While a student at Rochester High School, the younger Emrick directed a number of ensembles that played at dances and dramatic performances.

[2] Emrick came to Purdue in 1904 as an electrical engineering major and immediately joined the school's band.

Despite these handicaps, the band had grown to 50 members by 1902, and had become a fixture at football games even though it primarily served to play at drills and ceremonies for the Student Army Training Corps (forerunner of the Purdue ROTC).

It was the first time a marching band had broken out of military ranks to form letters on the field.

Emrick was hired as the band's first full-time director after graduating in 1908 and was also appointed a professor of electrical engineering.

He asked the Leedy Manufacturing Company of Indianapolis to create a giant bass drum "larger than the man playing it".

[1] By the time he retired for good, he had spent the first half-century of his adult life in West Lafayette as a student, professor, and band director.