EZ DRUMMER 2

[hibidy]

Found an annoyance.

I was working blissfully on a song and one chorus is 7 bars instead of 8. No go. So I have to write it out and the then drag/drop then edit that part which is fine and it's totally not horrible, but it seems that ezd should do that. It's not like it's a different time sig.

I don't understand what is hindering you here. Can you explain it a bit? It seems like an easy fix. Drag in or cut to length, so I'm thinking something is going on that I don't understand.

DOH! See my post below

[hibidy]

And I have no idea why I didn't think of this (I don't think it's mentioned in the manual, but it's important)

-you MUST zoom in properly to make those types of edits. If it's zoomed back, it won't do it.

Problem solved.

[noiseboyuk]

Underwhelmed by the DAW style editing. Fiddly copy and paste (no ctrl+C/ctrl+V?) and zooming. Am I doing something wrong? Also, Tap2Find has been very hit and miss so far. Perhaps I need to learn to interact with it. No way I could get it to understand I wanted a synchopated fill in the same tempo -- it kept suggesting clips with a completely different feel. The question is whether to spend time trying to improve interaction or just take the good bits that turn up immediately and resort to programming my own when none of the immediate search hits are useable. I expect to end up jumping back and forth from DAW to EZDrummer -- to me it seems the editing features inside EZDrummmer come up a bit short. Still need to spend more time with it to make up my mind, though.

I must admit I've never been planning to use the song timeline to work on a complete song - not really my workflow. I see it as a sort of a scratchpad / assembly area to work on sections and build up grooves. I guess I often don't figure out a complete drum part first and everything else later, it's all a lot more fuzzy than that so back and forth will always be with me.

Tap2Find is lacking a few basic things at the moment, especially swing. So if there's anything remotely out of the ordinary, I'd start in the daw first and drag from there to the tap to find window - only one extra step mind. As to search results, yes I've found them a little variable too - usually it's making a good effort though. When it fails, I often just drag down my kick / snare groove (or whatever) to the EZD2 timeline, then do a new search for a hi hat groove (or whatever) separately, as often its there that the playing of the real drummer makes a big difference. Then just cut and paste hi hats, and put the combined groove into Song Creator to find some variations.

So it's certainly not a 100% reliable one stop shop for me, but nevertheless a huge leap up from where I was. And no doubt stuff will get refined in the coming months as well.

[blueman]

...And no doubt stuff will get refined in the coming months as well

EZkeys had similar beginnings (initial quirks and clunkiness) and has matured be a really great product imo. What they have done with EZdrummer 2 is already vey ambitious; it deserves a certain respect just for the effort involved. Nevertheless, and this is true with other TT products, it bothers me that common keyboard shortcuts do not work for copy/paste and a few other things. I don't really understand that

[noiseboyuk]

...And no doubt stuff will get refined in the coming months as well

EZkeys had similar beginnings (initial quirks and clunkiness) and has matured be a really great product imo. What they have done with EZdrummer 2 is already vey ambitious; it deserves a certain respect just for the effort involved. Nevertheless, and this is true with other TT products, it bothers me that common keyboard shortcuts do not work for copy/paste and a few other things. I don't really understand that

+1 to all that - yes, shortcuts for cut, paste, shift and drag to copy, delete to delete.... would all speed things up and should be an easy bit of coding you'd think. But just as you say, it's already hugely ambitious for a .0 release.

[hibidy]

edit, I guess they can't do it

[skipscada]

Tap2Find is lacking a few basic things at the moment, especially swing. So if there's anything remotely out of the ordinary, I'd start in the daw first and drag from there to the tap to find window - only one extra step mind. As to search results, yes I've found them a little variable too - usually it's making a good effort though. When it fails, I often just drag down my kick / snare groove (or whatever) to the EZD2 timeline, then do a new search for a hi hat groove (or whatever) separately, as often its there that the playing of the real drummer makes a big difference. Then just cut and paste hi hats, and put the combined groove into Song Creator to find some variations.

