Thank you. We live in such times. Things that was like a dreams in childhood and early young, now can be if not owned, then seen and heard in various aspects. I enjoy that, a lot.
Incredible how we so blessed with ample memory sizes these days. Even more incredible how producers back in the day were able to make such a little go a long way. P.S. your emulator looks immaculate ☺
I had a hell of a good time with that instrument back in 1992 until 1997, when the floppy disk drive crashed and put a lid on so much fun. Not only is an incredibly straight forward instrument (maybe because there isn't much you can do once you get your 2 second loopable low bandwidth samples) but it is also inspiring and it's got a unique, distinctive sound. There's no DSP when transposing samples: it only speeds up or slows down the playback. Same for the EII and EIII. Sometimes less is more... The keyboard is always split between upper and lower sounds, but using a footswitch you can play both sounds simultaneously when playing the lower two octaves; very handy for fat, out of phase sounds. At the same time, though you've got pitch bend and modulation wheels, their range of influence over sound is very limited; you can bend up or down only one tone. Even though outdated, some of the library sounds are really amazing. I especially miss the "power brass" and "brass swell". Choir and string sounds were also great. An argentinian musician named Charly Garcia used the sampled voice of James Brown back in 1983 on one of his greatest hits ("No me dejan salir"). Also Pet Shop Boys, for the string pad on "West End girls". Yeah, I know: they themselves claim it's an EII, but no. Believe me: I HAD that disk!
Sampling has and has not changed very much. Time stretching has made great improvements with most sounds but this process still has its problems. The best sampling keyboard I have today is my Roland VSynth GT. Thanks for the post It brought back some fun memories.
What a cool looking keyboard.,,,,,the bright blue case and the white computery 70s font are so striking with the bright red button. It sounds almost mellotron like. I'd love to own one one day. It must have been so mindblowing when it came out.
That was an AWESOME video! I always thought the choir was from, or even possibly sampled from the Roland VP-330 choir. Thank you for demonstrating this unique instrument from a unique time. Your permormance of Blue Monday sounded very spot on!
Ah. This is how they got the sample into Blue Monday. Pretty revolutionary for the time. If we were to go the vintage way, we would use a Walkman or a Vinyl record player, the former being easier to record what to sample.
My turntable has been broken for a number of years - I finally just recently had it repaired and refurbished, so I'll be able to use records again. Btw, nobody would have used a Walkman to sample in a studio! Walkmans were for listening to music on the go (I had several, including a yellow "Sport" model that I still have somewhere) - studios had high-grade cassette players in their racks
Great demonstration man! I can't help but love the sound of this sampler. I'd love to get one myself, but around these parts where I live I've yet to see one come up for sale. As for the early 80s acts I still remember when Blue Monday came out and what impact the sound had on me.
Hey, Espen, thank you! Love your channel. Yes, the Emulator II is a lot easier to find than the I, although in the US it's probably a bit easier to get. I love the original Emulator because besides New Order, Vangelis, OMD etc., back in the '80s when I still was in Italy, there was a song hat we all loved called "Tziganata" by a group of our area called Litfiba (which later became very famous) and their keyboardist , Antonio Aiazzi, used the original Emulator (and the EII also). Those 8-bit "grainy" choirs sounds that Litfiba used gave me (and still do ) goosebumps, although depending on the source sample, it can also sound quite nice and detailed.
Thanks for both your kind words and the story Paolo! I love when gear are connected to particular memories like that and of course I've listen a lot to "Italo Disco" through the years as well and I have a special place in my heart for that sound. The Emulator 2 surface from time to time here, but so far the ones going have been in a rough shape so I'm still waiting. Until further notice I'll use my Emaxes which in itself sounds very nice for my sound.
That's pretty slick! I got freaked out for a sec at 2:28 because I've heard that digi freeze type sound when my PC locks up while working on some tunes or watching a vid lol. I thought for a sec my PC had crashed! That's really cool you can get an effect like that from a machine made in 81'!
That "freeze" sound you're talking about is pretty much exactly the same thing as a looping sampler. The audio hardware is playing a ring-buffer -- an area of memory that is constantly looped over. It's the job of the audio driver to follow behind the playback pointer and re-fill the memory with new audio samples. When the audio driver suddenly goes away (crash) and stops updating the buffer, the hardware just keeps playing the same memory content until something resets it.
Thanks for the demo! Sampling with it is very similar to my old Akai S-612 with the sliders for the looping. It wasn't always as successful with the loop points as I wanted it to be, but it sounded amazing for the day.
Totally out of key. Nice for the technical part but it hurts my ears to hear such a classic in a completely out of key. Sorry, sounds so weird to me. Song is in D Dorian
If I may try to help, try holding down the B-flat key in the lower part (this will give a B-minor chord which will match your bassline which is also tonic note B). And in the upper, try playing the melody like so: A-Aflat-Gflat-D... A-Aflat-Gflat-Dflat... and so on.
