Why EZDRUMMER still plays even if I don't drop the MIDI into my DAW?

[jbasalo]

Hi,

I’m a newbie with this product and there’s something I don’t fully understand. I’ve noticed that after creating a groove in EzDrummer I don’t need apparently to drag and drop the MIDI into my DAW (Soundlab Cakewalk). If I just save the DAW project and reopen it, I can still hear the drums even though I don’t have any MIDI notes in the track assigned to EzDrummer as a Virtual Instrument. It looks as if EzDrummer stores the notes internally (in fact, if I open  EzDrummer GUI from the DAW the song is loaded), but the actual track is empty in the DAW.

Any explanation? Do I really need to drag and drop the MIDI into the DAW track?

Excuses in advance in case this topic is already discussed.

EZdrummer version: 2.1.8
Operating system: Windows 10

• This post was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by jbasalo.

Topic

[jbasalo]

I think I can answer myself after reading the manual more carefully. It seems this is the default behaviour.

“Muting
You can mute any song block or all of the song blocks on the time line by selecting them,
right-clicking, and then selecting mute or it can also be accomplished by turning off “Follow
Host”. This is a useful option if you prefer to build your drum sequence on the Song Track in
EZdrummer 2 and then drag it to your host once it’s completed. Muting the song blocks in
EZdrummer 2 allows you to keep a reference copy of the entire sequence in case any additional
changes in EZdrummer 2 are desired at a later time. It also avoids sending a duplicate
version of the MIDI sequence to the EZdrummer 2 sound engine.”

So: I don’t need to copy the MIDI in the DAW track but if I do I should mute the track on EzDrummer if I want to make sure that only the MIDI data in the DAW is played.

• This post was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by jbasalo.

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Thanked by: Shadoobee

[Feefer]

If you want the EZD midi notes/tracks in your DAW tracks highlight them in EZD. Then drag on to the EZD DAW track.To edit once in your DAW. Right click on the track, and click “transform to audio track” this will also save you a lot of CPUs.
Hope this helps!

1

Thanked by: jbasalo

[jbasalo]

Yes, it helps. But regarding my particular question, the answer is that EzDrummer does not need the MIDI pasted into the DAW in order to play its part. In fact, unless you mute the song inside EzDrummer both signals (MIDI and the data inside EzDrumer GUI) are actually sent to the virtual instrument.

On the other hand, exporting the result to WAV and then loading it into an audio track in the DAW seem a good and straightforward solution once your drums are completely finished.

• The post has been modified 2 times, last modified 4 years, 10 months ago by jbasalo.

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Thanked by: Shadoobee

[Erik]

BEST ANSWER

Hey jbsalo,

If your MIDI/Instrument track is empty in your DAW, but EZdrummer still plays when you press play, it means there is MIDI in the song track within the plugin. When you save your DAW project, the state of EZdrummer is also saved (together with the rest of all the other loaded plugins), and the MIDI in the song track is a part of that state.

You can keep the MIDI in the song track of EZdrummer or drag it out into your DAW, either works fine. The “Follow Host” button next to the transport controls controls whether or not the MIDI in the song track should play when activating playback in your DAW.

The upside to keeping MIDI in the song track is that you can save your EZdrummer session into a project file which can be opened in the standalone application, or imported into other projects. If you use MIDI from your browser, you can also show similar grooves or variations of a MIDI block. Putting the MIDI in your DAW has the upside of letting you edit the MIDI note by note, where EZdrummer only allows that to an extent with the Edit Playstyle view.

Erik Berglund — Toontrack

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Thanked by: Shadoobee and jbasalo

[jbasalo]

Crystal clear. Thanks.

[Author]

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