EZdrummer 2: time signature changes

[Hazy]

I have made a song in Reaper 64 with various...

I have made a song in Reaper 64 with various tempo and time signature changes. EZdrummer follows the tempo changes perfectly but stays in 4/4. This means that e.g. measure 21 in Reaper is measure 17 in EZdrummer, bars in EZdrummer don’t start at the first beat etc., which make it very hard to find a fitting groove.

It would be great if EZdrummer would change time signature in sync with Reaper or alternatively if I could enter these changes manually in the Song Track.

I have made a song in Reaper 64 with various tempo and time signature changes. EZdrummer follows the tempo changes perfectly but stays in 4/4. This means that e.g. measure 21 in Reaper is measure 17 in EZdrummer, bars in EZdrummer don’t start at the first beat etc., which make it very hard to find a fitting groove.

It would be great if EZdrummer would change time signature in sync with Reaper or alternatively if I could enter these changes manually in the Song Track.

2

Thanked by: roliva and Ian Neal

Topic

[Terry Brunnick]

Play EZ drummer with a Midi track. You can add Time Signature Changes in the Tempo track in the sequencer. You can do this with Cubase.

[alexis]

@John said:

… If you know of a plugin that can change Time signature accordingly to the host’s Timeline, it would be very interesting to take a look at. …  

Rayzoon’s Jamstix changes Time sig. It is done by manually entering the time sig at the appropriate bar in the drum VSTi.

Please consider this a very strong suggestion for EZDrummer 2 as well. I just started using this for the first time a few hours ago, and am flabbergasted each song can have only 1 time sig.

[Bryan Butler]

@Bryan Michael Block said:
Hey Pook,
I understand that the feature “should be built in” but as of right now, it isn’t, maybe in an update. I was just trying to think about how to easily work around it. If I had to guess, I would think that (in the back end programming) every host provides information to VSTi’s in a different way, which might make UNIVERSALLY reading that info from a variety of hosts a tricky bit of programming for Toontrack. Maybe SD 3.0 will provide that feature, and will be one of the big differentiators between EZ and Superior.  

Has anyone tried this change up? I could totally see it helping but the issues I forsee is if you have EZD track one as 4/4 and track 2 as 7/8, wouldn’t the markers not match up in the Daw? The day has marker bar 9 where the 4/4 has lets say bar 11 and the 7/8 has bar 13 for the same bar.. I am sure the match doesnt work on this, but the example still is solid.

[berhu]

If I understand well, our preliminary request should go to DAWs manufacturers, asking them to find a way to transmit the time signature to the VSTis, not only the MIDI clock. Then VSTI makers could adapt. Am i right?

[perh]

@berhu said:
If I understand well, our preliminary request should go to DAWs manufacturers, asking them to find a way to transmit the time signature to the VSTis, not only the MIDI clock. Then VSTI makers could adapt. Am i right?  

It would be ideal to have time-signatures linked and updated between the DAW and its plugins, but the ability to make manual changes along the timeline would help a lot. Variable time-signatures is such a common feature in music that I have a hard time taking a drum-package that doesn’t support it seriously.

[Chris Thompson]

I’m struggling with something different.

I’ve found a drum riff that was recorded at 170bpm. My song is at 208bpm. The 170bpm drum riff sounds perfect if I slow it to 104bpm, but I can’t insert it on the track without it sounding like it’s in fast forward. Additionally, I can’t slow down the track.

It would be nice if there were an option on the EZDrummer timeline to not follow the DAW between X bar and Y bar, and you could set the tempo you wanted it to play at.

My band's SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-354528368

[krizrox]

Wow. Ok. I found this 3YO thread with a Google search lol.

I bought EZD2 yesterday mainly because I wanted a better drum program than the one that came bundled with my DAW software (Samplitude). It was considered a good choice by some of their forum users so that’s how I got here. I installed it and the first thing I tried to do, the very first thing, was setup some tempo and time sig changes in a sample test project. I was perplexed when EZD2 matched the tempo changes perfectly but not any of the time signatures. Just sort of plowed right on by ’em. I thought well… just part of the learning curve. I’ve only had the program for like 5 minutes. I’m sure it’s just a mouse click somewhere lol

Nope. After about an hour of futzing, I finally gave up. Then I did a search for answers and got here. I even posted something on my Facebook page hoping a fellow EZD2 user could help. It just seemed to be a confusing mess. Nothing so far from the guys at Magix either. I feel like I’ve been speaking Greek trying to explain it. lol

Here’s a sort of odd thing about this:

Samplitude has it’s own built-in metronome feature (I assume all DAWs have something duh). There are two basic methods to generate a click track in Samplitude: 1) using plain audio or 2) using MIDI. Plain audio just pulls up small WAV files and “plays” them according to the system timing reference. I have a library of click sounds so it’s easy to find something specific for a client. You can actually generate a complete click track audio clip/object using those sounds in Samplitude. The MIDI method plays audio from the internal system soundcard (or, I assume, an external sequencer of some sort if you have the drivers loaded). Now… the audio method doesn’t recognize time sig changes either. But the MIDI method does! It works perfectly. Just like you’d expect. It seems to me that Samplitude must be sending something to the system soundcard so it can make those time sig changes If it can do that, why can’t it send the same information to EZD2? So I’m adding my voice to this chorus. What’s the dealio? lol

[Bart Childers]

Old Thread but still a current “issue”.

