E-mu Emulator II

The E-mu Emulator II was a sampling synthesizer introduced in 1983. It was the successor of the E-mu Emulator (a.k.a Emulator I). Tony Banks and Peter Gabriel used this synth.

Tony Banks' Emulator II
Tony Banks acquired an Emulator II around 1984, replacing the Emulator I. Phil Collins talked about Tony owning one in a late 1984 interview, considering renting his for a session with David Frank for the No Jacket Required album.

Tony used the Emulator II rather extensively on the Invisible Touch album and the tour that followed. Besides for sounds, he also used the Emulator's sampling facility to record parts of jams, as heard on the intro of "The Brazilian".

For live performances, "Invisible Touch" was changed in key and Banks had to redo the song's sequences in the middle section. So he had copied the four bars of new sequences onto the Emulator, two bars each, rather than sample directly off the 24 track had the song been in the same pitch. Then when it came to the bridge, he'd play four notes, and the whole thing builds up like in the actual song, with the sample playing at different speeds. According to Banks, he felt it was easier that way than link up a sequencer and start the sequences at the right time. A similar sort of thing was done on the original Emulator in the Mellotron-style intro to "It's Gonna Get Better".

Quotes on the Emulator
"'With the Emulator [II], in particular, a lot of the sounds I use are ones I've stumbled across. I find the Emulator a useful tool for composition, too. What I often do is switch it on while we're improvising, and I get 17 seconds of everybody doing their thing and not even listening to each other. Then I play through it and sometimes there's something there. You edit out a few seconds and you've got something you can work with. On the new Genesis album there's a number called 'The Brazilian' that's got what sounds like a sequence pattern going through, which was done like that.' (Electronics & Music Maker, July 1986)"

"'Actually I've been using the Emulator [II] quite a lot. So many songs on the [Invisible Touch] album evolved from using that machine. One thing I like to do is record the group improvising in the room. I'll switch the Emulator and record whatever is happening for a full 17 seconds, the listen back and see if anything interesting happened. Then I'll isolate the good bits. One of them was 'The Brazilian'; that thing that goes all the way through was just random noise in the room. That riff just sounded great; it was just a matter of improvising on top of it and seeing what happened. You can have such fun with that thing.' (Keyboard, February 1987)"

Peter Gabriel's Emulator II
Peter Gabriel used an Emulator II on the So album; it was one of the newer pieces of gear he got by the time of recording the album. The Emulator notably features in the introduction to "Sledgehammer", which is the shakuhachi flute sound (although it was once said to be a Fairlight). Countless records after that had used that same sound ever since.