FERRIS BUELLER'S SYNTHESIZER 

*Sampler / synthesizer debate* The Emulator II has samples at the beginning of the signal chain. These run into analogue, resonant, low-pass filters and analogue amplifiers with envelope generators for control, allowing for changes in the harmonic content over time. The Emulator LFO also runs into the audio range and can modulate sample frequency, filter frequency and amplitude, allowing for both low frequency and audio rate FM and AM. Many synthesizers have digital samples at the start of the signal chain, whether they're loaded from ROM or they use RAM to allow for user flexibility and custom sound creation, the result is the same; digital samples playing into filters and amps with control and modulation from envelopes and LFOs (and more). The Korg DW-6000/8000, the PPG Wave synthesizers and all granular synthesizers work like this because they rely entirely _upon_ digital samples. Korg's DSS-1 moniker even meant "digital sampling synthesizer". There's no definition anywhere that says those samples have to load from ROM and not RAM to make it a synthesizer or not a synthesizer. I think most arguments I've seen use a pre-digital, 1960s definition of synthesis that uses the word "generate" that's being interpreted without the context of when it was written. New forms of synthesis have since emerged and definitions have evolved. Furthermore, even if that was accepted, as you can "generate" sine waves from the self-oscillating filters and control them with envelopes and LFOs, the Emulator would _still_ be a synthesizer, even by that definition. So yes....it's a synthesizer! A sampling synthesizer. Just stick "sample based synthesis" into Google for more.

Always thought it funny that Ferris complained he didn't get a car - just a sampler that cost more than a rather nice car at the time.

Musicians in 1984: Holy crap, this is truly a revolutionary product. The amount of power, the unlimited amount of sound possibilities, built like a tank, this is just incredible. This is going to change the world of music production. Other people in 1984: Haha, look, you can play funny dogs barking on this piano.

No wonder it was featured in so much popular music of the 80’s. What a machine it was.

Big shoutout to all my 80s kids that wish we could go back in time.

My favourite anecdote about Vangelis and the Emulator was during a TV special about him, he was flipping through his sample floppy disks and then exclaimed "I lost my harp".

Damn. The last 30 seconds of that track, plus those '80s visuals, were absolutely superb.

Videos like these redeem RU-vid. Such very iconic sounds back then, and beyond reading some articles in Keyboard magazine, I never knew anything about it. But today? This. Nice. Thank you.

Almost 40 years old, but still sooo fresh sounding

I am a professional musician who started out in 1985. I had a DX-7 and lusted after one of these. What a great video. Thanks for posting!

I'm an 80's kid. That track at the end hit hard. Took me back. You are talented, Sir.

You need to release an album! That jam at the end was pure bliss!

Despite continuing to like a fair bit of contemporary music, I still have a soft spot in my heart for the 80s synth / dance like Art Of Noise. I loved the end song!

A work of art. The synthesizer's cool too.

At 15:56 onwards - those juicy chords OMG! There’s something so evocative and 80’s about this. It transports you to a time and place that you remember well, even though you were never there.

It's always incredible how listening to those few sounds instantly brings you back to the 80s, if you were alive then

Man, you “get it” more than most. There is a certain fundamental with the music you make with these classic instruments that (seriously) can take one back. Well played again Sir

Definitely right in my wheelhouse this one. Mid-80s Depeche Mode machine. PS Alex your music is mighty fine. Always seems so happy and in days like these thats a gift.

You missed perhaps the most critical use of the EII in pop history. Rick Astley on "Never Gonna Give You Up" where he only sang "never gonna" once,... into the EII. Every time you hear those words it's the EII playing. The producer apparently wasn't sure Rick could nail it each time and that was the hook, so he sampled it. Now that you know that, you can't unhear it.

That sampled guitar patch is utterly gorgeous - loved this video, thank you! And that was an excellent rendition of Ferris ....

Wow. That final track was phenomenal.

TAL-Sampler really does a wonderful job emulating the Emulator II

I am going to say that for this synthesizer it seems like it was the top of its game for its time

Alex you have to be one of the most through presenters on RU-vid. You don't just dink around and pluck keys here and there, you give histories and examples and produce some great music on top. Great show mate! P.S, the 80's called and want their era back.

The Multi-Tracking demo you did was my favourite that you've ever done!

