Year/Date of Issue: 2023
Version: 2.0.3
Developer: Toontrack
Website: Toontrack
Format: STANDALONE, VSTi3, AAX*, AU
Bit depth: 64bit
Tablet: cured (Team V.R)
System requirements: 5 GB free disk space (plus 4 GB for download).
64-bit Windows 7 or newer, 4 GB RAM (8 GB RAM or more recommended).
macOS 10.10 or higher, Intel or Apple silicon processor, 4 GB RAM (8 GB RAM or more recommended).
A 64-bit host (with support for VST 3, AU or AAX). Standalone is included.
Description: In May we opened the door to a new generation of EZkeys. Ready to write, play and create? Welcome and meet your new pianist.
* Fully resizable and scalable interface.
* Bandmate: Get chords and grooves based on your own audio or MIDI.
* Built-in mesh editor with humanization, scale matching, synchronization features and more.
* Tap2Find: Get grooves based on the rhythm and notes you enter.
* Brand new piano, recorded using a wide range of microphones and atmospheres.
* Mix-ready presets for a wide range of styles and sounds
* An all-new MIDI library covering a variety of playing styles and musical genres.
* New business model: The software includes the main sound library. Installation is possible on a “clean” system, or on top of a previously installed version.
Release notes for EZkeys 2.0.3
CHANGES :
General
“Notifications” are a new type of dialog used to display information and/or suggestions for operations in certain situations. They can be disabled in Settings.
Attempting to play the song track while there are chords but no MIDI on the track will trigger such a notification, informing that MIDI is needed to actually hear sounds, and it has a button for instantly adding MIDI to the chords on the track.
Song Track
Placing an external MIDI file on the song track will show a new dialog with MIDI import options.
The song track can now automatically scroll if needed while the Pencil tool is being used to add blocks.
MIDI block operations, such as Mute and Quantize, are now available also if only song parts or chords are selected, as long as there are some MIDI blocks beneath.
The “Song Parts,” “Chords” and “MIDI” headers, shown in the middle of the track during drags and when the Pencil tool is active, are now hidden whenever they would overlap with a song part, chord or MIDI block.
Right-clicking in the time signature editor will now show an edit menu.
Edit Chord View
An information popup has been added for the “Keep Melody/Ostinato” option when it is active.
Changing chords by clicking in the chord wheel now removes the bass note part of the chord if “Keep Melody/Ostinato” is enabled.
When “Keep Melody/Ostinato” is enabled, “Adjust Notes to Scale” is automatically enabled for chords that are not in the current song key.
“Adjust Notes to Scale” is automatically enabled for IV chords.
When inversions are applied and the inverted notes are moved as much as one octave, now the other right-hand notes are moved one octave too. Inversion can now also alter chords that don’t have any chord notes in them.
Grid Editor
The pedal block editor now supports rectangular marquee selection.
Grooves Tab
Previewing in Replace MIDI mode, there is no longer a playhead visible in the browser (since it was not always able to show a correct/relevant position) but the playhead on the song track has been made larger.
Changes in user MIDI folders in the OS will now be immediately detected and a red notification dot will be shown on the folder in the Grooves tab, indicating the need to run a “Sync File Changes” operation (available in the context menu for the folder).
If an empty folder in a user library is selected, a “Drag MIDI files here” box is shown.
Bandmate
The Edit menu has been expanded with more options.
A context menu can now be accessed by right-clicking anywhere on the tracks.
Whenever the current filters/input would yield zero results in the Bandmate browser, there will now always be a very basic groove shown instead of an empty list.
Settings
In the VST 3 format, there is a new info section regarding Program Change and Bank Select on the MIDI Input settings page.
BUG FIXES :
General
Instantiating the plug-in in a DAW and immediately selecting “Open Project” from the File menu should no longer show the “do you want to save” dialog.
Opening a project with different selections in the browser than before would cause the project to immediately be marked as modified (triggering the “do you want to save” dialog if for example “Open Project” was selected again).
Loading a new project while a native file/folder selection dialog was open could cause a crash.
Trying to load an EKX that no longer exists on disk should no longer crash.
Song Track
MIDI blocks with sustain could affect playback of other blocks earlier on the track.
Removing notes from the beginning of a block by resizing it, then adding a note in the Grid Editor so that the block is expanded back to the left, the old notes would appear again.
Changing chords could cause notes to overlap. Overlapping notes will now be removed if a chord is different from the original chord.
In arpeggio chords, inversions could end up moving right-hand notes on top of or below left-hand notes.
Recording from a MIDI instrument while looping in a DAW could incorrectly cause the “similar MIDI detected” dialog to appear.
Drag-repeating a deselected MIDI block when some other block was selected would repeat the selected block instead of the one clicked on.
Hovering over a chord edge with the mouse and deleting selected chords could cause a crash.
Using tempo ramps could potentially lead to the playhead getting stuck during playback.
On Mac, Ctrl plus left mouse button did not work to open context menus on song parts and chords.
Fixed a crash related to bad MIDI files.
Turning the Amount knob could cause a crash if MIDI blocks were in unsnapped positions.
The Amount knob could end up in a state where resetting it back to 0 did nothing.
The keyboard shortcuts for moving the playhead did not work properly with time signatures other than 4/4.
At startup of the plug-in/standalone, if the default project had an active loop area, the loop button was not toggled on.
Clicking Octave Up or Down in Edit Play Style so that the clicked button became disabled would in some DAWs make the plug-in lose keyboard focus.
Undoing/redoing muting a MIDI block would not graphically update it, unless it was below/inside a Song Part block.
Edit Chord View
Clicking outside the chord editor did not close it in all cases.
The “Adjust Notes to Scale” button didn’t have a tooltip.
The chord preview didn’t play the correct notes in some cases.
During chord preview, the sustain pedal would sometimes not be released at the end, causing the previewed chord to ring longer than desired.
The inversion and the octave were not possible to edit as text (except inversion when it was “Auto” but then it didn’t work to write “0”).
The Inversion Down button would never get greyed out if the lower limit was -1.
Keys Tab
Changing the tuning was not possible to undo.
Grid Editor
The program could freeze when applying Humanize in some cases.
Auto-scroll in the Grid Editor would not work after marquee selection had been used.
Nodes in the CC and pitch curve editor would under certain circumstances be skipped (most notably causing the sustain pedal not to trigger correctly).
Bandmate
“Select Containing Folder in Grooves” would not be enabled in the context menu if the loaded output groove did not exist in the visible groove list.
Using the keyboard to switch away from the Bandmate tab when the chord editor was open would leave the chord editor open over the new tab.
Pressing stop to rewind would only move the playhead but not scroll the view to the start.
The track timeline in Bandmate could under certain circumstances become very strange, having the first bar not positioned at the beginning, and that could lead to freezes.
Selecting a new audio source file did not properly update the loop area.
