jazzmandanCould it just be as simple as no one is asking for it? Then let me be the first.
Tell us all please, that a EZKeys2 is on the drawing board and set for release in xxx/2016.
You know what I am asking for. Like you did with EZDrummer – EZDrummer2. Well, it doesn’t have to be that spectacular! But some thing to show commitment and maturity for this lovely program.
At a minimum can we at lease talk about it? This forum is soooo slow. Perhaps this could be a new level of life and pay off in dividends to the company bottom line.
Maybe if I say – Please and Thank you.
Jazzmandan
Could it just be as simple as no one is asking for it? Then let me be the first.
Tell us all please, that a EZKeys2 is on the drawing board and set for release in xxx/2016.
You know what I am asking for. Like you did with EZDrummer – EZDrummer2. Well, it doesn’t have to be that spectacular! But some thing to show commitment and maturity for this lovely program.
At a minimum can we at lease talk about it? This forum is soooo slow. Perhaps this could be a new level of life and pay off in dividends to the company bottom line.
Maybe if I say – Please and Thank you.
Jazzmandan
Scott HopkinsFor EZKeys 2, I’d like to see the ability to toggle the notation between the current chord view (C – G7 – Am7 – Fmaj) and a functional analysis view (I – V7 – vi7 – IV). This would be a very helpful songwriting tool! I realize that once you get into secondary dominants, etc. the functional analysis can get a bit tricky. Perhaps the user can have the option to input their own analysis when things get ambiguous.
Billy 86Well… this EZK thread dates back 6 years now with Zero movement on the most basic of pleas. GUI, grid editor, etc. Seems EZ drummer 3 has been stealing the show with its fancy new version. C’mon, TT, please bring us out of the 80’s functionality and apply what you’ve already developed on the drum side. Pretty please, with sugar on top? ;-}
SD3, EZD, EZ Keys 1&2, EZ Bass. Win10, i9/9900, all SSDs, 64g RAM, Cakewalk, Studio One
1
Thanked by: Laroidx
Asa PalmerEZD3! What’s the bluudy point? We already have SD3!
The time wasted on EZD3 could have been much better spent on updating EZkeys, in my humble opinion.
EZBass v1.1.8
SD3 v3.3.6
EZKeys v2.05
Windows-10Pro (ex Windows-11Pro user)
Nuendo-12.0.70
Roland TD-20X
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Thanked by: Laroidx
John RussellI use the new EZBass and EzDrummer 3 and we NEED to have EZ KEYS PLEEEEEEZ
prafleYes, please! Add me to the list of EZKeys fans — I just upgraded my EZDrums from 2 to 3 and it’s night and day! Just the ability to resize the window made a huge difference, but all the other useability improvements (standard keyboard shortcuts for cut and paste! In-app midi editing! Listening to a wav file and picking grooves that match!) are just as revolutionary!
What would make EZKeys 2 (3?) a home run for me?
Thanks again for all the amazing work on EZD3 — can’t wait to be the first to pre-order the matching EZKeys upgrade!!
Pete Rafle
Scott HopkinsSadly, my prediction is that we won’t see a release of EZKeys 2 until at least May of 2024. As of late, Toontrack has been on a cycle of releasing major products updates roughly every 2 -3 years years.
EZKeys 2012
EZDrummer 2 2014
Superior Drummer 3 2017
EZBass 2020
EZDrummer 3 2022
SkotLet’s all face it guys, Toontrack is aware that we have been begging for an update for years. EzKeys has been out for a decade. They don’t care. EzKeys is not a priority for them. They throw us a bone from time to time, and give us an expansion pack here and there, with some more MIDI packs to play with. But never a new numbered version.
Let’s just address the elephant in the room. They aren’t working on EzKeys 2. At all. You know it, I know it, they know it. And they don’t care how you feel about it. I know that because they have in ten years never said one word about it. I know, I know, Toontrack doesn’t talk about products they are working on, blah, blah, blah. That’s corporate speak for, “we ain’t doing sh*t all, and we don’t feel like we should have to explain anything to you, now shut up and buy what we will give you.”
That’s where we stand. Toontrack doesn’t care about EzKeys or it’s users. If they did, they wouldn’t have waited a DECADE to still say NOTHING. I wish they would sell the code for EzKeys to someone who will develop it. I mean we have all given them a laundry list of things we would like to see for a new version. But Toontrack can’t even be bothered to just give us an update that lets us resize the GUI for a 1440p monitor. You don’t need a whole numbered upgrade to do that much. They could have dropped that into a plain old update on the product manager.
I almost wish they would just discontinue EzKeys if they aren’t gonna sell it or develop it. At least then we would have a definitive way to show that they don’t really care about EzKeys. Have you ever counted up the number of Toontrack releases since EzKeys first came out?
