EZBass Honeymoon

[Butter Buns]

It’s not that EZ is it? lol. I think its like a halfway point between a ‘Superior’ product and a proper ‘EZ’ product. I mean it literally has features from both sd3 and ezd2 so why did toontrack decide to call it ‘EZ’? Beats me. I really enjoy it though and don’t really have complaints so much as some criticisms here and there. EZBass reminds me of when ezd2 was first released and the velocity knob had been removed which was super crucial to user experience. Toontrack eventually put the velocity knob back as dragging each groove to the song track and using the edit/play feature to manipulate the velocity was not very…’EZ’! :p

I think some of the beef around ezbass though is different because 1) it’s a completely different instrument than drums and 2) toontrack wasn’t completely upfront about the way the engine works in regards to sample pool, bass tab fretboard note display and the intricacies of the tuning system. But once those are figured out i think some of the riff raff around these issues is less relevant. Who cares if EZBass doesn’t replicate the exact same drop tuning when the Metal EZX tunes down to D#/Eb? That is some serious range and will cover any alternate tuning c’mon now. Also knowing that toontrack didn’t sample each fret (as i understand it) explains why the fretboard on the bass tab shows notes in weird places. It’s small things that aren’t really detrimental to overall workflow.

Even if it has some limitations what it gets away with is a lot, the articulations and the quality of sound are top notch. The overall feature set is expansive for being an ‘EZ’ product which is why i struggle with understanding as to why it is even considered ‘EZ’ it occupies a different class of product than the other lines. That’s really a compliment since the editability of the features is very deep.

One of the coolest things about it is that it sounds so lifelike that i get the psychological urge to reach out and grab a bass and start playing as if there’s really one with me. of all the other virtual basses and guitars i’ve tried none of them do this. The realism is off the charts, especially with the new Metal EBX and the extended range tunings. The presets are so usable and malleable. I could go on forever about EZBass. It rules!

Topic

[andy wilson]

Hi

I’ve just got ezbass and like it.  But one thing really slows work down, unless I’m missing something…

So I select a groove, add it to the song track and adjust the chords.  If I decide the groove’s not quite right, surely I can replace it with another groove but keep the chords I’ve entered?  But I can’t see how.

The 8 bars I’m working on involve 14 chord changes so it would be incredibly slow and frustrating if I had to re-enter them each time I try a different groove.

Please tell me I’ve missed something!

Thanks

Andy

[Scott]

andy wilson wrote:

Hi

I’ve just got ezbass and like it.  But one thing really slows work down, unless I’m missing something…

So I select a groove, add it to the song track and adjust the chords.  If I decide the groove’s not quite right, surely I can replace it with another groove but keep the chords I’ve entered?  But I can’t see how.

The 8 bars I’m working on involve 14 chord changes so it would be incredibly slow and frustrating if I had to re-enter them each time I try a different groove.

Please tell me I’ve missed something!

Thanks

Andy

There are 3 separate Lanes in the Song Track: Song Parts, Chords, and MIDI. They can be manipulated separately. If you want to keep the Chords, drag and drop MIDI from the Browser to the MIDI Lane only. Or, you can use the Replace MIDI function that allows the chord progression to remain unchanged as you brows the MIDI in the Browser.

See the link below in the EZbass Manual and the video at the top to see how it works.

https://www.toontrack.com/manual/ezbass/5/#5-3-the-song-track-header-bar

Scott Sibley - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

1

Thanked by: andy wilson

[andy wilson]

Thanks Scott.  That’s great news.  Somehow I’d missed the manual and only seen various videos.  It’s good to see there is also a comprehensive manual.

[DavidAntagon]

I think the same…they don´t take the risk to make a Deep Sampling and focused on the great GUI and flexibility that offers… EZ Bass proved that it’s not necessary the huge libraries with slides, fx, etc. With a detailed MIDI manipulation they can replicate with very realism many of this articulations and the best part, everything translated on a EXTREME EASY to operate Grid Editor to translate all that happens behind, it´s incredible. But… this amazing features are killed by no sampling every fret in every string, the strings not sounds equal and this is very needed to achieve a realism on a string-based virtual instrument, also I think EZbass needs more Round Robins… Perhaps in future editions…or better on future updates and EBX´s I will that it will be soon!

[Author]

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