Two of the most famous drum machines in history are the E-mu Systems SP-12 and SP 1200. Even if you don’t know all the details about these iconic devices—like, for example, that the “12” in the SP-12 stood for its then-impressive 12-bit sampling—you’ve probably still heard their names. And you’ve undoubtedly heard both machines on a variety of hits—especially in hip-hop, where they helped build the music’s revered Golden Age.
But the ancestor of both the SP-12 and the SP 1200 is a drum machine with an equally fascinating history. The E-mu Drumulator had a lifespan of just a couple of years, between 1983 and 1985. But during that time, it found its way to the top of the charts with regularity, and it paved the way for the sampling drum machine.
Cocteau Twins guitarist Robin Guthrie, who was one of the Drumulator’s biggest fans, neatly sums up the machine’s appeal. “They were easy to program. You could change the sounds,” enthuses Guthrie, from his Paris studio. “Until the Akai machines came around, the Drumulator was the cutting edge at that time.”
British hitmaker Howard Jones says the Drumulator’s ability to swap out drum sounds was an important part of his songwriting process. “I know for me, it was getting chips you could plug in, and then using them to inspire new songs,” he recalls.
Prior to creating the Drumulator, the Northern California-based E-mu Systems had made its mark in 1981 with a machine called the Emulator. This was a sampling keyboard that did most of what the Fairlight CMI could do—for around a quarter of the Fairlight’s (hefty) price.
E-mu founders Dave Rossum and Scott Wedge were proud of their ability to make music tech affordable through innovative engineering. Now, they felt that E-mu could do a similar cost-saving trick with drum machines.
The birth of the Drumulator, Rossum reveals, came from a microprogramming class he’d taken in college. By writing a 32-step program, Rossum was able to direct “a little tiny processor to run a program that would tell the machine how to loop” its drum sounds. Looping these sounds saved precious memory—which in turn allowed E-mu to keep its costs low.
Using drum samples provided by Bill Gibson of Huey Lewis And The News, the Drumulator entered the marketplace in 1983. It was competing with other machines that featured sampled drum sounds, like the Linn LM-1 and LinnDrum , and the Oberheim DMX.
E-MU’s sales pitch, Rossum recalls, came without celebrity endorsements and was decidedly simple: “Now there are affordable digital drums.” With a price tag of just $999—a third of the cost of the LinnDrum, for example—it’s easy to see why the Drumulator was so quickly adopted.
Synthpop heartthrobs Depeche Mode were one of the first bands to use the Drumulator—on their third album, 1983’s Construction Time Again. But the machine’s appeal spanned genres, from hip-hop (Keith LeBlanc’s “No Sell Out”) to industrial (the Drumulator became part of the final lineup of the late Steve Albini’s band Big Black).
One of the most successful early users of the Drumulator was Howard Jones. If you listened to his 1984 debut album Human’s Lib—a No.1 hit in the UK—you probably imagined that it was a LinnDrum powering hits like “New Song” and “What Is Love?” In fact, Jones says today, it was a combination of machines—including the Drumulator.
Producer Rupert Hine (who did own a LinnDrum credited in the liner notes) and engineer Stephen Tayler took beats that Jones had programmed into his Roland TR-808 and used them to trigger sounds they’d sampled into an AMS Digital Delay. “They would use the Roland to trigger better-sounding snares and bass drums, so that we got more of a fatter sound,” recalls Jones. “And so, yeah, I guess that’s where that idea [that I only used a] Linn comes from.”
The Drumulator was the primary machine used on “What Is Love?”—although, once again, the AMS was used to replace the bass drum and snare. The toms on the track are the remaining Drumulator element. It was on Jones’s second album, 1985’s Dream Into Action, that the Drumulator really came to the fore—thanks to a particular set of chips known as Rock Drums #1.
A pair of California youths named Evan Brooks and Peter Gotcher had developed their own custom drum chips for the Drumulator. Impressed, E-mu partnered with Brooks and Gotcher’s start-up business, called digidrums. And the duo’s most popular chip set was called Rock Drums #1. This was a set of huge, ambient drum sounds that most believed were sampled from John Bonham’s kit at the beginning of Led Zeppelin’s “When The Levee Breaks”—although today Brooks says he’s not exactly sure where the sounds came from.
Whatever their source, the sounds became all the rage for a while. Howard Jones’s UK Top 10 hit “Look Mama” from Dream Into Action is, the artist says, “the place to hear them. That’s where they are, the Rock chips. That’s where they’re most exposed.” You can also hear them on the original version of “No One Is To Blame” on Dream Into Action—a song later re-recorded with Phil Collins replacing the Drumulator, and which became Jones’s biggest American hit, peaking at No.4.
The Rock Drums chips were even more widely exposed on another hit: Tears For Fears’ worldwide No.1 smash single “Shout,” released late in 1984. When producer Chris Merrick Hughes first heard the song, the percussion pattern came from Roland Orzabal’s LinnDrum. “It was absolutely transfixing,” Hughes remembers. But he also felt it wasn’t enough. Hughes, a drummer himself, was an early adopter of drum machine technology—and he realized that another machine was necessary.
“Within a day or two, I got my Drumulator—yes, it had the ‘When The Levee Breaks’ drum samples in it,” says Hughes. “And I did the ‘rock bit.’ Then we put the two rhythm boxes together and said, ‘Yep. That’ll do!’” (In fact, Hughes also decided to add live drums to “Shout,” to get the song to “escalate” properly.)
There were plenty of other acts who made use of the Rock Drums chips at the time. Robin Guthrie used those metallic sounds to ground the delicate textures of The Cocteau Twins’ 1984 indie hit album Treasure. And he’s held on to his set of chips, all these years later. “I don’t actually own a Drumulator any more,” admits Guthrie. “But I’d like to borrow one for an afternoon.”
You can also hear the distinctive Rock Drums chips on everything from The Beastie Boys’ rap-metal hybrid “Beastie Groove” to A Flock of Seagulls’ “How Could You Ever Leave Me.” But the popularity of the chips would lead Peter Gotcher of digidrums to allege in Greg Milner’s book Perfecting Sound Forever that “every Tears For Fears and Howard Jones song” used the Rock Drums sound.
Any complaints about the Drumulator and the Rock Drums chips would—like the objects themselves—be shortlived. Even while “Shout” was on its way up the US charts in the summer of 1985, E-mu was debuting the Drumulator’s replacement, the SP-12. The follow-up to the Drumulator boasted that 12-bit sampling and retailed for less than $3,000. And hip-hop producers, in particular, would use the sampling capability to revolutionize music.
But the Drumulator was where it all began. And even today its sounds, which helped define an era, remain important to some artists. Jones, who is touring the US this summer with fellow ’80s hitmakers ABC and Haircut One Hundred, says that programmed drums—including the familiar sounds of the Drumulator—remain an important part of his live set.
“Even when I’m playing with my big band, I’ve gone back to using programmed drums because that’s what I do. That is part of my art. I do program these beats and I select these sounds,” says Jones. “Although it may be wonderful to see drummers and watch them play … it isn’t true. It’s not truly how I do it. My roots are working with machines and then me playing live over the top of it.”
Programming, Jones adds, is the “most authentic and honest” way of presenting his music. “You know, I actually programmed these beats, and they weren’t played on a drum kit,” he says. “I got these grooves together myself.”
About the Author: Dan LeRoy’s latest book is Dancing To The Drum Machine: How Electronic Percussion Conquered The World (available here). For more information visit danleroy.com.