Getting EZplayer pro set up in Ableton Live can be confusing at first, so I thought I’d write up a tutorial with some images.

For this tutorial I’ll be using Ableton 7.0.16.

First, open up Ableton, and open your plugins dialog. Scroll down to EZplayer and drag it into the device creation section, or create a new MIDI track to put it on.

Next, do the same for your Toontrack Plugin of choice, in this case, EZdrummer:

Now, we’ll set up the MIDI routing to tell EZdrummer to take its MIDI input from EZplayer Pro. Click on the pulldown under “MIDI from” select “EZplayer”.

Now do the same for the pulldown under “MIDI FROM“, selecting “EZplayer” from the pulldown. Finally, record enable this track.

Now jump back to the channel that you’ve got EZplayer Pro on. Open the EZplayer interface, and select the drummer you want to use from the pulldown next to the Velocity knob. I’ll select “EZdrummer” from the Toontrack menu:

Now I need to tell EZplayer what channel its going to send MIDI information to. Click the same pulldown you just used to select your drummer, and navigate to the MIDI output menu – select the channel you have EZdrummer on, in this case, channel 3:

Next, select a MIDI groove from your library of grooves and loops. You can drag some of them into EZplayer’s interface from here, or you can audition them using the quick audition player.

Finally, hit play in EZplayer; you’ll notice that EZdrummer is playing back the selected MIDI groove:

That’s it! I’ve included an Ableton Live set for quick reference or you can build this set yourself and save it as a template.

Happy drumming!

-Brian

FM – 10-31-09 Happy Halloween!

EZdrummer WILL work with SNOW LEOPARD!

It is ONLY an “INSTALLER SCRIPT” issue on PHYSICAL MEDIA - AKA “Discs”.

The DOWNLOADABLE “Full” version installer WORKS!

If you login to your Toontrack account and DOWNLOAD the FULL EZdrummer installer…

… This WILL work!!!

NOTE: This download is roughly 600-800mb and will take a little while.

And then…

Also NOTE:

All EZX packs WILL install on SNOW LEOPARD

Superior Drummer 2 and All SDX packs WILL install on SNOW LEOPARD

My - insert Sampler Based plug-in here (Superior Drummer, Groove Agent, etc) - is causing my DAW to

• crash
  
• take 20 minutes to load
  
• Freeze the system
  
• makes the system sluggish or all of the above when opening the session….
  

Or as I’ll put it: “What exactly is happening with RAM in these larger sessions?”

First, before getting hot under that collar, try a little experiment.  Start a NEW session in your DAW, one that doesn’t have any tracks and isn’t coming from any templates.  Now create an instrument track and instance the ‘problem’ plug-in.  Chances are it loads just fine and now works.  So what is going on?  In a nutshell, you’re session is requiring either more RAM than your system has to offer, or is requiring more RAM than the application can allocate…. huh?

It’s like this…

Currently the most RAM an application ON A MAC can allocate is about 4.5 GB of RAM.   If your system has 4 GB or less of RAM to begin with, then you’ll be hitting that ceiling sooner which is obvious.  What isn’t obvious is that for folks who have 6 or more GB of RAM installed your DAW still can only access a maximum of about 4.5 GB of RAM. So every sampler instrument, Drum kit, orchestral library etc you insert in a session is going to take a small piece of the RAM pie until there is no more and then you’ll get the (read opening sentence)

Well that Sux.

Yes it does, but it’s not a new problem. It’s been with us all along and trust me when I say that today, these limitations seem almost minimal compared to where the technology has come from.  What is new however is the A) every computer can now accept a lot more than 4 BG of RAM, and B) the amount of brand new users who have never used a DAW, never used a Sampler, have never been exposed to the inherent limitations of these systems and have been sold a wonderful “yes you can it’s so easy” dream. Which means when reality hits it’s a shocker for most who really have no idea what’s happening ‘under the hood’

Yes Fine, but what can I do?

Someday in the not very far off future applications will become 64bit. What that basically means, in context of this Blog, is that the limitations of memory access are lifted. Native Instruments for example just released a 64 bit version of Kontakt 3.5 which is 64 bit.  Load as much into it as you have RAM for.  But in the meantime, you’ll need to keep an eye on your overhead.  Don’t load 6 instances of EZDrummer, Don’t load the Acoustic Grand Piano into your templates if you don’t play it. In the case of VSL, they created an application that loads the Vienna library into a second application in the background. This means you get 4.5 GB of RAM just for the orchestra library, and still get to keep 4.5 GB of Ram for whatever DAW you are running.  As long as you’ve got 10 or more GB of RAM to begin with it’s a great solution.

As a final caveat, keep in mind that the 4.5 GB limit I mention here does vary from DAW to DAW, It simply a maximum potential and does not necessarily mean 4.5 GB worth of samples. The DAW itself is taking up RAM and that will vary and some applications may max out at a maximum allocation of 4 or less.

