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[David George]

Thanks–this is very helpful. When I go in there later today I’ll check this out. I often use three different snares blended together in varying %’s.

You and I have discussed this sort of thing before: I believe that you cannot, for example, add something to the studio kit from another kit (like, say, vibraslap).

Good luck moving!

[David George]

Thanks. So if I’m understanding this I can use, say, a Hip-Hop snare in the #1 Hits EZX?

I have always wished I could create custom kits that incorporated elements from different EZX’s: This seems like the way you can.

The reason I always run three instances is that I use a lot of percussion. So the main drum part may be playing on the Studio (default) EZX kit, but just the percussion may be playing on the Reggae EZX kit.

[David George]

@onewayout_1 said:
There are endless possibilities here with EZd2….I will also use more than one instance…BUT with NUMBER#1 hits you can stack many different instruments in there, it has at least THREE KIKS & THREE SNARES PLUS percussion and FX pads that let you access lots of other goodies from your other EZXs. For example I use the drum machine stuff and add in the organic stuff in underneath…I can even build an organic kit in number#1 hits and add my electronic kit underneath….

I have toyed withe idea of getting #1 hits.

In currently have the Hip-Hop, Latin Percussion, and Reggae EZXs.

I usually run three instances of EZD and have different kits playing different parts (I assign to individual tracks in Pro Tools).

I’m really comfortable with this workflow and am a little put off by the #1 Hits interface (I used an Alesis SR15 years ago and have an SR16 now that I never use).

How well does the #1 Hits behave with other EZX’s?

[David George]

In EXD2 use multiple instances extensively to get variations: That’s one of my favorite features.

[David George]

Actually, one aspect that I almost always change in EZD2 is the velocity (I turn it down quite a bit).

[David George]

I do exactly the same thing: I may preview a block in Song Creator but then find it in the browser where I have the velocity pretty much always set much lower than 100%.

Thanks.

[David George]

Yes, it’s from the Hip-Hop EZX. And according to the Toontrack Product Manager interface “All installed products are up to date.”

It happened with another clip recently; I think that was from “The Classic” MIDI.

It’s not a huge concern as long as I pay close attention when dragging into PT. It’s just weird when it happens. Luckily I’m pretty OCD when it comes to checking everything.

Thanks for weighing in.

[David George]

Thanks, John. It only happens with certain clips and always happens with those clips.

[David George]

One thing I noted is that with the version of the bell I previously used, when you add it in edit mode the first choice is one hit. With this other bell, the first choice in the same pattern is 5 hits. This is the same issue I run into with the vibraslap, which (bizarrely I think) adds 1 hit for each bar in a groove (so with an 8-bar groove you get 8 vibraslap hits, which I feel would never be done in the real world).

I’ll manage it by adding 5 and clearing four of them in the MIDI editor in my DAW.

[David George]

Thanks so much, Brad. I can’t believe I missed that.

This the perfect solution.

Edit: That’s one thing I sometimes have trouble with: knowing which channel a specific piece is assigned to.

[David George]

Thanks for the suggestions. I understood your point and the math. I just tried it with an 8-bar groove in the Hip-Hop EZX and the lowest number you can get is 8. That’s what I think is weird. I work with a lot of different percussion pieces and with (I think) everything else I’ve used it starts with 1. I guess I’ll do it the way I’ve been doing it: add 8 and remove 7 in the MIDI file in my DAW (Pro Tools). I can move it wherever I want it.

[David George]

I will try it out again, but whenever I’ve worked in 8 bar grooves the first (lowest) number you could add has always been 8. This was in Hip-Hop and Reggae EZXs.

[David George]

Thanks, John–don’t want to waste your time. For some reason it seems like that instance of the plugin was misbehaving, but it seems resolved now. Thanks.

[David George]

Thanks, John.
Any idea as to why this situation of drums being muted happens? I reopened the same template, which I had not resaved with the original name: Until I deleted and reloaded the plugin it was the same situation (only kick).

[David George]

Scott,
Thanks for replying. I just resolved this in the last few minutes and came back here to update again. In the mixer, everything is set to 1 for now (once I get deeply into a project I assign individual tracks, but not till the drum parts are all final).

I rebooted and that had no effect. What was really weird was that even when I shut down Pro Tools and opened the standalone, the problem was still there.

Finally I reopened the project in Pro Tools (nothing from EZD2 has been dragged over yet: I’m just going through the plugin interface in PT). I deleted the insert for the plug-in and then reinserted and everything was fine.

It’s really weird because I’ve used the same PT template for several projects and it has Studio Blues loaded as my default. Also weird was that when the problem was still going on I reopened a PT files I finished mixing yesterday: I was very worried that all the drums would be messed up because of this. But that wasn’t the case: the Studio Blues kit played fine. I closed that file and reopened the template file and no go: all I had was kick.

After that I deleted and reinserted the plugin and it was fine.

For the record, can you tell me this: If you do choose the “Restore Factory MIDI database,” am I correct in assuming that you lose your presets? I have several custom kits and lots of MIDI data saved in the User MIDI section. I am assuming that if I did have to do this kind of factory restore, I could restore my presets from a backup of my Toontrack folder, right? (I am obsessive about backups and have two backups of everything on other drives.)

dg

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