Just a thought but – WAVES Tune and TuneLT uses ReWIRE to stay in-sync with the host. BARS & BEATS stay synced up through the entire song.
In my case – I can’t use the EZD song track in a song with time signature changes – my brain can’t handle the disconnect between the plug-in and host time rulers.

Mac OSX 13.n , M2 Pro MBP 16, 32GB RAM, LPX 10.n.n, PT2023.n

[Hazy]

Superior Drummer 3 has this feature. So it’s no problem at all for Toontrack to add this to EZ Drummer 2 if they wanted to.

[Ian Neal]

Do Toontrack maintain the lack of the feature for time sig changes in EZ drummer 2, so that it forces its owners to upgrade to SD?

I also have Jamstix and it works fine manually setting any time sig at any bar.

[Ian Neal]

Forgot to mention; it’s ironic that Toontrack offer a range of drum expansions which feature odd time sigs. I went and bought these; but, struggling to use them creatively without a time sig change feature in EZ Drummer 2.

[mhembree]

Just found this thread, after fighting this problem for an hour or so. Here I sit in November of 2019, and the issue is still the same.  Can’t change time signatures mid-song in EZD2 (fyi running in PT12.7).  I’d be more than happy to hand-jam the changes in via the plugin interface, but no dice.  *sigh*

[everythingtoexcess]

Well, this thread just saved me $150. I’m glad I discovered you can’t change meters mid-song while I”m still using the demo version. What are they thinking? I’m writing dinosaur era prog rock. I’m changing meter A LOT. Apparently, I”m doing that with a different program.

[Jdickson]

This reminds me of being charged extra for GM airbags. Had I known that EZDRUMMER 2 isn’t designed to link bar numbers or time signature changes with the host DAW, I would NEVER have purchased the “songwriter’s bundle” software.
Piano roll editing has also been intentionally left out. Midi grooves do not offer any NON-swing 3/4 time, and tempos in “1” are also omitted. Individual control over EFX/reverb is not adequate either.
This may be a fun toy for an amateur, but does NOT belong in a professional musician’s arsenal, since it is too cumbersome and lacks critical editing features. This is a big box of rubber stamps – it reminds me of the popular Guitar H*** video game – a monkey could load up a quick (and great sounding) groove with one finger, but that’s basically where the usefulness of EZDrummer 2 ends.
Without a true midi timeline link, you must export your midi data in order to obtain individualized results, and then you can’t necessarily move it back. EZDrummer 2 is obviously only intended as a “gateway” to the MUCH more expensive “Superior Drummer 3”, and as such, should probably be offered as freeware. I’m afraid to make the jump to Superior-3, since I suspect that it may be lacking as well. At this point, I’m not willing spend hundreds to find out – I’ll save my money for a microphone or something useful. I was excited at first, but these shortcomings have popped my balloon. If I could get a refund, I would.

• This post was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Jdickson.

[John]

Hi Jdickson,

reading your post, it seems quite obvious that you are not the typical ‘EZ’ concept user but rather a Superior Drummer 3 user, right?

To clarify a few things:

The EZdrummer 2 plug-in will sync to your DAW’s Tempo regardless how you change it in the DAW. What doesn’t happen is that when you change Time Signature, it can’t be reflected on the EZdrummer 2 Song Track.
Time Signature is not something that is passed on to plug-ins from any host/DAW, so it is not exclusive to EZdrummer 2 but the opposite.

The difference between EZdrummer 2 and Superior Drummer 3 in this aspect, is that SD3 has both Tempo and Time Sig Tracks that can be manually edited and/or imported from MIDI files exported from your DAW.

If you want to ‘get MIDI back’ from your DAW to either EZdrummer 2 or Superior Drummer 3, the easiest way is simply to rec arm the plug-in’s Song Track and play back the MIDI from the DAW by pressing Play.

A few DAW’s allow for drag and drop to a plug-in and this is not a limitation of the plug-in but the DAW itself, restricting that kind of operation.

I hope this clarifies,
John

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[Author]

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