[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.

[Author]

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