Chris Cuben-Tatum

In 1987, the EIII, E3 or Emulator Three from E-Mu Systems was an ambitious and remarkable music construction tool. It was a pristine 16-bit 44.1khz stereo sampler, an analog synthesizer, a 16 track sequencer with a built-in keyboard, LCD screen, and internal hard drive. Built aesthetically with the same legendary DNA as found with the original Emulator, Emulator II, Drumulator, iconic SP-12 and later, SP-1200 products -- at $12,000+ new, the E3 was a heavy-weight without competition unless you could afford a Fairlight CMI or Synclavier. My E3 has been road tested (and failed often), but as perhaps one of the 1st true Digital Audio Workstations, it was an easy, fun and high-quality tool for making great music. With just 8mb of memory (yep, that was a lot back then), it doesn't get turned on much anymore -- still, it looks good and sounds great so I will never sell it. Thank you E-Mu, the Golden Age of Hip-Hop would not be the same without you.

I have the honor of buying the first Roland D50 that came to Chicago. It was an instant hit because just pressing one key (DIgital Native Dance factory preset) and you were wowed and mesmerized. Roland's genius was to create a keyboard with preset sounds so strong, the thought of programming your own seems pointless and unnecessary. I have owned three D50 (and a rackmount D550) plus the PG-1000 multi-slider programmer, and have never really made my own patches -- something I felt compelled to do on every synth before the D50. The problem is for many years, music artists became lazy with customization and the end of original sounds pretty much ended. Up to the present time, it's far less about making your own sound than finding the right patch and maybe tweaking it a bit. Nothing wrong with this, as most musicians are eager to get ideas laid as quickly as possible, are geeky programmers trying to stretch sonic boundaries. That said, today's tools have more tweak-ability than ever and plenty of enterprising non-geeks are stretching and working magic customization in ways never imagined during the heyday of the D50. Still, there is something to be said for the one that broke the mold. -cThaWzrd