E-mu Emulator

The E-mu Emulator (also referred to as Emulator I) was a sampling synthesizer released in 1981 by E-mu Systems, with external floppy disk storage.

Tony Banks owned an E-mu Emulator. He used it initially on the Genesis album in 1983 for sampling a variety of sounds and spinning them in for sound effects. An example of the Emulator is "Mama", for which Tony sampled Mike Rutherford hitting a Japanese Koto and he played it on the Emulator during the bridge. Another is the Mellotron-like introduction to "It's Gonna Get Better", which according to Phil Collins was a string phrase taken from one of the songs from the 2001: A Space Odyssey soundtrack. The effect was developed from playing it as chords on the Emulator - parts of the sample would be played at different speeds.

In 1984, Tony Banks upgraded to the newer E-mu Emulator II.

Quotes on the Emulator
"'The main instruments that I've used on the new album are the Prophet 10, the Synclavier, the Emulator, and the Yamaha piano. I've also used the Quadra on 'Mama' and I sampled the sound of a Japanese Koto onto the Emulator which gave the 'plunking' solo on 'Mama'. The Emulator is a great way of cheating! And a lot of fun too, I think we did a trumpet piece as well which I sampled onto it - and I don't play trumpet at all... But I often feel that the use of the Emulator and the Fairlight and things like them could become a bit, well, self conscious in a way, with everyone striving to get a new sound from them and it ends up with it sounding so obviously sampled. Peter (Gabriel) seems to have got round that one and has started a new way of looking at the sampling thing. Really quite exciting.' (Electronics & Music Maker, November 1983)"

"(On creating the 'It's Gonna Get Better' intro) 'That was done on the Emulator. I recorded a four-note string phrase. When you play chords with it, you get all these harmonies happening at different speeds. It's something I just stumbled across with the Emulator. I was attempting to record the string note and I got the first four notes instead of just the one. I happened to put the looping on [on the Emulator] after the four notes instead of after the first. And it was an amazing sound. It sounds like a Mellotron as it's a record sound.' (Keyboard, November 1984)"