And the most fantastic innovation on this gear is to have printed "Wheels" above the wheels... and to have specified "left wheel" for the left wheel and vice versa... this would allow a large number of keyboardists to no longer mix their right and their left handside... this video is a marvel and the final track... well... is so brilliant ! I watched it over and over again ! Congratulations Alex ! You're the best 😛

Love the interlude at 2:28! It makes me think of something Nobuo Uematsu would have composed for a Final Fantasy soundtrack

Great rundown of a wonderful bit of technology back in the 80's! I had to wrangle one on the Listen Like Thieves tour with INXS in 1986. There were two banks, and I had to load one bank while Andrew Farriss played the other one live. From memory it took about 30 seconds to load a bank. Had to feed the disks and switch banks in the right order so the right samples/sequences were ready to go on cue. One show, I played a trick on the lighting guy, who used a whistle to signal the rigger to set up the next light in the truss. I sampled his whistle and played it back a few times, and it took a while for them to work out where the extra whistles were coming from (sorry Squirt!). But it backfired on me - I forgot the sample was still loaded, and Andrew started playing it live. Whoops... Not very professional and had to scramble to get the right sound happening.

Wonderful video! I had lusted after an EII since I was a kid and finally found one a few years ago and it immediately became my desert island synth. I play it every day and it still takes me to a very happy place every time. It is huge and I sometimes regret how much space it takes up, but it's a situation where there is something really inspiring about using the hardware over a VST. The perfect balance between limitation and playability.

I love how it has "Wheels" in a happy friendly font next to the pitch and mod wheels so you know that they are, in fact, the Wheels.

Wow, now this was a nostalgia overload... it's like a secret sauce/ingredient that I knew was there yet couldn't identify. What a piece of kit and you did us all proud as ever! 🖖😊

Best Emulator II video ever. Period. And your creativity is still amazing! That song at the end is a pure 80's gem! Human League class (the Jam/Lewis era…) and needs to exist as a full blown song! :)

This instrument was marvelous. I never thought it was that advanced.

Your demo jams are always so damn good!!

I could listen to you create on this monster all day. You really seem to have an ear for creating flawless retro music. Everything you played could easily be mistaken for original music from the era.

The price of the Emulator back in the day, meant that Ferris's family was rich. I was a recent college grad working in an electronics engineering company in the 80s and couldn't afford one, even on an engineer's salary . But it was a dream machine that I wished I could afford. So cool. Thanks for the video showing what it was capable of. Awesome!

Not often I hear Front 242 mentioned in synth vids. Props!

15:55 to end is more 80s than the 80s. This slaps! Edit: I got addicted to this track. This is pure euphoria, like driving down the highway at sundown having this melancholic joy - just ahh. Can anyone figure out the vocals? I can just hear "I'll be on your side" and "You'll stay protected"

Alex's vids are so delightfully informative and humorous, and the compositions are always top notch representative uses of these instruments.

I rarely login to YT, but I just had to leave a quick comment and say, that this is quite possibly the nicest video I've seen on this platform. Great work!

Ferris was the coolest because of this sampler. I was so envious when I saw this as a teenager back in 1986!

6:33 surprisingly Boards of Canada like circa The Campfire Headphase album :) Actually the next example at 7:16 even more so lol

I am so glad I lived the 80's that was the ERA that was a time music was engineered to make music then non forgettable, and very enjoyable to dance and enjoy to listen no matter what your tasks are during the day. I listen ONLY to the 70's and 80's music today.

This synth and Depeche Mode literally shaped my musical taste in the 80s.

Probably the most sound defining instrument of the 80s after the DX7.

That EII looks brand new! What a wonderful machine & piece of history - Thx for sharing your magic take on it!

The end jam made me feel ten years old again. Dead center of the decade!

I watch dozens of RU-vid videos daily. The Ferris Bueller video is one of the best most informative and educational videos I’ve come across in a long time. It is brilliant content like this that keeps me coming back for more. Thank you so much.

Man how do you make all you videos so interesting and enjoyable to watch every single time?

Fantastic viewing! ..love the 'bits' you sampled thru it - sounded great, Cheers Alex! 🙏🏻

Specifications, features, and sounds that still make one salivate in 2023. One output per voice! Sample, the play immediately after. Imagine if we saw that stuff more, these days…

What an amazing ending track!!! Man oh man, how technology has evolved so fast. Cool video on the iconic Sampler/Synthesizer Keyboard, that changed, the created a whole world of amazing new music, like the Fairlight did too!

