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[Mark Styles]

Back in the 80s, six companies worked together to make the MIDI specs. MIDI has survived and prospered. Something like this needs to be done again with music software, DAW’s etc.  There are way too many musicians for this NOT to be done.  I can’t believe Apple put out Logic with this makeshift way to make a chord track.  My composing, producing, and songwriting friends use a handful of programs to do their work now. The current situation is just indicative of how far companies will go to force you to only use their family of programs and plug-ins.

I am fed up with it. It seems like I spend 1/3 of my time talking, emailing, and typing in those stupid little ‘chat’ boxes to get a simple process to work.

This is akin to an expensive car manufacturer. just to be special, decides to put a ‘brake button’ on the steering wheel, just so they are unique.  As each company wants to be more special, they make up their own different techniques.

• This post was modified 1 week, 6 days ago by Mark Styles.

[Mark Styles]

I’ve been putting EZ presets in the song folder of my DAW for that particular project.

[Mark Styles]

You’ve got the start of a great composing system.  Yet you do not follow through.  You could have the best composing system.

[Mark Styles]

11/24/2025

I am not able to save the EZ Keys project.  I save it with 3 or 4 tracks.  It opens up empty, no chord track, no MIDI patterns, using Mac Studio, OS 15.7, EZ Keys 2, Logic Pro 11.

Auto saves work, but are named by the date and time.  APITA.

• This post was modified 2 weeks, 2 days ago by Mark Styles.

[Mark Styles]

You will notice a lot of questions are dated 2 years ago, NOT a good sign..  I own all EZ keys, drums, and bass, and Superior drums also. Toontracks products are excellent.  Having a fair amount of crashes using EZ keys/bass/drums with Logic Pro 11.  The lack of information is disheartening. It is a complex piece of programming.  I haven’t figured out  everything yet, so maybe the problem is my understanding of it.

I certainly don’t like the idea of locking non-owners out of forums.  That raises a LOT of read flags.  I bought another AI-type system for choosing chords, making parts.  I posted a message about how inadequate the explanation of how to do processes was, and I had to go through 3 companies to purchase, download, register, and find tutorials to learn it, cause the main company just has one guy showing you all the amazing things it does, without showing you how. The message was deleted in one day.

To their credit, they made purchasing, installing, and tutorials available.  Other people are making clearer and detailed instructions.  I have given up on it for now, because their progress in making it understandable is moving too slow.  I think they will catch up in time.

I’m feeling the same way about the EZ line.  It is brilliant, but too many issues.  I’ve spent hours working on the keys, bass, and drums before importing them into Logic. EZ bass will crash, forcing Logic to reload all plug-ins.  Most of my EZ line individual ‘project’ saves are not loadable. “Recent audio saves” are much more helpful, but I still lose changes I made.  Sometimes the bass plays the chords along with its bass part.  Still haven’t figured out what I am doing wrong, or if it is a bug.  The EZ Bass definitely needs to be brought up to the standard with which the EZ keys work.  Although the articulations you can put into EZ bass are tasty.

It could be a fantastic tool, and I read posts that claim that, but I have come across too many online companies now that have fake posts and mislead you to make a sale. I’ll keep plugging at it, in for a penny – in for a pound

[Mark Styles]

I’ve noticed EZ Bass resolves chords with extensions to a  basic triad

Reply To: Import EZKeys 2 project Chords version: 1.3.1
Operating system: macOS Sequoia (15)

[Mark Styles]

It’s 11/2025… After spending several hours creating a great long chord progression.   I find I CANNOT import/drag/drop into EZ bass..  My EZ keys have a lot of 9ths, 13th notes, along with 7ths, 5ths, 3rds, as the bass, also Diminished, suspended chord.  EZ bass just modifies all chords to triads, clashing/destroying the movement of my chord progression.

I can find no mention of how to get around this.  Except wait for an update. which hasn’t happened.

Native Instruments has the beginning of a great system, yet they have dropped the ball.  I haven’t found another suitable system. They are either to esoteric and undefined.  I cannot write a song doing only 4 bars at a time, bounding them. Then, only see a 150 chords displayed in one unending line.

Someone please tell me I’m missing something

[Mark Styles]

Do you have a ‘dry’ drum kit.   a week or two back, I thought I got an email about new Superior drum kits.  It was a ‘dry drumkit’..  The picture had towels on some of the drums.  The audio examples were great, very dry. I went back to your site but couldn’t find it.   Maybe I had a senior moment.

Do you have such a drum kit?   Thanks… Mark Styles

[Mark Styles]

Totally agree with you..  If they up EZ bass, EZ drums to the complexity of EZ keys.  It will be a much stronger package.  Right now I’m working with sending the same midi data to EZ Keys, and Logic Pro 11,  cutting/splicing/merging outputs from the two ‘players’ to make something unique and a bit more interesting.  Doing the same with Bass, drums also.  More work, but makes a noticeable difference.

