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EZ Drummer 2 Overview with Rikk Currence

for anybody out there in the audience and Internet land that's not familiar with easy Drummer to it is without a doubt the world's best leading solution for virtual drums. So if you want, if you want toe, you make digital drums that don't sound fake. Easy Drummer and its big brother, Superior Drummer are definitely the tools you want to use. Um, Rick is the president of Tune Track North America. So, uh, he is the mouth piece of the company and interfaces with the mothership back in Sweden. Hey has done millions of demos, and he's actually going doing a whole class tomorrow about song writing with Easy Drummer, too, because, as he's gonna explain to you, kind of, that's the new song. Writing tools are really the focus of what makes easy term or two different than the first version. So, uh, since he's in town figured we'd have him on to give us a little sneak preview of what's gonna be Tomorrow and introduce easy drummer to to anybody that might not be familiar with it. He's also the pre...

sident of the Beard Club of North America, so he's the president of actually both and also a client. I don't think I've ever been called the president of the Beard Club of America and a mouthpiece in the same introduction. It's fantastic. Love here creativelive indelible. So hey, just a quick thanks to creative life for having me even the day before our session. There's so many cameras of people don't have to look at someone's gonna look forward today. I just want to give everyone sort of an overview on Easy Drummer to Many people probably are aware that it's out, but there may be some folks that are as familiar with it or why it's out. So the real quick sort of condensed version again of what we'll be doing tomorrow will be spending a lot more time in a lot more detail. But today I just want to walk you through a couple of really basic things. First of foremost Easy Drummer to, as the name indicates, is the sequel to our number one selling production software that was released in 2008 and that was the original Easy Drummer. I'm sorry 2006. It's been eight years since it was released, so this is sort of a highly anticipated kind of follow up to a really, really popular program. And the success of the original Easy drummer was based on the fact that not only didn't provide production quality sound, but it really had a stripped down interface that allowed you to get in and really concentrate on making music. There's nothing really exciting about the concept of programming drum tracks, but writing songs is a really cool concept, so we wanted to focus on that and sort of take all of the complication out of that process. So with easy drummer to, we live in that same lineage and we've got it up on the screen here. As you can see, when you open the program up, you sort of get the bird's eye view of the drum kit kind of something we made very popular in the software world with the original release of Easy Drummer in 2000 and six. As you hit an instrument, you get its primary sound so you can kind of scroll through the instrument and preview the sounds you'll see. There's some arrows where you can drop down and tweak some things. But if I showed you how to use that, I wouldn't need to come tomorrow and show you really how to use it. So we're just gonna keep moving on. You see that the top is sort of delineated. We've got different tabs, and this is part of the new workflow enhancement with Easy Drummer. The browser tab, for instance, gives you access to all of your many drum performances, and this looks and should look really familiar to the original easy drummer users because we borrow this from the original program. Nothing's really changed here. There are a few more options and bells and whistles, but ultimately this gives you a preview of every MIDI file you have in your library at your disposal. Another new feature in Easy Drummer to is to sort of take that browser concept one step further, and it's our search function Now. This is a really complex and rich sort of, I guess, tool that really helps you articulate and find the song structures and grooves you're looking for when writing. And there are a number of things that you can do again. We're gonna talk all about this in detail tomorrow, but just know that this basically takes your browser and makes it completely and thoroughly, easily searchable by you. The end user show you one really quick, cool feature is our tap to find feature. You simply click on the button and then in the worst, most rhythmic way, you can tap out a beat to the click track as much as you can see, I'm gonna try and do it as horribly as I can. Set the co organization here a little bit deeper. Case award, eighth notes. So let's go. So nice. Clean it up, See, do all the work for you that we could just tap some high hats over that it's gonna clean that up to. And then we can it show me results, and it's gonna actually look through your mini library based on that horrible group I tapped in and it corrected and fine grooves that it thinks it's similar, and it's going to show you how similar it is based on the percentage here. So, for instance, this is a 79% match to that monstrosity I just tapped in. Let's see if it's even close. It's not close, which is why it's only 79% match. However, it does have some of that particular vibe from this horrible group here. But anyway, this is just one of many of the features we're gonna go over in depth tomorrow. And then, of course, the last page is our mixer page, and the mixer page sort of brings everything together in a way that's familiar for the original easy Germer user as we had a mixer in the original Easy drummer. But we take it to sort of another step here on give you some tools and some song writing and production options that weren't available in the first easy drummer. So, for instance, if we were to go back to the search page and grab this committee group, we could drag it down to our song track. And then if we go back to the mixer, we kind of see what's happening here. We could make some some pretty standard adjustments, but you'll also notice we've got some effects that are set up here as well. Now, when you click one of these knobs, you'll notice the mixer channels lineup because this novice corresponding toe what's going on in those channels, which