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[David George]

Thanks, Henrik–makes sense. One more thought: Is there a way of determining whether there are no instruments playing a particular MIDI note? It’s easy to see what’s going on with regular kits. But, for example, I use the Latin Percussion and Hip Hop EZX sets, both of which have a ton of instruments. I may take a pattern from a different library and play that on one of those kits. Sometimes I’m not sure.

[David George]

@dg27 said:
Thanks–that definitely seems much more up my alley: I prefer the kit GUI rather than the drum machine GUI and I am a bigger lover of percussion and soul grooves. Thanks for all your help!  

Kudos to you, onewayout_1! I got the Hip Hop EZX and love it! I’ve been mixing it up quite a bit. Thanks so much for the recommendation!

[David George]

Thanks! This is as suspected. I purposely set up a very sparse set and figured these MIDI notes were being sent to unassigned instruments. I’m very familiar with editing play style, etc., since I do this all the time, generally to add something like shakers or tambourine.

If you want to remove, or move the hits that are played on a certain instrument, in Edit Play Style you can right click the instrument and choose “Remove” from the menu. Did this make it more clear? 🙂  

What I’ll have to play around with later today is the part about moving hits. I guess in this case the pattern calls for the cymbal that’s grayed out, but it’s being played on the cymbal that’s active, right? That is exactly what I’d want to happen. OR, is it actually playing the grayed out one? If that’s the case then I want to move it.

Thanks for your help!

[David George]

I agree with Ibex. And keep in mind that some hits when a drummer is going across the kit are more or less “passing tones”: The velocity of those won’t be nearly as high as say, on the snare.

And you might want to have a look at any of the EZD patterns in the MIDI editor view: You will see that they are all over the map.

I would not get caught up in the velocity numbers too much: Use your ears.

[David George]

Thanks, juicy.

What threw me was that it shares a channel with Phase and I didn’t realize till I soloed Phase in PT what it actually does. In this context it doesn’t add anything useful (just noise, which in this case I don’t want), but at least I know it’s there.

[David George]

Thanks. What’s it used for? Is it just displaying overall distortion? Not clear on the purpose. I looked again and there is nothing in the manual.

[David George]

Wow, John. Thanks so much. It’s such a simple solution, but never occurred to me.

[David George]

Thanks–that definitely seems much more up my alley: I prefer the kit GUI rather than the drum machine GUI and I am a bigger lover of percussion and soul grooves. Thanks for all your help!

[David George]

Thanks, onewayout_1. I guess I’ll have to look into the hits EZX.

[David George]

Thanks for clarifying, John. Now I just have to remember how I created the kit preset!

onewayout_1: Can you clarify what you mean here?

@onewayout_1 said:
But like number#1 hits kit can and so can hip hop kit and the electronic kit… Cool thing about Number#1 hits is you can also add 2 or more snares using other acoustic kits too to layer them!  

Do you mean layer on separate tracks?

[David George]

Thanks, juicy and onewayout1 for your replies. It’s funny you posted Graham’s video: I’m a regular @ RR but missed this (I wasn’t an EZ user at the time).

Having more than one instance is great!

[David George]

Oh wow–I didn’t realize that you can change the instruments clip by clip (different ride or kick, etc.)–will have to try that. Thanks so much for pointing this out.

Related question: I don’t think this is possible, but I’ll ask anyway.

So let’s say I have my basic kick on one track in the DAW (I use Pro Tools).

Can I set up a second track to have a different instance of EZD2 to layer on percussion?

[David George]

I have another post about this (workflow best practices).

What I’ve been doing is creating tracks in EZD2 (in the song track) when Pro Tools is open then dragging them clip by clip into the Pro Tools track. That way you avoid having one continuous track and it’s much easier to replace sections if need be.

If I created something in standalone, then I open Pro Tools, open the EZD plugin from PT, then open EZD the project and drag them into PT.

I set up markers in Pro Tools before I drag anything in (like intro, v1, v2, chorus, etc.) and drag the markers into position when I drag a clip in.

This has worked for me so far.

[David George]

Funny that your reaction to the Reggae Midi and EZX is identical to mine: woefully incomplete. I was very disappointed in both. The midi lacks even basic more common reggae grooves. I’m able to use it, but think it could’ve been a lot better. I do like having the reggae sounds though and put together a custom reggae kit I like.

I bought a 6 midi pack and haven’t delved into all of yet. I do like the Backbeats, Bues, and Ballads though. I added in American and Basic Rock 1 and 2; haven’t checked those out yet.

[David George]

Thanks so much, Scott. This was driving me a little batty.

[Author]

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