EZKeys is Horrible – No It’s Fantastic

[chris page]

Saw the previous EZKeys is Horrible thread. Well for me...

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

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

[mrdrums]

stop talking about cover songs, you guys are so dense. The point is you CANT do a cover song with ez keys, you might do ok with Adelles song, which they steal the entire bit from her song, but for most songs, the software plays chords. The reason YOU think it sounds ok in YOUR songs, is because there is no reference point for YOUR songs, you take a pattern, throw it in the mix, and you feel like you have piano in your song. You have piano, but the piano doesnt do anything.

Your own song should be as detailed as a cover song, but you are beleiving that your song sounds great with generic piano parts in it.

Perhaps you might understand it this way. If you were recording guitar, and somebody plays some acoustic guitar for your song, would you feel like paying for their playing if all they do is strum the chord 1,2,3,4 you would say, well gee, I can do that myself, dont you do any riffs? Or any fingerpicking? Or bends, hammers….

What I would like is for the software to be able to do is the same as drums. The drums have beats, and fills, the fills are what makes the track interesting, not the beat.

Same thing, the piano should have fills, runs, riffs, you could drag them in to the rest for 2 measures or 4 measures.

That is what I thought I was getting, What I got was similar to getting drums but without any fills.

[Les Barker]

The Cover songs was only a small part of my question, as it was something you brought up. I am not saying you ARE an idiot, but you are being an idiot in the way you talk down in your responses. Maybe it get’s in the way of how you can use ezkeys?

i think what you would like is something more like George Duke Soul Treasures, in the way it sets it samples out, but yes, that isn’t a piano. Fair enough too, it’s a good program. I personally didn’t have the expectations i was getting that.

Dense? i wasn’t the one who bought something without knowing what I was getting…

See ya.

[mrdrums]

You’re right. It was my fault for trusting the toontrack brand, for believing the overhyped videos, the songs they had on their site pretending to be done with ez keys.

I was also wrong believing morons like you who dont understand how music is arranged and produced.

It’s a mistake I wont make again, and will do what i can to prevent others from doing it. Ill be making a yotube video showing how madly it sucks, I will be visiting every site where it;s sold and saying it sucks, and facebook, anywhere, I dont want anybody buying this again.

[mrdrums]

@mrdrums said:

You’re right. It was my fault for trusting the toontrack brand, for believing the overhyped videos, the songs they had on their site pretending to be done with ez keys.

I was also wrong believing morons like you who dont understand how music is arranged and produced.

It’s a mistake I wont make again, and will do what i can to prevent others from doing it. Ill be making a youtube video showing how badly it sucks, I will be visiting every site where it;s sold and saying it sucks, and facebook, anywhere, I dont want anybody buying this again.

[Les Barker]

@mrdrums said:

I was also wrong believing morons like you who dont understand how music is arranged and produced.

.

hehe..yeah, alright.

Good luck with your music!

[Dave Modisette]

I’m finishing up on a CD project for a solo artist and EZkeys has helped me through the process. The client had budget we needed to stay within so hiring musicians had to have a strategy and I chose EZkeys to stay within the budget by allowing it to do what it does.

I am a bassist first, a guitarist second and I can one hand or one finger a piano part till I get something down. What is cool is that I could do a very rudimentary piano part and then use EZkeys to stylize it a bit by using the USE BROWSER MIDI button. I would edit the midi in Pro Tools 11 if something could be improved or needed fixing. Cool thing is that when I managed to muddle through a particular comping rhythm with my one handed technique in a key I could manage, I could save that keyboard riff into the browser and use it to stylize whole note chord patterns in keys I couldn’t manage.

As I’ve stated, I’m not a real keyboardist but I know music theory and I’ve been a paid professional music arranger for the USAF band so I will admit that I had a bit of a “leg up” in this process. So, EZkeys is not expected to work miracles for me but give me more of a keyboardist’s perspective in the production process.

Bottom line, my client still doesn’t know that I didn’t play in any of the best parts and he’s even complimented the keyboard tracks on several of the songs.

I’m not “telling” him anything different.

EDIT:

Furthermore I would suggest that we all use this forum to suggest improvements for EZkeys. I, for one, would like to see more keyboard grooves where the chords where stretched out for longer periods of time like 2 bars or 4 bars. I would also like to see variations of this with slightly different fill notes or passing tones for different verses.

An EDIT PLAY STYLE feature similar to the EZdrummer 2 would be awesome.

Dave Modisette www.gatortraks.com www.plasticsamerica.com http://www.gatortraks.com/forum

[mrdrums]

The issue is NOT if somebody knows you played it or didn’t. That’s no different, than anyone knowing you are playing a beat on drums or using the software.

The issue is you are getting stale generic parts to use in you original music. Your client is not going to say “hey hey now, you are not playing piano”
They will just know a better arrangement when they hear it. Sounding good doesn’t mean musically good.

Im using it for sketch demos and that’s about it. It sounds okish

[William Kitchens]

I use the product much the way a I might hire a session player. I give EZ keys the chart and then “produce” the session.

