I made a drum track on EZD2 to re-do a song that was originally on 4-track using a drum machine as drums.
It is a muddy mess of toms ringing. Using a gate, turning off reverb, mic bleads and ambience helps, but a lot of trouble.
Also, there is no good punchy kick like the Alesis SR-16 had.
Sounds more like either the wrong kit pieces were matched up and/or post processing issues with the song, if you’re going to compare EZ Drummer to a drum machine
Just the kick. The SR-16 punch kick was amazing in the mix. I keep it around to just play that kick. EZD Collector’s Maple was close but less of a punch/thud.
I think the only toms I know of in EZD that don’t ring for 2 seconds long is in the Nashville one with the tom sustain control. I don’t have many EZX to compare and most on youtube reviews don’t even hit the toms for some reason. But I use Modern and had to fix with a gate on both the toms and snare and turn off the bleeds and ambient to kill the ring. Now it is useable but it took a while to figure out by effectively disabling features in EZD. Otherwise on a drum fill with say, 3 toms, it is a mess of wooooooow.
However I do miss tapping out patterns in a real time loop on a drum machine pattern mode, writing down the number on a list or chart on paper stringing those together in song mode instead of creating the whole thing on the Cakewalk piano roll click by click. That is taking days rather than a couple hours in the old days. I’m sure people have their tricky ways or a similar feature in EZD itself. Midi patterns, grooves, phooey!
The post has been modified 4 times, last modified 6 months, 1 week ago by Richard Viola.
Admittedly I don’t use the EZ Drummer 2 core library. Something about Chuck Ainlay‘s work that doesn’t fit in any of the songs I’m working on, whether it’s tonality or energy.
Adding punch/thud to a kick it is really just a matter of compression (to bring out the transient), EQ (to carve out the suffocating frequencies) and saturation (usually tape for a bump in harmonic). Of course it boils down to the right type of kick to start. Generally, using a kick without a port hole on the head will often result in an overly boomy kick. It’s good if you’re doing songs along the line of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple or other 70s type of rock music. However, there isn’t much thud in it. The other trick I like using in Superior Drummer is stacking and electronic sample on top of a kick to bring out the transient.
My preference in EZ Drummer 3 is anything by Michael Ilbert, which includes the core library. However, Signature is my go-to here because the fit in and I get a decent punch out of them.
However I do miss tapping out patterns in a real time loop on a drum machine pattern mode, writing down the number on a list or chart on paper stringing those together in song mode instead of creating the whole thing on the Cakewalk piano roll click by click. That is taking days rather than a couple hours in the old days.
Sounds like you’re doing things the hard way. Get yourself a MIDI pad controller. You can then do the same thing within your DAW just like the old days: tap it out in a loop. You can then arrange the MIDI regions within your DAW the same way. Plenty of pad controllers out there with features that will cut your time down drastically.
Midi patterns, grooves, phooey!
You contradict yourself with this statement. Isn’t this ego getting in the way of songwriting since almost every groove pack put out by ToonTrack is played by real drummers which will most likely have have covered the type of groove? Or, at least come real close to the point where you can fine tune it using Edit Play Styles or the Grid Editor in EZ Drummer 3? Preferring to write your own grooves is one thing. Despising a set of grooves already available because you didn’t write it is totally different. Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you what I do in Logic Pro 11 more often than not these days.
MIDI pad controllers are simply another way of firing the MIDI notes to play EZ Drummer. EZ Drummer, like any other MIDI software instrument, doesn’t care how it gets its data. It sees all controllers the same. However, I’d rather be hammering out drum patterns and fills on the pads than a keyboard. Plus, I can reconfigure the pads to my playing style far better than I can with a keyboard.