Software samplers and workstations with sampling capability pretty much killed the market for multisampling keyboards. Most people who do their own sampling these days are doing hiphop style loops from albums.
Thank you - you can see me trying to adjust the pitch in the song. This sampler is almost forty years old. The strings are admittedly out of tune, going fast when I do these videos.
The choral voice came probable from a vako orchestron like kraftwerk one or maybe a real melotron, they still use it a lot in british studio in the beginin of the 80's, we can heard that on OMD Joan of arc.
It's a Uranium sample for sure, in which Uranium itself also stems from the Mellotron choir. But the high strings part before Bernard's vocals kicks in, that's from the vocoder/string machine for sure. Not sure which model it is.
Ciao Paolo! Sapresti dirmi che tipo di sintetizzatore ha usato "Richard Wright" per "Shine On You Crazy Diamond"?Ancora oggi è un suono eterno. Oltretutto mi piacerebbe sapere (se lo sai) che sintetizzatori sono stati utilizzati per la meravigliosa "Force Majeure" dei Tangerine Dream. Grazie e complimenti per il canale! sempre un piacere i tuoi video. Saluti dal bel paese ;)
Grazie, jippalippa, Minimoog. La strumentazione completa (EMS VCS3, ARP Solina and Minimoog) e intervista sono - tra molte altre parti sull' Internet - a questo sito di SOS Classic Tracks: www.soundonsound.com/people/pink-floyd-shine-you-crazy-diamond Per quanto riguarda i Tangerine Dream, hanno usato moltissimi strumenti durante gli anni, i soliti sospetti sono Moog, modulari, Mellotrons etc. - per Force Majeure c'e' una thread con Micke a Vintage Synth (he researches very well) and he mentions also the OB-1 forum.vintagesynth.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=37374&start=45
At the time Emulator was so cool, almost science fiction type of instrument. Loved it so much. Today a $25 toy instrument can do better samples. Anyway, thanks.
What toy? Name it? Trying to emulate hardware on software is a bit like re-creating something that someone else cooked who didnt tell you the exact recipe. Even then your trying to re-create it on a different platform (software). Even if you tried to re-create it on the same platform (hardware) that it was created- good luck! What I'm saying is that everyone thinks they can emulate everything via software. Good luck with that. The last thing I would ever wish on someone is for them to attempt (via software) to recreate all the sounds I've designed in the last 20 years on hardware. I bought a $200 toy keyboard that sounded better than all the keyboards in this price range. However, it does not sound like this video, it does not have the color and character. Nothing in my studio actually can reproduce this, unless I sample the sound in the video maybe har-har. Even then, as a sound designer not sure I can add to the warm and personality of this sound.
A bit off-key, but it serves very well as a demonstration. Also check out another 80's geek. Espen Kraft, from Norway. One video here, in the same context: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-A0xR348AyUU.html
There might be a bit more than that, ideally you want to sample a sound so the sounds frequency matches or is a multiple of the sample rate you're using, this will help in getting a better editing experience as well a better gange.
A question for you out there: Does the Emulator I have automatic threshold triggered sampling like the Akai S 612? I am considering getting one but that feature would be important because otherwise its difficult to get the start of the sound spot on or you are having silence at the beginning and wasting precious sampling time.
I found myself actually enjoying that he kept holding down that 1 note. Now that is a true musical instrument for a musician. Cant you hear? It's got character. Thirty years ago equipment had to be designed for musicians (with critical musicians ears) because they were the only one who could afford them. So they had to sell equipment that sounded good. Music and equipment has become so devalued these days that everyone things everything can be emulated on software. Btw I emulated/designed a heavy metal guitar sound on a TX81Z that made you want to hear more and more (like one note you want to go on and on) that heavy heavy awesome grunge sound. But I don't kid myself, I'm only emulating an instrument (like that guy is playing), software is trying to do the same thing. Designing a sound that will get old. Basically faking it. Newer and more powerful does not mean it necessarily sounds better to the ears. New sounds can quickly sound old. I cringe at music that sounds too perfect because I know it quickly gets boring, sound old school and sure enough- it does. I want character. The old equipment had it because they knew. Color, character, and personality.
I meant that single "Blue Monday", from your vid here, was released in 1983:-) But yes, 1983 was a wonderful year, for example many Italodisco hits was released that time, it was in this year that term "Italo" was born. 1984, 1985 was also fantastic, you're right. I love 1985 and following years, because of the heyday of Eurodisco sound: Modern Talking, Silent Circle, Video Kids, Michael Bedford.
yes sure - it's a great job you did at any rate - but it got me thinking about the 'original' - i think the new order one was done in a 'chord' (?) not sure if a fifth or what interval though
