Trying Out the Demo

[Peter]

I’m currently trying the EZ Drummer 2 demo, and I’m very impressed. However, there’s a couple of things I’m not sure about and I’m quite happy to be told my approach is incorrect.

Is it possible to make an alias/ghost copy of a part in the song track? Currently if you copy and paste, the copy is unique so changing the original does not affect the copies. This is ideal in a lot of cases, but I’ve found that after making several copies of a part, I would like to add (for example) an extra snare hit. This means I then have to copy it again, delete all the other copies, and copy and paste again.

Is it possible to rename parts in the song track? Currently I think they’re named depending on the Power Hand setting. It would be useful to be able to name them as required. This could be an extension of the colour codes that are already available.

Is it possible to manually amend the MIDI inside the song track? For example, move a snare hit if it’s not exactly where you want it.

Topic

[Henrik Ekblom]

– EZdrummer 2 can only make copies of MIDI blocks, aliases can’t be created. It is this way because we really wanted to keep the complexity level down. Other software has this feature, which can lead to confusion (“I changed this block, why did that block change?”).
– The blocks can’t be renamed, since we saw that the combination of song part (verse, chorus etc) with the power hand is enough to identify the song part.
– The MIDI can only be edited via the smart functions in Edit Play Style, or by recording extra hits to a block. This follows the same design guideline as above, and this can be accomplished in the DAW.

The fact that these features aren’t implemented from the start doesn’t mean that they won’t ever be. We listen to our customers, and if features are wanted by many of you we always take that into consideration for future updates.

Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
Toontrack

[Peter]

Thank you very much for the response. I think the ‘alias’ idea would be a great new feature and hopefully, some other users will agree!

[Scott Eshleman]

I might agree if the function could be switched ‘On’ or ‘Off’ like MIDI Mirroring in Pro Tools.

[Peter]

Yes, I would think an option ‘create alias’ along with the normal copy, paste, etc. options would suffice. An alias could then perhaps be coloured in a slightly lighter shade to distinguish it from real copies. Also, an option to ‘make real’ an alias would be needed.

Regarding renaming parts, I still think this would be a useful addition. If I’ve got 4 parts in a verse, all slightly different and all with the same power hand, they all look the same in the song track. Even if they could be renamed Hi Hat A, Hi Hat B, etc., I think that would be good.

[Author]

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