 His 1970s recordings were characterised by a very broad variety of instrumentation predominantly played by himself, plus assorted guitar sound treatments to suggest other instrumental timbres (such as the bagpipe, mandolin, "Glorfindel" and varispeed guitars on the original "Tubular Bells").During the 1980s Oldfield became expert in the use of digital synthesizers and sequencers (notably the Fairlight CMI) which began to dominate the sound of his recordings