It's crazy how much stuff Dave Rossum has done

Fantastic video, loved it - great video, demos and brilliant homage to Ferris! Really enjoyed the song at the end too.

Fantastic video! The Emulator II nearly didn’t make it, Emu was in a cash crisis in 84 after sales of the Drumulator stalled. Luckily Syco in the UK stepped in and payrolled the initial production, possibly due to the PG connection. Amazingly it has one of the first custom chips in a sampler, the E chip, which is incredilbly reliable. Good job, because once it dies the sampler is toast… it creates all the digital sample manipulation which is the sound we still love…Big thanks to the Emu team of 84, especially Dana Massie who created the Mac software editor and much more. 😊😊

Even in 2023, I’m mind blown by this.

We really need to bring back L/R panning in songs. Hearing it in this sounds SO good! It opens it up to so much creativity, and when used tastefully, can truly create a one-of-a-kind epic listening experience.

Hello Alex: Your mention of the limitations of pitch shifting dredged up one of my old memories. In the late 1980's I was lucky enough to go for a tour around Fairlight. Our guide said that for the piano sound, they had sampled every fourth note, because if they just had one note and pitch shifted it, it didn't sound like a piano. On the subject of how widely used the Emulator II was, Clive James mentioned it one of his novels. Stay well and safe.

What a beautiful synthesizer. Modern art look, matching to functional implementation.

Love that the mod and pitch wheels are helpfully labeled "Wheels"! xD Fascinating how good these samples sound even at that low rate and how it has a sound of its own. Great video!

It's amazing how fantastic it still sounds.

We tend to love exactly what couldn't be engineered out of a product at the time. From valves distorting to wobbly VCOs, tape hiss and later aliasing and 8 bit crunch etc. We do $hit on them at the time, but we will pay mad Euros for them in 35 years time.

Incredible work alex! loved the song, the production ended encapsulating a little bit of everyone; howard jones vocals, japan crazy signatures too. As always great work, keep it up !!

You are so freaking creative it is astonishing. Well done, as usual. With a last name like Ferris, naturally I had to chime in on an Emulator vid. Enjoyed this one particularly. Cheers.

The last song flashbacked me really hard back to my youth. The first girls, the first homecomputers, the first hifi. The future will be great. ❤

the vocal stems of tableau are super interesting to listen to. lovely singing :) to me it always is fascinating to hear the building blocks of songs.

It's cool seeing all this 80s nostalgia. I was just a kid but yes, it was amazing. Full of life, happiness, and optimism for the future that was on it's way out by the 90s. It could have been that I was a kid, but if you listen to the music of the era it paints a picture of what the cultural zeitgeist was. Compare it to the music now.

in the late '80s, a while after i hung out my shingle as "the MIDIcian" in SF Bay area studio and production scene, i got on famously with the next generations of e-mu kit: EII, eMax, SP-1200 and EIII. Innumerable hours spent in Sound Designer, Alchemy, Turbosynth and Vision/StudioVision, to build sample libraries for my own productions, and tour prep for Timex Social Club, Club Nouveau, Gregg Rolie (the Storm, after his Journey days,) Tony, Toni, Toné and others. I was perpetually leveraging OPS (other people's samplers,) which started when i hired in Paul Fox for an EP i co-produced in '84, and he came up from LA with Wave PPG and Emulator to frost our cake. Paul was in demand in those days for his considerable synthing/sampling skills, as heard on Pointer Sisters' "Automatic," a bunch of Smokie Robinson records, and so forth. I mentioned StudioVision earlier, as that is precisely why i didn't invest in my own sampler (had a Prophet-10 at the heart of my rig, so already had a "monster mortgage," if you will…,) - being able to sequence and manipulate samples within the Mac was a more streamlined workflow, than "shipping" the sample data over RS-422 to the eMax, to trigger via MIDI. Brilliant workup on this landmark beast, and i, too dig the production you realized here! Fun fact: in '96-'97. i was one of a 2-man team building StudioFrames in Richmand, CA, the inheritor to the WaveFrame legacy, and that led me to being recruited as Digital Audio Tech at Skywalker Sound, '97 - '98, a glorious time in the "digitalization" of film Post-production, wherein the ties to Mag recorders and video tape decks were severed, and remoting editing GUIs (via KVM control over Pro Tools and/or StudioFrame systems in the newly-digital Central Machine Room,) became standard operating procedure at SkySound, a facility that had already spawned EDnet - the ISDN-based technology that permitted Ahhnold to do his ADR in SoCal for a dub in Marin, and Spielberg to sit in on dubs for "Saving Private Ryan" form his Amblin screening room, riding herd on the mixers in NorCal.