Superior Drummer 3 and various expansion packs for it
EzDrummer 2 and a whole slew of expansion packs for it
EzDrummer 3 and 1 new expansion less than a month later!
EzMix 2 and a truckload of expansion packs for it (but is also due for an upgrade and a resizable GUI)
EzBass and nine expansion packs for it
Not to mention an absolutely staggering amount of MIDI packs for all three of their instruments.
And in all that time, not even once has Toontrack showed any interest in giving us any news about EzKeys.
dgc4rterLet’s all face it guys, Toontrack is aware that we have been begging for an update for years. EzKeys has been out for a decade. They don’t care. EzKeys is not a priority for them. They throw us a bone from time to time, and give us an expansion pack here and there, with some more MIDI packs to play with. But never a new numbered version.
Let’s just address the elephant in the room. They aren’t working on EzKeys 2. At all. You know it, I know it, they know it. And they don’t care how you feel about it. I know that because they have in ten years never said one word about it. I know, I know, Toontrack doesn’t talk about products they are working on, blah, blah, blah. That’s corporate speak for, “we ain’t doing sh*t all, and we don’t feel like we should have to explain anything to you, now shut up and buy what we will give you.”
That’s where we stand. Toontrack doesn’t care about EzKeys or it’s users. If they did, they wouldn’t have waited a DECADE to still say NOTHING. I wish they would sell the code for EzKeys to someone who will develop it. I mean we have all given them a laundry list of things we would like to see for a new version. But Toontrack can’t even be bothered to just give us an update that lets us resize the GUI for a 1440p monitor. You don’t need a whole numbered upgrade to do that much. They could have dropped that into a plain old update on the product manager.
I almost wish they would just discontinue EzKeys if they aren’t gonna sell it or develop it. At least then we would have a definitive way to show that they don’t really care about EzKeys. Have you ever counted up the number of Toontrack releases since EzKeys first came out?
Superior Drummer 3 and various expansion packs for it
EzDrummer 2 and a whole slew of expansion packs for it
EzDrummer 3 and 1 new expansion less than a month later!
EzMix 2 and a truckload of expansion packs for it (but is also due for an upgrade and a resizable GUI)
EzBass and nine expansion packs for it
Not to mention an absolutely staggering amount of MIDI packs for all three of their instruments.
And in all that time, not even once has Toontrack showed any interest in giving us any news about EzKeys.
EZkeys version: 1.3.3
Operating system: Windows 10
Sadly, I think you’re probably right. The hopes I’ve had (for some while) of Toontrack acting on any of the EZKeys community’s wishes are fading pretty fast. Like you say, it’s been a full decade since EZKeys was released. If they’d seen its potential, were bothered about it and/or bothered about their EZKeys customer base surely we would have seen a significant upgrade by now.
I think they’re just going to focus on their drum and bass software for the foreseeable future and I’m with you on wishing that they’d just sell the code to another dev who could realise its potential (Scaler for example).
I guess I’ll always use EZKeys as a starting point in some of my projects. I’ve invested in most of their MIDI packs and it’s still an incredibly useful tool even with its ridiculously small antiquated GUI but there will always be that niggling thought in the back of my mind of just how much better it could have been if they’d given it the EZBass/EZDrummer treatment.
ZedIs that an attempt at reverse psychology?
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I am baffled by the amount of upset some customers are experiencing over this, to the point of venom towards this incredible company that has given us so many amazing music-making tools.
I look forward to EZKeys 2 and even wrote a lengthy request list for some key improvements, but it’s not like the current version of EZKeys is horrible or anything close. It is fantastic and I use it all the time and love it.
Not sure why folks get so bent out of shape about it. Obviously ToonTrack will most likely update it at some point, and they probably are working on it already, and we will all be thrilled when it is finally launched.
In the meantime, maybe we should tone down all the frustration. There are still a million things we can do with EZKeys just as it is–things which we couldn’t do before Toontrack introduced this tool in the first place.
SkotNot sure you actually read or understood anything I wrote.
Raynaldo MartineDo you have a link to your music using EZ Keys? I would love to hear anyone using this in an upper professional manner. The instrument sounds are top shelf, but the patterns are so stiff and arpeggiated, that only the “simplest” parts would sit nicely in a track with other instruments, but when they’re that simple, you begin to think, “I might as well just play this section myself”. I have a working studio with clients to answer to, and with Superior Drummer 3, and even EZ Bass (sometimes), I am thrilled, but as soon as I try to use EZ Keys in any capacity, the track immediately becomes “amateurish”. The time it takes to modify the parts to make it sound closer to a good comping keyboard player, defeats the purpose.
