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[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

[mrdrums]

yes it’s Grand Piano. Just got it like two weeks ago, no dings or dents in it … lol

[mrdrums]

@Scott said:

Yes on the songwriting contest.

http://meltwater-fb-998362.strutta.com/?&ref=web_canvas

Yeah, Ez drummer 2 song contest. You would think that ONE requirement would be to use EZ DRUMMER 2 in the song, or at least
require the writer to OWN ezdrummer 2. No such thing mentioned.

So what will happen is since it’s worth 10 thousand, you’re going to get people entering tracks that are professionally produced, and arranged
which will destroy anything done at home.

Songwriting contests are never about the song, it;s always about the production and the performance, a real drummer and real piano player is
always going to outperform the software.

Silly.

[mrdrums]

@chris said:

Hi there,

There is a post on the EZkeys pre sales forum and I was supporting EZkeys in beng fantastic sofware for a guitar based musician who wants to use keyboards. Anyway, was trying to link a piano song I wrote and recorded with a singer call Heather Merryn. Without EZkeys this type of song for me would never have been possible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZudJCZf4tc

Thanks

Chris

Of course it wouldnt be possible, if you dont play, but that doesnt mean since its possible, it’s great.

Your song is pretty good, Singer is pretty good, but the piano part is simply reference. Im not being mean, im being real. First of all it reminds one too much
of adelle, that riff which is in the ez keys is featured in the “Ballad” section. And no melodies or riffs in between vocals, the song is set up for there to be “parts” between the lines, but you dont have any. The verse melody sounds like Dido’s thank you

I also think your “first blood ” hook line is too similar to the rest, it’s a nice hook but it doesnt jump out enough because it’s the same rhythm.

It’s a fine reference demo, but not kicking enough to be THE recording. now that you have a good working recording of it, you can upgrade it

[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.

[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]

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.

[mrdrums]

@gseshleman said:

@mrdrums said:

@nigel.smith said:

maybe more instructive help or videos would be helpful lets have a building block learning curve based across all genres not just the metal community as championed by the guy with the beard . but then it becomes uneasy . like logic 9 . come on toontrack back it up . if you go down the road of belittling peoples computer skills re cut and paste you are the guys out of time . why throw your reputation away . a recent uk magazine guitarist poll said only 4 %had got into computer composing theres your market educate the masses not the current generation exclusively . i have had nigh on 30 years of looking in on this arena ,1986 midi /smpte . the minute you go computer nerdy you’ve lost and who are we kidding you can’t replace a real drummer so calm down and relax good luck

I have no problems with using computerized parts in recordings, if I can get whats in my head into musical form, im good with that.

I can do that with drums, it will play what i want it to play, when I edit it. Keys will not, granted, it’s harder with musical notes and not just percussion.

but they charge a frikon lot of money for something Not really useable for a pro recording.

Opinions vary. As will results.
Please do not presume to think you know what I do or not understand.
I did my due diligence before laying down my money and got everything that I expected.
Nothing more. Nothing less.

And you know, I might even have agreed to some extent if EZKeys was used solely & only in standalone mode
but you contextualized your usage in terms of ‘editing’ and ‘pro recording’ – presumably in a host/DAW of some sort.

Opinions will vary between non musicians, not amongst musicians.

Excuse me? You ask me to not presume what You know?

Wasnt it you who wrote to me? . “Oh, I think that I understand. You want EZKeys to play cover songs and to somehow(?) inherently know how to play the song.
It’s a virtual instrument just like EZDrummer. It will play any MIDI that you feed to it…step programmed, recorded or imported.
If you want the piano to play the same riff as the guitar, it can do that. You have only to give it the MIDI to do so. “

YOU presumed you knew what I understood.

Stop arguing simply because YOU think it;s good, it’s clearly not. Your points seem rediculous to anybody who knows how music is arranged.

if it’s worth anything it’s the sound module which I will have to play it myself, since it wont do that. And even the sound is not that great, there are free vst that sound better

What a freakin ripoff!

[mrdrums]

@nigel.smith said:

maybe more instructive help or videos would be helpful lets have a building block learning curve based across all genres not just the metal community as championed by the guy with the beard . but then it becomes uneasy . like logic 9 . come on toontrack back it up . if you go down the road of belittling peoples computer skills re cut and paste you are the guys out of time . why throw your reputation away . a recent uk magazine guitarist poll said only 4 %had got into computer composing theres your market educate the masses not the current generation exclusively . i have had nigh on 30 years of looking in on this arena ,1986 midi /smpte . the minute you go computer nerdy you’ve lost and who are we kidding you can’t replace a real drummer so calm down and relax good luck

I have no problems with using computerized parts in recordings, if I can get whats in my head into musical form, im good with that.

I can do that with drums, it will play what i want it to play, when I edit it. Keys will not, granted, it’s harder with musical notes and not just percussion.

but they charge a frikon lot of money for something Not really useable for a pro recording.

