Zed
Participant
Topics Started: 11
Replies Created: 35
Has Thanked: 5
Been Thanked: 9
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.
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?
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.
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.
ZedWhen you pay so much for one product, you expect the product to be fully developed as a complete product! It’s not EZK. If you do not bother to develop it further! I see it as a speculative business model. My word is; Sharpen up. You have earned significantly enough to be able to develop EZK further. If not! Pay back the money for this product, it each had the most conscientious and correct.
But it’s not like EZkeys isn’t already a fantastic product as it is. You make it sound like it is crap and that you almost feel swindled that it hasn’t been improved. EZKeys does amazing things and will continue to be a very useful tool whether they update it or not. I assume that it still works properly in the latest computer operating systems? If it stopped working, I could understand the frustration.
Let’s give them some credit for what they’ve accomplished. Toontrack has NOT just been twiddling their thumbs all these years. They have developed an incredible series of very useful and clever product lines in the interim.
So your reaction might be a little harsh…
Zed“Show in Browser” navigates the user to the selected groove within the EZKeys MIDI Grooves Browser, not to anythin in the OS file system.
That’s only true if your favorites are from within Toontrack’s MIDI packs.
If you drag your own MIDI into the Favorites section, and then select it and choose “Show in Browser” it will take you to a folder on your hard drive.
On a Mac it is: System Hard Drive > User > Library > Application Support > Toontrack > EZKeys > Stored Favorites
The MIDI files do exist, but their names are not reflected in the computer filing system…
ZedI also wish for a rescalable GUI.
Glad to see Toontrack indicating that there will indeed likely be an update at some point.
ZedYou make a good point… I was complaining about something that wouldn’t be an issue if I owned those keyboards.
I don’t want to erase the demos because on occasion I go to them to compare what the MIDI would sound like on a different keyboard. ALSO, I am open to buying those products in future if Toontrack makes and attractive offer for them.
Also, it seems like Toontrack is okay with us keeping them installed and continuing to consider them.
In light of your point though, I removed that item #6 from my list and replaced it with something I forgot to mention which I really want:
(6) Notes and Song Markers–The ability to add NOTES to an EZKeys project that is saved with the project would be VERY handy, and it would be EVEN MORE HELPFUL if we could add markers in the song construction window, so that we could add our own cues for blocks of MIDI, like “verse ideas” or “intros” or whatever we need to help us remember what each block of MIDI is when we open up a project to continue working on it in the future.
ZedThere is access to the Favorites folder (on a Mac just control-click on a Favorite and choose “Show in Browser”)…
But none of the names that you have used will show up, and none of the names that the Toontrack content favorites come from are included. We just get numbered files: “EZkeys_song(305).mid” which makes it next to impossible to actually find what you are looking for using the Mac Finder file system.
Maybe if you are strategic and sort by CREATED DATE, you could grab the MIDI files you just created in the past hour or past day to drag them somewhere else. That’s a strategy for working if you do want to move copies elsewhere… BUT the files will not preserve any name you gave them in EZKeys if you renamed them. It must be encoded into the file or something. Kind of a shame they did it this way.
If you only want to name them once, it seems it’s probably best to just drag the MIDI to a computer user folder (where we want them to reside) and name them in that folder, so no renaming and future confusion can occur.
ZedThanks Shootie!!!
That USER FOLDERS thing is a game changer for me. I can’t believe I missed that all these years. I have been doing all that in the Favorites section all this time and never caught on to importing folders that way.
Since I just got a bunch of new MIDI packs in a couple of recent bundles, the timing on this is great. I can now add them to the USER FOLDERS section in and audition them much more easily. Perfect!!
I wonder what is the best way to add snippets to the folder? I suppose I continue to use the Favorites section to store the favorite bits I like, and then if I ultimately want them in the original USER FOLDER that they came from, I drag the MIDI to those folders using Finder.
As for the “Set as Default Project” thing, that works and has worked for years when launching EZkeys. But if I select “File > New” it will always default to the Grand Piano which I don’t own. Not a big deal though… I hardly ever do that.
Appreciated your images. You made it very easy to understand. Thanks for doing that!
Zedd
ZedI tried to start a new thread with my EZKeys 2 wishlist, and it got marked as SPAM and I couldn’t post it.
