EZKeys is Horrible – No It’s Fantastic

[chris page]

Saw the previous EZKeys is Horrible thread.

Well for me its fantastic. If you are an accomplished pianist you don’t need EZKeys. I’m not. I’m a guitarist. This software has opened up a so far unachievable world for me. I think its stunning. I cannot play a keyboard, yet can now produce piano based songs. Here is an example written totally in EZKeys for an artist called Heather Merryn. Its been played on the BBC here in UK. You may not think its any good or like it, but for me this was just not possible until now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZudJCZf4tc&list=UUso4kb6MxXzrIVdW5ftYLUA

I’m not linked to Toontrack in any way other than a very happy customer.

Just one point minor point Toontrack. It looks like you used admin rights to lock out the ‘EZKeys is Horrible’ thread. No need to do that…. let your customers speak for themselves whatever the alternative views.

Cheers

Chris

1

Thanked by: Henrik

Topic

[chris page]

Trying to send the link

[chris page]

How can I embed a link in the thread. Anyone know ?

I’m not to clever at this.

thanks

[Les Barker]

i agree and am also a guitar player that can also only play basic keys, I bought it for what it was, and it has provided me more than expected.

Would i want more from it? Sure…the only thing i would like is to have more availability of the midi genres i like.

[Scott Eshleman]

I agree whole-heartedly as well. I love EZKeys and do not understand the OP’s unmet expectations.

I never downloaded the EZKeys demo so I’ve not experienced whatever the OP feels was wrongly misrepresented to him.
I never saw anything in the Toontrack description of the product, the videos or sample audio that would suggest that EZKeys
was anything more than a harmonic songwriting composition tool.
And considering the editing enabled by its interface, it’s an amazingly EZ tool at that.

And of course, it is also an awesome sounding Virtual Instrument!!
So the OP can play/record melodies, harmonies & FULL solo keyboard concertos with it – to the full extent of any virtual instrument.

[Scott]

‘Just one point minor point Toontrack. It looks like you used admin rights to lock out the ‘EZKeys is Horrible’ thread. No need to do that…. let your customers speak for themselves whatever the alternative views.’

Yes, I know. I felt like the OP of that thread had made his point and wasn’t contributing more to the thread.

He’s more than welcome to post in this thread and you guys can battle it out.

Scott Sibley - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[Ian Scott]

I would like to say I am blown away by EZKeys I am primarily a guitarist and it has opened up many other possibilities in arranging and writing.
I am also loving EZ Drummer 2 it has reduced my workflow so much I am writing quicker than ever

Thanks again Toontrack.

[mrdrums]

Well of course, it is for people who DONT play piano, that doesnt mean it’s for people who dont know anything about piano.

If you played in a band with real musicians long enough, you would understand just how silly this software is. For example, try doing a cover song with it, any song where the piano is at least a decent part of the song. What will happen is the piano will be generic and it wont support the melody of the cover the way it was recorded, but it will SOUND ok, it wont HURT the cover, but it wont be the right performance of it.

What’s happening when you do originals is, nobody knows your song, and so you could pretend
that THAT is how the piano for your song goes, and nobody will be the wiser. It just wont sound like a great performance, but it will SOUND ok.

Drums is different, because it’s just rhythm, and you can edit fills and beats to precisely fit your song. With Piano, you are stuck with what is programmed. lets say you
have a riff playing on the guitar, and you would like the piano to do the same thing….Sorry Charlie, it wont, it will play a chord.

So you basicly have Piano in your mix, and it sounds well enough, but it stands out as not belonging to the arrangement. Remember music is not a bunch of instruments playing randomly, it;s all instruments playing to each other.

Cabice?

[Scott Eshleman]

@mrdrums said:
Drums is different, because it’s just rhythm, and you can edit fills and beats to precisely fit your song. With Piano, you are stuck with what is programmed. lets say you
have a riff playing on the guitar, and you would like the piano to do the same thing….Sorry Charlie, it wont, it will play a chord.
Cabice?

Oh, I think that I understand. You want EZKeys to play cover songs and to somehow(?) inherently know how to play the song.
It’s a virtual instrument just like EZDrummer. It will play any MIDI that you feed to it…step programmed, recorded or imported.
If you want the piano to play the same riff as the guitar, it can do that. You have only to give it the MIDI to do so.

Your rationale about the use and editing of MIDI drum grooves can just as easily be applied to the piano parts.
You are by no means “stuck with what is programmed“. It won’t play a chord unless programmed to play a chord.
It can and will play single note riffs, double-stops, octaves, sixths, etc. Legato, staccato, etc.
It’s only limitations are those imposed natively by the instrument sampled. (and some of those limitations can be ‘overridden’ by modern technologies)

If you want it to play Andrew Lloyd Webber or The Beatles, program them, step record them or find the MIDI for them.
I think that Toontrack will readily admit that (currently) their EZKeys MIDI pack libraries do not include MIDI for any specific songs
(unlike the EZDrummer MetalHeads expansion with 12 Meshuggah songs in MIDI format, performed by Tomas Haake).

I also think that once you understand the product for the compositional features and gorgeous sounds it offers, you’ll come to appreciate it for what it does.

