Hello.
First let me say that I LOVE Toontrack products. I use EZ Drummer and EZ Keys religiously. I see on the tutorials that they teach you to use the “structures” (Intro, Verse, Chorus, etc), and that’s fine. The only problem I have with that is that even though they tell you that the patterns are royalty free and you can use them to your heart’s content on your projects without having to fear lawsuits there are still one or two points I ponder. One is, suppose you create a song with EZ Keys variations straight as they are programmed in the browser. Well, if you and 50 other people use the same variations and structures would that not create a situation where those 50 people could sue each other for copyright infringement? Yeah, the guy who programmed it originally isn’t gonna sue you, but if all of those people use that same pattern, who will eventually be able to claim copyright?
The way I like to use it is to break up the patterns. I create a chord progression first and then shop around through all of the various MIDIs I have in my browser and mix them by sometimes measure by measure. I have found that this sometimes makes for interesting variations especially when you’re crossing genres and I feel as if the song is more unique and “mine”. Sometimes due to structures and voicing I do have to go into my MIDI editor and do some editing or moving some notes around, but I can always make it work to my liking. I wonder if there are others out there who work this way, or perhaps another way other than straight “out of the box”. How do others feel about this? I do this mostly with EZ Keys. The drum patterns I kind of use as they are.
Would really like to hear others thoughts and feelings on this.
Thanks
John B.