I’ll try it posting the list here…
(1) The ability for EZK to SEARCH and present results for piano performances that are similar in all of our packs and any third party MIDI content that we’ve added to EZkeys.
(2) The ability to open up a piano roll and actually add or delete notes (or adjust their lengths) when building a song, without having to leave those tasks for when we have imported the song to our DAW of choice.
(3) THIS ONE ALREADY EXISTS. My mistake. I can’t believe I missed this all these years and was using the Favorites section to do this…
>>>>> A more sensible MIDI management features for third party MIDI so that each MIDI pattern we want to add doesn’t have to be added individually and manually renamed (which then doesn’t even show up with that name in our Finder MIDI folder). Adding a third party MIDI pack should be as easy as it is in EZdrummer where you just add the folder of files and they will all be imported (with their existing names) into EZkeys for use with our other EZkeys MIDI packs.
(4) A bigger window for managing our Favorites and third party MIDI.
(5) A text Search also to find and display all the variations and sets with a key word in it like “Ballad”, “Train”, “Blues” or “Jazz” so that we can find something we might be looking for that is hiding in a pack we didn’t think to check.
(6) Notes and Song Markers–The ability to add NOTES to an EZKeys project that is saved with the project would be VERY handy, and it would be EVEN MORE HELPFUL if we could add markers in the song construction window, so that we could add our own cues for blocks of MIDI, like “verse ideas” or “intros” or whatever we need to help us remember what each block of MIDI is when we open up a project to continue working on it in the future.
(7) It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a user preference option to resize the chord name displayed in the GUI, so that it could be bigger if you are sitting further away from your display (or have bad eyes).
(8) When on the Browser screen it would ALSO be nice to see the name of the chord being played (maybe in the top or bottom corner).
(9) EXTRA AWESOME #1–Intelligent Performance Randomization, by simply making sensible adjustments to a selected performance that could create a variation of that performance that is almost the same but a little different? There isn’t even a humanize option in the pull down menu. Just having a way for EZKeys to try to alter it a little for repeated sections and such would be clever and handy.
(10) EXTRA AWESOME #2–For something extra special, how about a learning mode where there is a PLAYER window/tab which plays the MIDI performance in a way that helps the user learn how to play the part? It would be like a MIDI roll (akin to MIDI Trail) so that there is a helpful visual component to see in advance the notes about to be played and to be able to play along. A nice “slow motion” button on the page would be helpful to really aid users in learning to actually play this wealth of great piano stylings if they want to be able to.
(11) And finally, I sure wouldn’t mind a time counter on the GUI to reveal the length in minutes and seconds of the song I assembling or the parts I am collecting.
(NOTE: Suggestion #6 was changed and is now completely different, so the post that follows refers to a different #6.)
ZedI really hope that Toontrack is NOT done with EZkeys, and I doubt that is the case… it is a remarkable tool, but it definitely need some improvements to match the search features of EZdrummer and EZbass.
Just improving the MIDI file management so that it would be easy to drop a third party MIDI pack into a folder and have it easily accessible in EZkeys for doing MIDI replacement or the copying of chord progressions would be very helpful.
I’m gonna post another thread with a list of improvement requests…
ZedYes Please.
EZdrummer, EZkeys and EZmix for iPad so that I can use the terrific EZmix guitar presets.
As long as the iPad versions of the products exist they DO NOT have to be stocked full of goodies. Users can still have to pay the regular prices for the different MIDI packs and and instruments but could them use them on iPad.
I would LOVE to be able to work on a drum track in iPad.
I would LOVE to be able to create piano tracks with EZkeys on iPad.
I would Love to be able to plug a guitar into my iPad and access my favorite EZmix guitar presets!
Thanks Toontrack!!
1
Thanked by: GratefulspleenZedThanks for the response Lachrae!
As it happens the “Country Grooves MIDI” pack *is* on my wish list… but it’s #7 on my list of EZdrummer MIDI packs I’d like (i.e. there is a 6-pack of other selections to come first).
But if they offer it again at the end of the week, I might just grab it for the price (which I assume was $10).
What I’d really love to see is an amazing deal on Traditional Country EZX or the Vintage Upright, but I’m happy for MIDI packs too!
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