EZKeys – The good, bad and ugly

[David Pefley]

Hi,
I got EZKeys just a few days ago. I can’t play keys and do like to write songs. So this tool is wonderful in that regard. To me though I find both good and bad in the product. The good includes the fact you folks made an awesome program that does things probably none other to date has. The ability to apply playing styles to midi and the simple way in which chord sequences can be assembled is great. This leads me to state that the guts or engine of the program appears both sound and strong.

Yet in working with the program for even a short period of time revealed many issues with the UI or User Interface. It is quirky and lacks standard Windows conventions. I spent a couple decades in IT Management and that field. It has probably been over 20 years and after having seen thousands of programs in that time that I have run into an application that does not support standard Windows navigation or common keyboard shortcuts. Specifically I am talking about Ctrl + C = COPY and Ctrl + V = PASTE. In this area something does not add up. You folks spent considerable time and money developing the core of the program and or engine. Yet when it comes to simple stuff like copy and paste you dropped the ball. The only thing I can think of is that the core development took too long and once that was done the UI got pushed aside and we end up with no keyboard shortcuts for copy/paste operations. Instead we get a click to a menu tree and more clicks to do something very simple in Windows. Why? This is cumbersome and a time waster.

In addition I may have missed it. But could you not store the existing MIDI information contained in the chord construction window into memory or a small file behind the scenes upon invoking the “commit” button that converts midi to a playing style permanently? If this were done you could simply provide a button allowing the user to de-commit the changes and go back to the raw midi data. This would be a nice time saver.

Thanks for hearing me out and I will be back with more “findings” as I run into them. I am very much looking forward to an update that addresses some or all the above.
D

Topic

[Olof Westman]

> I have run into an application that does not support standard Windows navigation or common keyboard shortcuts.

It is a plug-in. The host usually eats those keyboard events.

Olof Westman - Toontrack
Coder

[Henrik]

As Olof said, the main issue is that EZkeys is designed to work as a plugin in a host, which will take over shortcut keys. We know about this shortcoming, and we are constantly trying to make our software work as smooth as possible for our users. I can’t, however, say what we will do in the future.
You can ctrl + drag (alt + drag on Mac) to copy a block on the song track, which will enhance the work flow.

Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
Toontrack

[David Pefley]

Ok,
This is interesting in that I was running the module as a VST Plugin. So are you telling me that the host (Reaper in this case) facilitates the basic Windows commands and does it for your application? If that is the case then it is not functioning on my end. Or do mean use a couple tracks on the DAW to cut and paste midi back and forth between the plug and the DAW tracks? if that is the case I was already thinking of doing just that.

Thanks for your quick response,
D

[Henrik]

The host takes over the basic key commands (ctrl + c, ctrl + v, ctrl + z). If you, for example, press ctrl + z when using EZkeys in Cubase – the undo event will be fired in Cubase, and alot of times the last thing you did was to add EZkeys to the track. The result will be that EZkeys disappears from Cubase – which isn’t what the user would expect. These shortcomings apply on all plugins that runs in DAW:s (Cubase, Logic, Pro Tools etc).

Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
Toontrack

[Author]

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