[nigel smith]

maybe more instructive help or videos would be helpful lets have a building block learning curve based across all genres not just the metal community as championed by the guy with the beard . but then it becomes uneasy . like logic 9 . come on toontrack back it up . if you go down the road of belittling peoples computer skills re cut and paste you are the guys out of time . why throw your reputation away . a recent uk magazine guitarist poll said only 4 %had got into computer composing theres your market educate the masses not the current generation exclusively . i have had nigh on 30 years of looking in on this arena ,1986 midi /smpte . the minute you go computer nerdy you’ve lost and who are we kidding you can’t replace a real drummer so calm down and relax good luck

[mrdrums]

@gseshleman said:

@mrdrums said:
Drums is different, because it’s just rhythm, and you can edit fills and beats to precisely fit your song. With Piano, you are stuck with what is programmed. lets say you
have a riff playing on the guitar, and you would like the piano to do the same thing….Sorry Charlie, it wont, it will play a chord.
Cabice?

Oh, I think that I understand. You want EZKeys to play cover songs and to somehow(?) inherently know how to play the song.
It’s a virtual instrument just like EZDrummer. It will play any MIDI that you feed to it…step programmed, recorded or imported.
If you want the piano to play the same riff as the guitar, it can do that. You have only to give it the MIDI to do so.

Your rationale about the use and editing of MIDI drum grooves can just as easily be applied to the piano parts.
You are by no means “stuck with what is programmed“. It won’t play a chord unless programmed to play a chord.
It can and will play single note riffs, double-stops, octaves, sixths, etc. Legato, staccato, etc.
It’s only limitations are those imposed natively by the instrument sampled. (and some of those limitations can be ‘overridden’ by modern technologies)

If you want it to play Andrew Lloyd Webber or The Beatles, program them, step record them or find the MIDI for them.
I think that Toontrack will readily admit that (currently) their EZKeys MIDI pack libraries do not include MIDI for any specific songs
(unlike the EZDrummer MetalHeads expansion with 12 Meshuggah songs in MIDI format, performed by Tomas Haake).

I also think that once you understand the product for the compositional features and gorgeous sounds it offers, you’ll come to appreciate it for what it does.

Dr Mr Shill,
Purposely mis-identifying what was said, to make what WAS said seem silly, is not something that works. I mentioned cover songs, to demonstrate how mindless
and generic the parts played are. They are not intuitive, they are not original, they are basicly chords being played. What you fail to understand is that when you add ez keys to your song, you are adding sound to it, you are not adding performance to it, because it’s not playing anything specific.

If you play nothing but chords,sure, it wil fit, but it wont be interesting and it wont be commercial use. As I said, yes you could edit the piano parts, but that would requite hours and hours of time(it’s EZ keys) and also, you would at least have to have parts played to actually edit. You dont here, you have a piano playing chords, not a piano playing a song, playing runs, playing hammers, playing moving bass lines, playing melodies. If they had perhaps a hundred of such, one MIGHT be able to cut and edit and somehow piece it together, but if you wanted it to play hmm, let’s see, say a Billy Joel song, couldnt do that with ez keys, but its marketed as a COMPOSER software.

What in the hell is it composing? It’s playing chords to your melodies, that is all it’s doing. As far as expectations, the demos for it that were on the original site were purposely misleading. They had various artists songs up there to demo both the drums and keys. and they had songs that were clearly played by a real piano player, possibly just using the software as a module, but that is not the results you are going to get with it, when you buy the thing, you will hear generic part after generic part. To me that was false advertising. They also make sure to mention “songwriting” in every ad, that way they can say, well its for songwriters, not for producing music. Its a rip off, I want my money back

[mrdrums]

@nigel.smith said:

maybe more instructive help or videos would be helpful lets have a building block learning curve based across all genres not just the metal community as championed by the guy with the beard . but then it becomes uneasy . like logic 9 . come on toontrack back it up . if you go down the road of belittling peoples computer skills re cut and paste you are the guys out of time . why throw your reputation away . a recent uk magazine guitarist poll said only 4 %had got into computer composing theres your market educate the masses not the current generation exclusively . i have had nigh on 30 years of looking in on this arena ,1986 midi /smpte . the minute you go computer nerdy you’ve lost and who are we kidding you can’t replace a real drummer so calm down and relax good luck

I have no problems with using computerized parts in recordings, if I can get whats in my head into musical form, im good with that.

I can do that with drums, it will play what i want it to play, when I edit it. Keys will not, granted, it’s harder with musical notes and not just percussion.

but they charge a frikon lot of money for something Not really useable for a pro recording.

[Scott Eshleman]

@mrdrums said:

@nigel.smith said:

maybe more instructive help or videos would be helpful lets have a building block learning curve based across all genres not just the metal community as championed by the guy with the beard . but then it becomes uneasy . like logic 9 . come on toontrack back it up . if you go down the road of belittling peoples computer skills re cut and paste you are the guys out of time . why throw your reputation away . a recent uk magazine guitarist poll said only 4 %had got into computer composing theres your market educate the masses not the current generation exclusively . i have had nigh on 30 years of looking in on this arena ,1986 midi /smpte . the minute you go computer nerdy you’ve lost and who are we kidding you can’t replace a real drummer so calm down and relax good luck

I have no problems with using computerized parts in recordings, if I can get whats in my head into musical form, im good with that.

