[Will]

Oh, I totally agree that we don’t need another DAW *like those ones*. But I would argue that the *user experiences* of the DAW’s you mentioned are actually very similar: several “integrated” panels of distracting knobs/buttons/sliders/menus/icons all performing separate functions of dubious immediate value, too many options (which leads to decision paralysis), so many mental models of different tasks that unless you use it several hours a day for multiple weeks you are often asking yourself, “Wait, how do I do this again?” All these aspects make the current DAW’s hard to use as creative tools. Toontrack knows this. Check out their track record of innovation:

EZDrummer (plenty of other drum sample packages around at the time, but none were as easy to use or as smart under the covers)

EZMix (hundreds of plugins available of the same processors, but none that combined them into such an easy yet usably good-sounding package)

EZKeys (again, plenty of piano instruments out there at the time, but none that were quite as easy or had anything like the integrated chord sequence feature)

From the past evidence, Toontrack seems rather interested in innovating in crowded markets and seems to like to disrupt the status quo with products that make bold optimizations of the user experience. The DAW market seems like a natural candidate for Toontrack to disrupt with something bold. And I for one, would welcome our new EZDaw overlords.

[Will]

Ooo, another cool idea:

When creating (or initially configuring) a track you could select not just an instrument, but also a genre so that the channel strip would get pre-loaded with the controls most relevant (and perhaps some of those same hidden special sauce settings like in EZMix). You can imagine all sort of combinations. 60’s Guitar gets you EQ’s modeled on old British boards with a fuzz and maybe a phasor and a tape echo. 70’s Guitar gets you different EQ’s, some simple chorus, analog echo, and flange. 80’s Guitar gives you LA board EQ’s, huge choruses, and multi-delays. And so on, for not just guitar but for all the other types of tracks. This is kind of like an EZStrip concept, I guess.

Sure other DAW’s like Logic have channel strip presets, but once you load them, all the settings are still hidden/lost in all the effects that were loaded. Using them in the context of the EZStrip idea make it more powerful while retaining the its simplicity.

[Will]

Further info:

I reset my TD-9 to the factory defaults. The default midi notes for the 1st position crash are:

Rim: 55
Head: 49

So, it turns out that I had not actually changed those from the default. This means that with a stock TD-9, if you load up the funkmasters and select the edrums mapping, the 1st position crash will play:

Rim: ride cymbal (crash articulation)
Head: crash cymbal (crash articulation)

instead of what it should play:

Rim: crash cymbal (crash articulation)
Head: crash cymbal (ride articulation)

This is a bug that should be addressed, no?

Or is the TD-9’s default note mapping strange in some way?

[Will]

While that spreadsheet is both useful and impressive(!), the mapping it covers is the default mapping and not the E-Drums mapping, right? So, it doesn’t quite cover what I’m talking about. And no, it’s not the articulation name “Ride” that’s throwing me. I’m watching the animated hits and it’s triggering the ride cymbal, not the ride articulation of the crash.

For my first position crash, the TD-9 is sending:

Rim: 55
Head: 49

In the Pop/Rock, Vintage, and Jazz EZX’s, when I select the E-Drums mapping:

55 triggers the first position crash (crash articulation)
49 triggers the first position crash (crash articulation) (same as 55)

In the Funkmasters EZX, when I select the E-Drums mapping:

55 triggers the ride (crash articulation)
49 triggers the first position crash (crash articulation)

I can see maybe why TT decided to map Funkmasters that way, given that there’s only one crash and that one crash has more articulations than in the other EZX’s (which is great!), so maybe I’m thinking less like it’s a bug. 🙂

There is one unfortunate thing though, that I think is going to require that I make user presets with custom mappings. Let’s say that I want to be able to switch between the Funkmasters kits and the other EZX’s. When I play the Funkmaster kit I want:

1. Crash rim: crash (crash articulation)
2. Crash head: crash (ride articulation)

But when I play the other EZX’s (that don’t have a ride articulation for the crash) I want:

1. Crash rim: crash (crash articulation)
2. Crash head: crash (crash articulation)

This is a pretty reasonable desire. In most EZX’s the crash is just the crash, no matter how I hit it (since that’s the only articulation they have) and in the Funkmasters I have the ability to play its ride articulation by hitting the head zone. The problem is that there is no mapping that let’s me switch between those two effortlessly. In other words, none of the midi notes assigned to the ride articulation of the crash in Funkmasters play the crash articulation of the crash in the other EZX’s. That’s not very good. In fact, I’m lucky that I have Superior that let’s me even do a custom note mapping, because it seems that if I only had EZ Drummer, I would have to change the midi note assignment on the TD-9 every time I switched to Funkmasters. Yuck.

[Will]

Hi, Toontrack folks. Is there any chance you might do this or should I abandon my plans of periodically asking for it here and perhaps rabble-rousing in the forums?

Thanks!

[Author]

Replies