It can be so complicated can’t it?

We’ll start by creating a NEW Garage Band project, just to keep it simple.

Starting with a blank GB project, click on TRACK from the top menu area,

and from the dropdown, choose NEW TRACK.

Select “SOFTWARE INSTRUMENT” and click on “CREATE”. Below…

You will now have a new TRACK that automatically loads a Grand Piano. Below…

Next, on the right hand side of the screen, click on the “EDIT” tab. Below…

At the top of that window, you will see “Sound generator” and you

will see the word PIANO in a “bar”… Below…

Click on the word PIANO and a pop-up menu will appear… Below…

From this pop-up menu, choose EZdrummer from the list. Below…

EZdrummer will “load” but, you won’t “see” it until you click on

the new “Sound Generator” icon that replaces the “Piano Keys” icon. Below…

After clicking on the GENERIC Sound generator ICON, you will see EZdrummer… Below…

At this point, you will either see the window ABOVE OR you will see this… Below…

If you see the window above, you will need to AUTHORIZE EZdrummer.

For instructions on how to Authorize EZdrummer see this article…

http://www.toontrack.com/support_portal.asp?prod=EZdrummer%20and%20EZX%20expansions&issue=Authorization&os=Mac%20OS%2010.5.x&seq=Garageband

Once you are Authorized or if you are already Authorized, you can start using EZ drummer…

Click on the “OPEN GROOVES” button IN EZdrummer. Below…

And then you will see this (below)… Click on each category until you find what you want and then

Drag and Drop the “groove” you want.

… And it will look like this (below) after a “Drag and drop”.

Finally, let’s change that PIANO ICON to a DRUMMER ICON!

CLOSE the EZdrummer window (you can always bring it back by clicking on the EDIT TAB and then clicking on the GENERIC SOUND GENERATOR icon).

And we will be back here (below).

Now click on the PIANO ICON here… Below…

And you will see this pop-up selection of ICONS… Below…

Just click on the ICON of your choice (DRUMSET) and your new ICON will appear in your track.

(then change the name)

That’s it!

Toontrack support

Powered by Obedia

7-29-09 / FM

FOR PC:

From your “C: drive” OR install them (in the first place) on a drive OTHER than

your “C: drive”

If you have already installed EZdrummer or an EZX pack that you want to “MOVE”…

The first thing you have to do is UN-INSTALL EZdrummer or EZX sound packs using

the WINDOWS “Add or Remove Programs” utility in the WINDOWS Control Panel.

NOTE: You may UNINSTALL and REINSTALL EZdrummer or EZX packs on THE SAME COMPUTER

as many times as you like WITHOUT re-authorizing.

AUTH CODES and SERIAL NUMBERS can allways be viewed in your Toontrack account.

FROM THE TOP…

Toontracks, Swedish developers of award winning drum samplers, have generously provided OBEDIA with EZdrummer and Superior Drummer 2.0, two of their premier products, as prizes in a drawing exclusively for OBEDIA members. Both are RTAS, VST and Audio Units compatible and both run on Mac OSX and Windows. No matter your DAW of choice this will be an excellent addition to your system

Two lucky OBEDIA members get the chance of winning a great product from Toontrack! The drawing will take place on January 15th and is open to all registered OBEDIA members. Only one entry each registered member please. Enter now before it’s too late and get a chance to win one of these superb drum samplers.

Click Here to Enter

I recently got a call from one our regular clients about some funky-ness while

“Dragging & Dropping” MIDI in Cubase 4. In this case we were using Toontrack’s

EZdrummer. It’s usually very straight forward… You open up the Grooves window in

EZD, find what you want and just drag it over to the MIDI track that is assigned to EZD.

BUT, instead of the “chunk” of MIDI just dropping where we wanted it – It would create a

couple of NEW, UNWANTED tracks. Worse than that, it kept creating new pairs of these

unwanted tracks EVERY TIME we did a Drag and Drop from EZD.

I figured that this HAD to have something to do with a preference in Cubase 4… So, I did

some digging and this is what I figured out…

NEXT…

When you do a MIDI “Drag and Drop, you are essentially IMPORTING MIDI into your

Project so, I had a look at the MIDI Preferences in Cubase 4…

To get to your Preferences, Click on the FILE MENU and then Click on PREFERENCES

As shown here…

NEXT…

What I discovered was right here…

The DEFAULT Setting has these two options (see below) ON!

I’m not quite sure what “Auto Dissolve Format 0″ is or does but,

After much playing around with it, I determined that things are better

With this setting OFF. The next setting is the more obvious one…

“Import To Instrument Tracks”… This one is the real culprit. This

Was creating new instrument tracks EVERY time we did a Drag And Drop.

SO – Shut these two “preferences” OFF and Dragging And Dropping MIDI

In Cubase 4 will act the way you’d expect.