[mrdrums]

@gseshleman said:

@mrdrums said:
Drums is different, because it’s just rhythm, and you can edit fills and beats to precisely fit your song. With Piano, you are stuck with what is programmed. lets say you
have a riff playing on the guitar, and you would like the piano to do the same thing….Sorry Charlie, it wont, it will play a chord.
Cabice?

Oh, I think that I understand. You want EZKeys to play cover songs and to somehow(?) inherently know how to play the song.
It’s a virtual instrument just like EZDrummer. It will play any MIDI that you feed to it…step programmed, recorded or imported.
If you want the piano to play the same riff as the guitar, it can do that. You have only to give it the MIDI to do so.

Your rationale about the use and editing of MIDI drum grooves can just as easily be applied to the piano parts.
You are by no means “stuck with what is programmed“. It won’t play a chord unless programmed to play a chord.
It can and will play single note riffs, double-stops, octaves, sixths, etc. Legato, staccato, etc.
It’s only limitations are those imposed natively by the instrument sampled. (and some of those limitations can be ‘overridden’ by modern technologies)

If you want it to play Andrew Lloyd Webber or The Beatles, program them, step record them or find the MIDI for them.
I think that Toontrack will readily admit that (currently) their EZKeys MIDI pack libraries do not include MIDI for any specific songs
(unlike the EZDrummer MetalHeads expansion with 12 Meshuggah songs in MIDI format, performed by Tomas Haake).

I also think that once you understand the product for the compositional features and gorgeous sounds it offers, you’ll come to appreciate it for what it does.

Dr Mr Shill,
Purposely mis-identifying what was said, to make what WAS said seem silly, is not something that works. I mentioned cover songs, to demonstrate how mindless
and generic the parts played are. They are not intuitive, they are not original, they are basicly chords being played. What you fail to understand is that when you add ez keys to your song, you are adding sound to it, you are not adding performance to it, because it’s not playing anything specific.

If you play nothing but chords,sure, it wil fit, but it wont be interesting and it wont be commercial use. As I said, yes you could edit the piano parts, but that would requite hours and hours of time(it’s EZ keys) and also, you would at least have to have parts played to actually edit. You dont here, you have a piano playing chords, not a piano playing a song, playing runs, playing hammers, playing moving bass lines, playing melodies. If they had perhaps a hundred of such, one MIGHT be able to cut and edit and somehow piece it together, but if you wanted it to play hmm, let’s see, say a Billy Joel song, couldnt do that with ez keys, but its marketed as a COMPOSER software.

What in the hell is it composing? It’s playing chords to your melodies, that is all it’s doing. As far as expectations, the demos for it that were on the original site were purposely misleading. They had various artists songs up there to demo both the drums and keys. and they had songs that were clearly played by a real piano player, possibly just using the software as a module, but that is not the results you are going to get with it, when you buy the thing, you will hear generic part after generic part. To me that was false advertising. They also make sure to mention “songwriting” in every ad, that way they can say, well its for songwriters, not for producing music. Its a rip off, I want my money back

[mrdrums]

Well of course, it is for people who DONT play piano, that doesnt mean it’s for people who dont know anything about piano.

If you played in a band with real musicians long enough, you would understand just how silly this software is. For example, try doing a cover song with it, any song where the piano is at least a decent part of the song. What will happen is the piano will be generic and it wont support the melody of the cover the way it was recorded, but it will SOUND ok, it wont HURT the cover, but it wont be the right performance of it.

What’s happening when you do originals is, nobody knows your song, and so you could pretend
that THAT is how the piano for your song goes, and nobody will be the wiser. It just wont sound like a great performance, but it will SOUND ok.

Drums is different, because it’s just rhythm, and you can edit fills and beats to precisely fit your song. With Piano, you are stuck with what is programmed. lets say you
have a riff playing on the guitar, and you would like the piano to do the same thing….Sorry Charlie, it wont, it will play a chord.

So you basicly have Piano in your mix, and it sounds well enough, but it stands out as not belonging to the arrangement. Remember music is not a bunch of instruments playing randomly, it;s all instruments playing to each other.

Cabice?

[mrdrums]

Musicians would know

[mrdrums]

Its a dick thing to sell me software that is not usable. I dont think im trolling, Do trolls buy products for 179 dollars? no they bash it without even buying it

Im not happy with spending this amount for something I cant use.

You demos sound pretty good, but the piano is kind of just there, helps fill in the sound, but doesnt add much to the performance

Thanks for sharing

[mrdrums]

The style is irrelevant, If you dont know what i mean, i kind of doubt you are making professional recordings, or even decent home recordings,
do you have demos?

[mrdrums]

That I didnt know, but still, it’s all chords. I can sit there with a midi controller and punch in chords with one hand, and accomplish the same thing, plus I can groove it anyway I want to. What piano player do you know plays all chords to a song, and nothing else? Where is the tickling, where are the hammers, and the melodies, you know the single notes, not just chords?

[Author]

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