• This post was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by Mark Styles.

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Thanked by: rpm-nj

[Mark Styles]

I bought easy bass first, very impressed, then easy drums – not enough control, over individual sounds, not useful for some users.. Finally EZ keys..  IT HAS TO BE UPDATED!!!!!     I’m not bothering to buy anything from you anymore.

The idea to use a shared chord trak is brilliant, and saves a lot of time in making controllable and interesting bass/drums. If you completed the system, you would have a powerful tool.  which I’m sure a lot of people buy into

I understand you are going for a different, larger market – and if that’s your goal – Good luck to you,,

Superior drums is well – SUPERIOR..   I need the same especially for the keys. Packaging them all as different VI’s is JUST CHEESY.  A cheap ‘f**k you to the customer’  You’re just want the money now.

[Mark Styles]

UPGRADE EZKEYS  PLEASE

I’ve owned Superior Drums for many years.  Always appreciated the time, and effort that went into creating this.  A top-notch product.  Over Thanksgiving, I tried the trial of EZ Bass, which Seemed pretty decent, But 10 days is not enough time to learn this instrument, seeing as the manual is so minimal.  During your sale, I invested several hundred dollars into EZ BASS, EZ KEYS, EZ DRUMs.  Because you presented it as a songwriting packing stating the programs worked together to create a easy system to write songs.

When I got to EZ keys, I am shocked.  It is so far behind EZ Bass, in terms of functions, I found it very misleading (almost criminal the way you presented it).  If I had bought everything from Thoman in England, I could have returned everything..

If you updated EZEYS to the level of EZ BASS, EZDRUMS. things would be really fine. It’s like you started EZ keys as a clever inexpensive tool, Then EZ drums. Now with EZ Bass, you have brought this past the cheap 1 trick tool.  You have the foundation for a powerful suite of tools, but can’t quite decide what you want to do.  Much as Apple’s top-of-the-line Mac Pro was their crowning glory, They then discovered of iPhone, and iWatch, ipads, were much cheaper with a greater profit.   They seem to be begrudgiNG upgrade the  Mac Pro, because the profit and sales of other productions far outweigh the Pro.  Several times I have gone into Apple stores. and most of the staff is not really clear on what a Mac Pro is and some even Logic Pro.

Toontracks is in a similar position, they are straddling the fence on whether to invest the time to make.  I also feel like some customers here.  Neglected and kinda ‘RIPPED OFF’.

PLEASE UPDATE/UPGRADE EZ KEYS

[Mark Styles]

Possibly try the EZ keys trial, and see how that interprets GP.  You can easily drag EZ keys midi output into EZ Bass.   Yes, I also noticed EZ bass has trouble interpreting midi. I tried EZ keys, and it was better for me.  Unfortunately EZ keys has not been updated in a long time.  It would be EXTREMELY helpful if they brought it up to the level of EZ Bass.

Reply To: Guitar Pro MIDI Exports version: 1.1.6
Operating system: macOS Monterey (12)

[Mark Styles]

Yes you can.  Mac is notorious for putting the smallest SSD in their computers.   I bought an OWC Thunderbolt RAID system.  It houses 4 drives, that work as one FAST drive. Never had an issue with not being fast enough.  The benefit you can have is a huge amount of space (depending on the size you get) You can make aliases of data on your system drive, to move files to RAID  to free up more space.

I formatted the RAID  drive to RAID 5.. This uses one drive (of the four) as a ‘safety backup’.  You can retrieve ALL data if one of the drives goes down.  The SoftRAID system is extremely robust. It will give you plenty of time to repair any corruption.

I have two Thunderbay RAID systems for 7 years now.  Only had to replace one drive in 7 years.

Take into account your future plans.  Maybe you don’t need all that extra space.  Perhaps SSDs will come down in price in the future when a new technique is discovered.

[Mark Styles]

You can easily start with just the instrument. Play around with that for a while. Then listen to examples of different midi packages to see what you might like.

[Mark Styles]

I’ve been using SD3 with Logic Pro X for quite a few years.  I have SD3 sync to Logic and audition different drum parts, I directly drag the midi loops from SD3 into Logic Superior Drum track.   I drag in all loops I might possibly use.  I also drag in several fills from different styles, intros, endings, etc. In Logic I color each midi region – all drum intros are red, all verses are blue, fills are yellow etc. Then I string them together in the order I like, cut and paste in Logic. ETC.

You can use SD3 midi drum loops from different styles, then go back to the DAW midi drum track, and copy-paste different parts, like Hi-hat or Kick so that a different style is more consistent with the primary beat you’ve established.

This method works great for me, I much prefer to string midi together in the Logic rather than on Superior Drums 3 track. Especially on long song projects with 100-200 measures.

Just make sure your DAW allows you to drag in midi regions (I think all DAWs would have that feature by now).  It’s all in perfect sync.

• This post was modified 3 years ago by Mark Styles.

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