Piano Roll

[Drew Hallenbeck]

Hey All @ Toontrack

Good job on EZD2… incredible inovations. I was slightly hesitant to buy seeing as I am an avid SD2 user but totally happy I purchased this. This will totally work side by side in a very productive manner (though I am sure, and speculating, that all the amazing innovative features will end up in SD3? But I can’t wait that long!)

Anyway, a selling point that you have with EZD2 is you’ll never need to use a piano roll again. Well… maybe, if you on;y ever want to tweak grooves on a macro level. Which is, I would say, 90% of the time. But that 10% that you want to get in there and micromanage the odd hit or group of hits in a fill is a HUGE 10% to be missing.

I would say that if I could dig that next level down to the individual hits, I would almost exclusively write my drums in EZD2. But I can still see have to do a rough “90% there” writing and then export out to the DAW to do the micro editing. If there was a way to be able to drill that one extra level down would really make it the ultimate drum editor!!

Keep up the good work!

Drew

Topic

[Erik Phersson]

Hi and thank you for your praise!

It’s a difficult thing to design something that should be easy to use but still can perform complex operations. Our goal with EZdrummer was to make things that are difficult or time consuming to perform in your host easy. I think we achieved that. I can understand that there sometime is need to make that final tweak but adding a piano roll would add a complexity that would go against the nature of EZdrummer. Not saying that it never will happen (we thought about it a number of times) but we like to focus on giving creativity back to the users rather than consuming for the sake of detail… seeking. We think of it in terms of you being in the rehearsal room with your band mates. You give your drummer general instructions on how you want him to perform (if you are the song writer) but you seldom go in and tell him exactly how to play each note. In this environment the songs and ideas can flourish since there’s no focus on details, only on the general feel and energy. Once you are finished creating your song you can go into the studio and focus on the details. That’s not EZdrummer though…

Erik Phersson - Toontrack
Head Of Development

[Drew Hallenbeck]

That is a fair assessment as to why you did not add the further “complexity”. As I said, the fact that you can get the song 90% there is still amazing. Taking it into the DAW for the extra tweaks is not a big deal at all really. All and all without overthinking a wish list that is out of scope with the “EZ” part of EZDrummer… you guys did an amazing job! Thanks again.

[Harald.Beckedorf]

Hi Drew,
Have you tried tap2find? Drag the pattern you want to change to the area below “tap2find” and click that button.
You can clear the part(s) of the kit you want to alter and make a new recording.
When you click “Show Results” the new pattern stays in the area below the “tap2find” button when you switch to the browser window and can be dragged into the user midi folder.

[PatRat_2]

@Erik said:
You give your drummer general instructions on how you want him to perform (if you are the song writer) but you seldom go in and tell him exactly how to play each note. . .

Yes but even with a couple of the EZX plugins I find this is like having a drummer who cannot play what you ask them to..
I have yet to have Tap2Find get a drum pattern close enough to be useable.

If you don’t know what you want, close with work, If you know what you want, close doesn’t cut it.

I can play multiple instruments with some skill, drums is something I cannot play at all.
even using a midi trigger at a slow tempo I have a hard time tapping out exactly what I want.
I’ll miss an off time hit that is only off by a small amount but enough that quantize won’t fix it…
Those times when I’m only a couple beats off, a piano roll even if it just for placement (or moving or deleting a beat)
would be an incredible feature.
Don’t take anything away from what the program is or does!!
We are just asking that you just add another feature to an already awesome program!
Since when does adding a new feature take away from a program?

Every usable program at some point couldn’t do what it does now…

We LOVE your program! It Kicks @$$!!
But we know what would make it better and what would make it more versatile and user friendly!!

I remember once calling an engineering program’s development team because their software
wouldn’t run in windows (This was some time ago! – I’m old!)
They whined and complained about recompiling their software for windows…
Well, all their competitors moved to windows. They didn’t.
They’re probably writing FL plugins now….

[Robert]

Was thinking about this today.
I feel like the next update for EZ2 would rock to the moon and back if a plug-in or some other mode of communication was developed to allow for full editing capabilities to be shared automatically between EZdrummer and whatever DAW is being used – so no dragging midi from EZ to the DAW ever. I want to be able to drop midi patterns into EZdrummer from the EZBrowser and see that midi automatically come up in my Logic piano roll editor – and vice versa of course. Then being able to edit from either place (EZdrummer or Logic/DAW) and have those edits register in both places – whether it’s rhythmic, velocity, or whatever else.
That would be the dealio! Yeah? Can you guys do that??

[Leith Gow]

I would love to see this make its way into the product. It really is the only downfall. As a user I like the ability to tweak snares etc to create accents to my riffs. In my current workflow I have to edit the loops in a DAW which kind of defeats the purpose of using the blocks and song creator. The ability to double click a song block and make a quick edit would be a godsend. Please consider it.

[Katmama]

Hi,  I too think that EZD is absolutely amazing, but I am missing the ability to tweak in a piano roll.   The devil is in the details, right?  There is a trade-off of having an skilled drummer provide patterns and subtleties that I may  never have thought of  for actually being able to simply tell him or her to “I need a cymbal crash right here” or “add a tom on the second beat of that measure”.  Maybe I just haven’t found the workaround yet.

[Author]

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