I can do that with drums, it will play what i want it to play, when I edit it. Keys will not, granted, it’s harder with musical notes and not just percussion.

but they charge a frikon lot of money for something Not really useable for a pro recording.

Opinions vary. As will results.
Please do not presume to think you know what I do or not understand.
I did my due diligence before laying down my money and got everything that I expected.
Nothing more. Nothing less.

And you know, I might even have agreed to some extent if EZKeys was used solely & only in standalone mode
but you contextualized your usage in terms of ‘editing’ and ‘pro recording’ – presumably in a host/DAW of some sort.

[Scott Eshleman]

@chris said:

Saw the previous EZKeys is Horrible thread.

Well for me its fantastic. If you are an accomplished pianist you don’t need EZKeys. I’m not. I’m a guitarist. This software has opened up a so far unachievable world for me. I think its stunning. I cannot play a keyboard, yet can now produce piano based songs. Here is an example written totally in EZKeys for an artist called Heather Merryn. Its been played on the BBC here in UK. You may not think its any good or like it, but for me this was just not possible until now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZudJCZf4tc&list=UUso4kb6MxXzrIVdW5ftYLUA

I’m not linked to Toontrack in any way other than a very happy customer.

Just one point minor point Toontrack. It looks like you used admin rights to lock out the ‘EZKeys is Horrible’ thread. No need to do that…. let your customers speak for themselves whatever the alternative views.

Cheers

Chris

Awesome, Chris!!! Friikon awesome!!!

[mrdrums]

@gseshleman said:

@mrdrums said:

@nigel.smith said:

maybe more instructive help or videos would be helpful lets have a building block learning curve based across all genres not just the metal community as championed by the guy with the beard . but then it becomes uneasy . like logic 9 . come on toontrack back it up . if you go down the road of belittling peoples computer skills re cut and paste you are the guys out of time . why throw your reputation away . a recent uk magazine guitarist poll said only 4 %had got into computer composing theres your market educate the masses not the current generation exclusively . i have had nigh on 30 years of looking in on this arena ,1986 midi /smpte . the minute you go computer nerdy you’ve lost and who are we kidding you can’t replace a real drummer so calm down and relax good luck

I have no problems with using computerized parts in recordings, if I can get whats in my head into musical form, im good with that.

I can do that with drums, it will play what i want it to play, when I edit it. Keys will not, granted, it’s harder with musical notes and not just percussion.

but they charge a frikon lot of money for something Not really useable for a pro recording.

Opinions vary. As will results.
Please do not presume to think you know what I do or not understand.
I did my due diligence before laying down my money and got everything that I expected.
Nothing more. Nothing less.

And you know, I might even have agreed to some extent if EZKeys was used solely & only in standalone mode
but you contextualized your usage in terms of ‘editing’ and ‘pro recording’ – presumably in a host/DAW of some sort.

Opinions will vary between non musicians, not amongst musicians.

Excuse me? You ask me to not presume what You know?

Wasnt it you who wrote to me? . “Oh, I think that I understand. You want EZKeys to play cover songs and to somehow(?) inherently know how to play the song.
It’s a virtual instrument just like EZDrummer. It will play any MIDI that you feed to it…step programmed, recorded or imported.
If you want the piano to play the same riff as the guitar, it can do that. You have only to give it the MIDI to do so. “

YOU presumed you knew what I understood.

Stop arguing simply because YOU think it;s good, it’s clearly not. Your points seem rediculous to anybody who knows how music is arranged.

if it’s worth anything it’s the sound module which I will have to play it myself, since it wont do that. And even the sound is not that great, there are free vst that sound better

What a freakin ripoff!

[Les Barker]

Just so i understand what the issue is for you, let’s say you want to add piano to a cover song, or add piano to your own song….

In a perfect world, what would you like TT or another developer to deliver? And no, I’m not saying EZkeys already does what you want it to do.

For example, are you wanting a product that can analyse data ( a song), and provide ideas of chords/melodies that could play/fit to such a song?

For me – and i am not after a response on whether the way i use it is useful or not, if I have a song ready and want to add piano, there wouldn’t be many midi files with EZkeys that would fit my song. However i have found at times a midi file that was interesting against my song, so i used it and edited it appropriately by way of changing chords and changing some of the melodic piano parts to suit my song. I would not have been able to think of something better as i don’t play piano. I needed inspiration (help) and have at times found it this way. I do the same thing with ezdrummer.

I also have resonated with some midi files that come with EZkeys or midi packs, and i cut and past, edit, turn upside down some midi files to get something i find pleasing and can go about adding guitars, bass and drums to. My piano skillset would never have allowed me to find this song that i have generated from multiple midi files across different midi packs. I do the same thing with EZdrummer.

What do i need? A load more Pop, Rock, Ballad midi packs! More opportunities and inspiration please!

[Author]

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