Alex another very made video. I think most of us take sampling into a DAW for granted these days but interesting seeing one of the first machines to do record and sample manipulation.

Your show is amazing! Thank you for another great episode!

The lighting in your studio is like the lighting in a horror videogame. I love it.

You are the king of synth/sampler tribute videos! Every single time you absolutely nail it. Kudos!

Between this and Wargames, Matthew Broderick had some of the most iconic 1980s on-screen electronics interactions

Love the emulator so much nostalgia for me as a 80’s kid. Great video as always🤘✨Would really love to see a video of what you’re recording to as your recordings always sound incredible. You always have an amazing amount of separation clarity and warmth in your music.

Beautiful tune at the end... really captured the essence of that magical beast! Bravo

Great video. The choir patch was used a lot around the mid 80s : from the main melody of 'Always On My Mind' (and most of that period of Petshop Boys until 'Behaviour') to the title theme to 'Howards Way' by Simon May, it was as ubiquitous as the Orchestra Hits. Keff McCulloch also made it the star of Doctor Who from 1987-1989 as his soundtracks are basicsally EII, Prophet 5 and a Linndrum - the Cybermen arriving at the start 'Silver Nemesis' uses 3 of the Orchestra Hits for example. . It even made the 1985-89 'Jim'll Fix It' opening title theme but even the composer wants to forget about that.

The best synth ever made, the EmulatorII. The sounds it makes is fantasic- Just listen to Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, Front 242 to name a few that used it.

I love your videos! So much info, so much knowledge on the history of the synths and the artists that used them. I love the jam sessions you do, you're such a talented human! And your sense of humor is just fantastic! Please don't stop putting out these videos! Very inspiring! Cheers Mr. Alex !

This was awesome Alex. Just commenting to help the almighty engagement algorithm in the hope that you get a million new subs.

That jam at 8:20 is so funky, man. Do you have a full version of it?

God I love this channel.

Alex the amount of melodic and harmonic ideas you get through in your songs makes me feel so inadequate as a song writer. Superb stuff!

Keep coming back to the Multi-track Sequencing track. Love that jam!

What a solid writer you are... Loved that track you played at the end :)

The two things that come to my mind when I see this instrument are Ferris Bueller and Depeche Mode!

What an outstanding production the last piece was. I can't figure out whether I'm reluctant or inspired to return to the studio now. Wonderful stuff!

All those nostalgic sounds makes me cry. Thank You so much for all the emotions you give. I love you !

I’d buy a daft-styled-emulator-remix album of all of all the old alex-hits in a heartbeat! 👌

Consistent awesomeness never gets boring... 😍👍🎹❤

Thanks. Finally meet my nemesis and why the 40's to the 90's were excellent decades of music, subtracting a large portion of the 80's.

Honestly for the money and time it was released this is one of the coolest things a kid could have had in the 80s. Endless fun and it sounds amazing.

Very nice vocal harmonies 😊

Would love to see a video about your vocals for these tracks, particularly around stacking harmonies and your approach (probably not going to get massive views but I'd be interested nonetheless). Also, I like how with each video we get a peek at the tracks for the next album!

Awesome and inspirational showing how the old gear can still bring it! Thanks for continuing to crank out interesting and entertaining content. And I love the music tracks throughout.

All your videos are just.. joy all the way thru! An that outro was splllleeendid!

It’s hard to track all the iterations of the EII. The one in the video is very early…serial #84…PSU on the far left rear vs the later amidships. I think this was changed because of early heat issues. Fun Fact: serials 1-25 were all ordered by Peter Gabriel’s company Syco in an attempt to keep E-MU from going bankrupt and sold out of London. Some of those first 25 made it back to the states with Stevie Wonder, Steve Porcaro… I have #27. She def has growing pains. ;)

Brilliant as always 🙂

Thanks for mentioning Front 242, my personal favorite OG Emulator II users.

80s Style Music at the end ROCKED!!

6:24 Alex does a Madonna impersonation! Rita Hayworth gave good Face...