The player I hire is going to have certain “chops”. EZ keys is simply a pianist or a collective group of pianists with chop.

It has it’s place in production and if used properly will produce incredible results. Great songs and productions will rise to the top.

If the EZ keys Library and add on’s don’t have what you’re looking for there are 1000’s upon 1000’s of piano midi files that exist that can be pulled into the program! Simply manipulated those to create the result your’re looking for!

There are already third party options for importing new midi styles into the program. The pallet of styles can actually be as large as your wish.

I understand there is argument that music is getting too “EZ” to make. The song is still king IMO and EZ Keys is just a tool to help bring ideas into focus.

[melkior13]

Wow I can’t believe some people are harping on this so badly. It is 100% meeting my expectations.
I can play passable keys to enter parts and I am adept at editing MIDI. Simple pad keyboard parts – I can do those myself either by playing or by editing. Even some other stuff as well.
What I can’t do by myself is more sophisticated jazz/latin piano comping that a real pianist would do. This does a great job of pulling that off. Now will I keep these as the final versions? Maybe, maybe not. I could get someone to do a more refined MIDI performance to replace the basic idea here.
Or I could use it as is – depends. If keys are the focus of the song then it can be hard to let this drive everything.

For me the chord change tool on the song element is fantastic! Brilliant! I can start with a pattern, change a chord or two. I can edit parts of patterns together, etc. etc. I can use this to refine ideas and match up my intended harmonic progressions.

That being said, I also export the song MIDI and then can edit it in further detail.

I also got the funk library – which is interesting but I don’t think I’d use the riffs as is, but maybe as inspiration. But then again, that’s what this whole thing is for.
I also got it for the Mellotron library – I had sampletron before but that is no longer 64-bit compatible.

So far I find this far more effective and easy to use than things I’ve used for horn sections. Those didn’t really allow exporting the resulting MIDI data – I think that feature is essential.

[Adam]

I purchased ezkeys awhile back now and never brought any packs for it or really used it to its full potential!

Now if your a composer sometimes you just need some inspiration to get your idea started… this is what happened in my latest track. I really wanted some nice piano in this track and my piano skills are shockingly BAD! I can play some chords but can not for the life of me string something together for the vibe i wanted…. this is where ezkeys helped! I found a progression I liked and looked at what i could do with it!

Considering I have really now only just skimmed the surface I can see how this helps immensely. The fact they even have suggestions for chords that are all completely changeable is fantastic… oh and once i have sorted out my chords I drag the desired midi into my DAW so if I don’t like some of the short notes I can edit them or move them or just delete them.. simple! perhaps add some too XP
Also I managed to get some real depth out of the keys simply by adjusting the velocity in the piano roll…. and shh… adding another virtual piano (thanks NI) over the top! welcome to layers!

Now about the time it takes to edit the midi… hmmm well the entire song so far has taken 7 hours and its still not finished to a standard that i would be happy to release! i would say probably about half an hour to an hour purely just on the piano midi as its the main instrument in the track and all the others follow that. Editing the midi is what composers/producers do all the time with virtual instruments why should easy keys be any different than ezdrummer.. if the part doesn’t quite fit you edit the drums select a different kit and edit the midi!!

To me you have to use the tools in front of you, and Toontrack does not miss sell this product… I could use it to write an entire song… oh wait i just did! Yes i had to edit the midi, add some drums, guitar and other sounds but thats the idea, its a composition aid not a free song creator so you don’t have to do anything, as for cover song why cant you…. its a virtual instrument, feed it the midi file — although i don’t see why you would want too, where’s the originality!!!

As for the sound of ezkeys… for the price its just fine – great even just for the chord suggestion!, perhaps invest in some other high end piano… try ££££’s instead and then complain about how they don’t quite sound like the real thing…. that’s why its a virtual instrument.

Overall opinion: a well priced virtual instrument which has some powerful features and is still simple… sorry ‘ez’ to use

[Brian Dowding]

Voltaire stated no argument can resolve unless all the terms are clearly defined and agreed upon.

1) The term “COMPOSING” is thrown around, speaking to EZKeys being marketed as a ‘composing software’ tool. This is exactly what it is,

“Composing” is creating a new piece of music. This is a tool fundamentally designed to help you write a new piece of music.

It isn’t marketed as a “Performance” tool. It isn’t marketed as a “band-in-a-box” or as “backing tracks companion” for your songs or for cover songs. At the heart, it is a “COMPOSING TOOL”.

You have great sounding VST’s for it to run on, a wealth of MIDI in various styles to call upon (assuming you got a lot of MIDI Packs, or at least the ones in the styles you intend to compose in), and you have a theory assistant – all rolled up into an interface that is easy to understand and use. You can import MIDI, call from various clips of library MIDI, dig down into the 64th note level to add new changes manually – pretty much do EVERYTHING but the core melody, though you can work with pre-existing melody from the Library. Whatever you pull from the library, you can time shift, pitch shift, key change, change individual chords, add chords – and any melodic work within the library MIDI makes the transition elegantly every time as well. And those MIDI libraries are played by real people – very well – just as real people played the MIDI libraries used in EZDrummer/Superior Drummer MIDI packs.

