console, a Steinway grand and a 24 track Studer.
At the time I owned a Yamaha DX7 and a Wersi organ I assembled myself (it took me 8 months). You can see the organ behind the Steinway. Later on it was stolen from the studio. Never saw it back.

I also took pictures of the Europe "radiostudio" on the Firato from this site:
http://www.rinkeldekinkel.com/stations/europaradio.html

and the photo's of the Dolly Dots performing that year on the Firato from this site:
http://www.patty-zomer.nl/dots/tijdlijn.php?page=24