The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
  1. #1

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    I use Toontrack's EZDrummer 2 all the time. It's a great piece of equipment.
    Tried EZBass but got nowhere and bought a real bass, which I'm happy with.

    But EZMix? I wasn't even sure what it was supposed to do. (Well, make mixing easier, but in what way, exactly?)

    A short walkthrough:



    A demo from Reaper TV. (Reaper is my DAW, so anything I use would end up in Reaper.)


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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

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    It’s basically a collection of presets utilizing eq, compression, reverbs etc. In practice it provides you with entire mixer tracks ready for production.

    I bought it and tried various guitar expansions packs. I found nothing I could’t do in Logic Pro X. In fact I felt more limited because there is no real control of the signal path in EZ Mix. Not to mention the very tiny (by modern standards) user interface which was difficult for me to use. So I sold it again.

    I think you can actually get more out of packages like Izotope’s Ozone and Neutron (I mean the basic Elements versions which can often be bought for peanuts on sale).

    So EZ Mix is a good idea and probably a very useful tool, if you have any experience with recording and mixing in a DAW, you probably don’t need it. At least try the built-in tools in your DAW before you buy it.

    As for EZ Bass…now that is a miracle for me. I use it in all my songs.

  4. #3

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    Quote Originally Posted by kovacs
    It’s basically a collection of presets utilizing eq, compression, reverbs etc. In practice it provides you with entire mixer tracks ready for production.


    So EZ Mix is a good idea and probably a very useful tool, if you have any experience with recording and mixing in a DAW, you probably don’t need it. At least try the built-in tools in your DAW before you buy it.

    As for EZ Bass…now that is a miracle for me. I use it in all my songs.
    Thanks! I'll pass on EZ Mix for now. I'm increasingly comfortable with Reaper. It's like the ocean----endless possibilities, but if one just likes to hang out on the shoreline there's plenty to do. I'll gradually work my way out into deeper waters...

    I couldn't do anything with EZ Bass. So I bought I real bass. I'm glad to have it too. EZ Bass sounds good but I didn't know where to start with it. What I like about the real bass is that I can start a track (say, drums and a guitar part) and try out different bass lines over it. I'm no great shakes as a bass player but I'm good enough for the material I'm writing now. Often I start songs with a bass line. I like to hear just a bass and drums.

  5. #4

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    +1 to what Kovacs said. Usually I'm able to duplicate what these type of plugins do with the plugins that come with Reaper. I do have "Izotope’s Ozone and Neutron (I mean the basic Elements versions which can often be bought for peanuts on sale)"... I mostly use those to compare what I did with the Reaper plugins as a reality check. For the most part I end up using what I did in Reaper. The exceptions are EZdrummer and Amplitube both of which I use all the time. And of course, now that I'm playing my keyboard/piano, I use third party instrument plugins which Reaper doesn't have many... pianos, organs, synth, etc.

  6. #5

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    As for plugins, I use some from WAVES. Reaper immediately finds them and adds them, so there's no trouble there.

    I use one for vocals, another for my bass, and a third for guitar. I have a "start here" template with a clean guitar sound, a good bass sound, and a good vocal sound so that I can lay things down while they're fresh. Fine tuning is for later. So far, I've been happy with WAVES plugins. Reaper provides a lot, and if you know what you want, you can probably get it done in Reaper. But if you DON'T know exactly what you want, a plugin can get you an in-the-ballpark sound to start with in seconds. That's convenient.