WAY more than enough to COMPOSE a song. When I was a kid, my guitar was my composing tool – and it cost a hell of a lot more than EZKeys, yet I didn’t expect it to write and play for me. EZKeys gives you many more tools and sources of inspiration to play with in addition to the imagination you start with.

If you are fluent with a PC and a DAW, you can export that into a MIDI track, and edit to your hearts content. If you know what you are doing you can pencil in whatever corrections, adjustments, melodies, etc you want on a track that is already 99% of the way there. You can still use EZKeys as the instrument for that MIDI track, and it will sound good enough for a Pro recording.

So I hope that sets the table to what I see as a “Composing Software” is. It’s job is to help you write songs. Not play them live, or in the studio. Yet this software goes beyond and can do that also, if in the right hands.

I don’t subscribe to the “make a song around what you find” theory mentioned a few times here, though there is nothing invalid about that approach. I’ve had no problems working EZKeys to fulfill parts previous complete in my mind. I start with the rhythm figures of a section and find performances that match the rhythm and energy first, then editing them to the correct key and chords, the manually edit in the missing details and/or corrections. The library is vast, but if you are familiar, it isn’t a long time to find what you need or know what you need isn’t there. Once in a while you just got to play.

2) The term “Musician” gets thrown around in contrast to “non-musician” a lot in this thread in negative ways by one person.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EqY-JuEvpE

Bill Evans : Jazz Pianist on “The Creative Process and Self-Teaching” (linked above) begins with a powerful statement regarding his belief that everyone has a Universal Musical Mind observable in that music itself is a universal language and he states:

“I do not agree that the layman’s opinion is less of a valid judgement of music than that of the professional musician.
In fact, I would often rely more on the judgement of a sensitive layman than that of a professional since the professional, because of his constant involvement with the mechanics of music, must fight to preserve the naivety that the layman already possesses.”

This is an important idea. Very many who study music assume that their ability to appreciate it is superior somehow, and this is, of course, untrue. Even at St. FXU, where I did my BA MUS in Jazz Performance there was a running joke “What is the difference between a College Diploma and a University Degree? The size of the ego you graduate with”.

I am a 40 year old musician with credentials longer than anyone wants to read about and I can certainly say that no one speaks for “musicians” when they are saying negative unfounded things about the results of the performances one can yield from EZKeys.

If it takes you hours to get the result you want, or you find it to hard to use in concert with other tools, then you need practice. Making it perform in the arena of performance – which is past the point of its advertised function – is possible if you know how, and knowing how is a learning curve that takes practice and patience. There is no magic “so EZ it reads my mind and works magic” software.

3) To the point of Toontrack having been accused of bad customer service/relations. I also had one bad step in the beginning – but it was taken seriously quickly and resolved very amicably. I had spoken for over an hour to the man himself and have spent thousands with them since. Almost $4000 CAD, to be exact.

4) To the point some make that it isn’t cool or rock and roll to be techy or computer savvy… It’s 2017 – it is very sexy to be a nerd today. In fact, it is simply dangerous not to be. If you are not, hopefully the insurance companies of the world will look after whatever may happen to you, your identity, accounts, etc – but from my perspective – you also need that ability to truly be in control of your tone. As an engineer, what could matter more? I’ve re-written LAME without Upper filters, lower filters, AHT, or working bit reservoir so that the mp3’s it generates are CBR and as lossless as possible without breaking compliance. I can’t tell them apart in blind testing from FLAC, but I get 5:1 instead of 2:1 compression. Since 2003. To me, spicing up an EZKey’s MIDI track is easy. Wishing for easier starts to sound a lot like entitled whining for instant gratification without effort of any kind. Just my opinion.

I wholly recommend EZKeys to anyone.

[gfbentz]

The issue with me is EZKeys DOES NOT WORK AT ALL. It hasent been updated in years and is obviously an abandoned project that Toontrack unethically continues to sell and publish expansions for. But if you have a modern computer or DAW, it’s a brick.

[gfbentz]

Adam, To0ntrack employee? It doesn’t sound like you are using the same software as me.

• This post was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by gfbentz.

[John]

gfbentz wrote:

The issue with me is EZKeys DOES NOT WORK AT ALL. It hasent been updated in years and is obviously an abandoned project that Toontrack unethically continues to sell and publish expansions for. But if you have a modern computer or DAW, it’s a brick.

Hi,

this is a pre-sales part of the Forum, so I’d rather you started a Topic in the Help section to get you up and running, alternatively that you open a Ticket with Toontrack Support.

To clarify, though: the latest update for EZkeys software and core MIDI was in March this year (2022).

BR,
John

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[Oscar Stern]

EZ Keys 2 (the updated version of EZ Keys) is always amazing because the sounds are recorded w/ Real Instruments to get a more Authentic Sound. It took years to come up w/ VSTI expansions that sound like their Real counterparts.

[Author]

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