Good idea about searching for only the cymbal parts. I usually have a clear idea of where the snare, kick and toms hits go, but cymbals usually require a bit more effort, so a helping hand there will have an effect.

On the lack of shortcuts: I find it so unbelievable that the usual ones aren't implemented that I expect there to be a fundemental problem there somewhere. Perhaps it's because as a plug-in the commands could be interpreted as intended for the host? Could they include them as an option that's on by default as standalone and off as default as plugin?

[noiseboyuk]

On using the shortcuts, this has been raised at the Toontrack forum. Erik there replied:

that is a request that we get all of the time. Unfortunately it is not very easy to do. Most hosts steal all keystrokes (except the key modifiers). That means that if you, for instance load EZdrummer 2 in a host, make your song and then accidentally press CTRL+Z then you would remove the last change you did in the host, which might well be loading EZdrummer 2. We could add it to the Stand-Alone but then you would get used to using the keyboard short-cuts and the above scenario would be even more likely to happen.

I see the problem.

One thing that may help is using modifiers. Shift and drag on the timeline to copy. Perhaps a trash icon might be helpful to quickly delete too.

[noiseboyuk]

One thing that may help is using modifiers. Shift and drag on the timeline to copy.

Oops - you can already do this with CNTRL (windows) or ALT (Mac). That'll speed things up a ton

[tparker24]

I was about to order the "Vintage Rock EZX", but I now see that EZD2 already includes a Vintage kit (along with a Modern kit). So I wonder if EZD2 makes the Vintage Rock EZX kind of redundant?

I have the Vintage Rock EZX and the update hasn't made it obsolete, or redundant at all. The Vintage and the Default are very different sounding; the Vintage being very tight and intimate, while the default is pretty much the opposite. So, really the update just adds to the palette.

Thanks to you, and the others who responded. - Tom

[morelia]

Copy paste working great here with ctrl key used. Biggest issue I've had so far was losing a complete song structure. Took about 25 minutes to put it to gather, saving as I go. On reloading the project the midi song track was empty. Reaper 4. Whatever is the latest version

[dbender]

I've read in a review that Tap 2 Find works only for "Toontrack midi" but am not sure from that exactly specifically just what that really means.

So .....

Can anyone confirm if Tap 2 Find works only for Toontrack's own midi drum loops, or, if it also works with:

(1) any ol' regular midi drum loop files that appear in the EZdrummer browser (because they've been appropriately installed in the correct folder to be so displayed in the EZdrummer browser), and/or

(2) 3d party midi drum loops made specifically for EZdrumer, I'm thinking here of the Groove Monkey midi drum loops that are specifically for EZdrums and get installed in the the correct folder to be so displayed in the EZdrummer browser.


And, also, can anyone confirm if the other cool editing stuff -- like e.g., Power Hand, Amount knob, velocity adjustment, etc. -- work with non-Toontrack midi drum loops?

[UltimateOutsider]

Can anyone confirm if Tap 2 Find works only for Toontrack's own midi drum loops, or, if it also works with:

(1) any ol' regular midi drum loop files that appear in the EZdrummer browser (because they've been appropriately installed in the correct folder to be so displayed in the EZdrummer browser), and/or

(2) 3d party midi drum loops made specifically for EZdrumer, I'm thinking here of the Groove Monkey midi drum loops that are specifically for EZdrums and get installed in the the correct folder to be so displayed in the EZdrummer browser.

According to a Toontrack employee in the EZdrummer support forum, Tap-2-Find only works with Toontrack's own libraries- but they are aware that 3rd-party support would be a desirable feature.

I've also discovered that Tap-2-Find includes results from Toontrack's SDX libraries, which aren't compatible with EZDrummer. Some SDX libraries come in special "MIDI only" versions which you CAN use with EZD, however last night I got results for SDXs that do not appear to have any MIDI-only version available. (Toontrack support is looking into this.)

[invitia]

Now I am only waiting for an EZBass plugin so I can have the full backing track when writing song on my guitar. Maybe to be replaced by other instruments/synths in the final version, but great when composing and testing arrangements.

[blueman]

I want to skip EZbass and go straight to EZlife