Zed@Skot
If your response is to me, then yes I read and understood what you wrote. It sounded like you were doing an attempt at reverse psychology so that they will come out and protest “No! We care about our customers and we are working on it! Don’t lose faith in us! We hear you!”
It also sounded like you are a bit bitter.
And I can’t agree with the suggestion that Toontrack “doesn’t care”. I’m sure they have every intention of getting to it, but have decided on other prioriorities in the meantime.
One of them did come on here some time back and said that while he couldn’t officially say it was coming, be assured that it’s in the pipeline.
So I think that assuming that they don’t care about their customers wishes is inaccurate and I am surprised by the constant negative messages in this EZKeys forum… yours was not the most bitter by far. Some folks seem thoroughly disgusted with Toontrack, despite Toontrack creating so many great toys for them.
Zed@Raynaldo Martine
I am actually really surprised by your comment. I am personally blown away by the quality of the EZKeys content and how easy it is to get amazing sounding performances out of any chord progression. I thought most everyone shared that opinion. I don’t think there is anything amateurish about the MIDI patterns at all (barring a few performances that are a little sloppy and might need a little editing depending on the context). There is so much great stuff to work with. It is so easy to adjust the sections and get things to work, and YES you can play some of the parts yourself. That is even better because it makes the performance partly your own.
You take the simple parts that work with your song, and then your replace little bits of those simple parts with little riffs and variations that suit your song and what the other instruments are doing. You can make magic so easily.
Having said that, I would tend to play my own piano parts for certain styles of music. But using EZKeys allows me to create piano driven tracks that I would never otherwise come up with on my own, and do things in other genres too. It’s pretty satisfying to come up with a new piano piece that sounds so interesting and has a satisfying chord progression.
I am not sure what you are or are not doing with EZKeys, but my guess is that you are not taking full advantage of what it can offer you. It should not be sounding amateurish unless you have really weird chord progressions. If you are using sensible progressions it’s pretty hard for EZkeys to sound bad.
Just out of curiosity, which piano did you choose when you bought the product?
dgc4rter@Zed
OK, to begin with, let me point you to a Virtual Instrument software developer who believe in communicating with their customer-base with respect to the ongoing development of their products.
https://www.virharmonic.com/dev_update
Question: Does this information cause any inconvenience, adverse feedback, negative consequences for the company in any way?
Answer: If there are, I can’t find any.
Their products are openly discussed on one of the major Virtual Instrument/Sample library discussion forums called VI-Control https://vi-control.net/community/ Their latest major release, v4 of the Violin has just been released and the Cello follows shortly with a new product – the Viola, also coming out soon. These products have been in development for well over two years with several delays not least because of COVID. However, they have kept their customers fully informed with regular updates. If you cared to read through some of the forum threads on these products, you would probably ascertain that there is an underlying sense of respect and patience for the company and an acknowledgement that these things take time, delays will be inevitable but it will be worth the wait because the product will be great when it is finally released. Have I noticed any “venom” against the company in these posts? No. Quite possibly because of the simple fact that no one is being kept in the dark.
Now, back to Toontrack and EZKeys. Most of the criticisms and venom you see in this forum thread are almost certainly born out of frustration and the fact that Toontrack, for whatever reason, insist on keeping us in the dark about its development. It is not because EZKeys is a bad product, it’s because it’s a good product but one that desperately needs updating. Name me one other VI software developer that have an innovative and popular product that’s been left on the shelf for 10 years since initial release.
If they just came out with a very simple statement to the tune of, “We are aware of EZKeys customers’ frustration….blah blah blah. We would like you to know that we have not abandoned the product… blah blah blah and a development roadmap does exist… blah blah blah”, you would most likely see all the negativity disappear.
Zed@dgc4rter
I do agree with your points and that it would certainly be nice if Toontrack was more interactive and giving use feedback.
I don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t have a dedicated person who pays attention to the forum and provides feedback, encouragement and responses to more of these discussions. They are certainly big enough that the SHOULD have an employee who does this.
I don’t get the hostility that some have expressed, but I suppose given the lack of effort in keeping customers updated and feeling that they are being heard, it is understandable that some would interpret that as “they don’t care.”
I suppose they don’t care enough about that aspect of their business and it would definitely be nice if they addressed that and became more interactive.
I wrote a long list of good ideas and requests for the EZKeys 2 product. I can’t deny that it would have been nice to get a note saying “Thanks for all the suggestions. We have given them to the development team.”
But neither was I expecting that or upset that I didn’t get such feedback.
Anyway, I totally get what you are saying. It’s actually interesting to see how people are responding to this odd situation, and you helped to put it more into focus for me.
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