is really kind of a nice visual way for you to see what's happening with your mixes. You're adjusting things. So again, Ah, lot of amazing features. There's some song editing features, Semitic e editing features. There's a whole slew and kind of plethora of really new, intuitive songwriting functions. I mean, let's face it, recording drums wonderfully and recording drums well is an art form. And we like to think that we're really good at it. And we've been doing it long enough to where we know, works and what doesn't. But just working with raw drum sounds isn't necessarily always inspiring. It's not always really fun to sit down and bang a snare. Okay, well, that's audition. I mean, this gets monotonous. So what we've tried to do is take the production aspect of having the sounds you want combined with an interface that really allows you to just sit down with your instrument and start writing in real time. The addition of the song track here at the bottom and a couple of the other features and functions again, we're gonna go over this all ridiculously in depth tomorrow, really make the easy drummer to experience a unique in that it sort of blurs the line between software an instrument, and that's what we wanted again. Rarely do I find guys and gals in our industry getting excited to go work with their software. They want to work with an instrument. They want something that's organic, something that's intuitive. And we would really like to think with easy drummer to We've sort of taken this eight year lineage of the original easy drummer. Listen to all of our users for all the features they wanted to add. Put him in there, innovated a few things as well, which again will go over. And we've come up with this sort of beautiful hybrid instrument that really empower songwriters and producers to work efficiently and quickly and is, you know, it's corny, but easily. I mean, that's the whole point. So we've taken a lot of the guesswork out of multimillion dollar recording session, put it in your hands and made it accessible to everybody for when they need it, Why they need it, how they need it. So we're really excited, excited for the class tomorrow as well. It's familiar with superior drummer. How would you compare easy drummer to to superior the interesting thing about superior drummer is. We call that superior drummer for a reason. So it came out in 2008 again. It's been a while since it came out, and there were a number of features and still are in superior drummers. We've updated it actually. Quick. Blurb If your superior Germer to owner. Last week we released the newest update for Superior Germer Update. Your software disappeared 2.4 brilliant stuff and actually makes it more compatible with Easy Drummer to. So now the commercials over Back to Your question Superior drummer was created from a strictly a production standpoint, meaning you are the person that wants to spend 19 hours tweaking the kick drum. We have an app for that, right? It's appeared Number two. You can go in and literally craft and create sound to the level that you really can't. An easy drummer. Superior drummer is our attempt to taking the multi track recording studio, the multi $1,000,000 drum recording session, top notch producers and just giving it all to you and its purest form and saying you do with it. What you want to easy drummer to is about, You're in the moment you're in that creative zone where you just want to write. You really don't want to think about sounds and manipulation and production to a real vast extent. You want to get in and write your music and have stuff ready to go. So what we found is that many of our superior to users are already responding very positively, owning both programs, saying, You know, put up on the laptop, I sit in front of it. I write Export Committee. I opened my dog. I open superior because it's what I'm used to. And then I have this, this level of the depth that you know these drummer to doesn't give me. And it's a great marriage of both. The really cool thing about superior to is as it is the flagship. Everything we do from a drum product standpoint works and superior. So if you own easy drummer to the library's working superior, all your easy X is working superior. So it's really it's It's a lot of the same user, but they're really just different tools. You know, you have a ball peen hammer framing hammer. They're both hammers, but they do different things. Use him in a different time, eso One of things that I think helps me I'm writing is having great sounds toe work with whether that's, you know, guitar, drums, whatever. And I think the recordings, the drum, the sounds you have an easy drummer are incredible. I know that you guys put a lot of time and energy and money into producing them. Can you kind of give people look behind the curtains that, like, for example, this is this kid is new, right? Talk about those compliments. I had nothing to do with it very much. Know this the so the core libraries. And that is a great point because again like we talked about sound could be inspiring. The actual kit we're looking at is part of the core easy drummer to library. And there are two kits in that in that he's a drummer to program our modern kit and our vintage kit. So we went to British Grove Recording Studios in London, which is owned by Mark Knopfler from Dire Straits, and we worked with engineer Chuck mainly, and we went in and again. This library that we're listening to is recorded over four years ago, and we went in with the purpose of recording sort of two very distinct libraries. Anyone that may know or, if you don't know British Growth Studios is world renowned for sort of its behind the scenes technical proficiency. They have a number of things there that you won't find in any other studio, including one of the last remaining. If I think it is the last remaining AM I read council, so they have a number of things that are unique to that environment and, you know, beautifully crafted rooms. So we went in and recorded for the Modern live for a three different drum kits that accommodate a modern style of music. So, for instance, this is the DW kit, but we also have a Gretsch kit, and we have a Yamaha kit. Now it's interesting about those three drum kits is if you know anything about just drums. Over the past 20 years, those are the three most recorded drum sets in modern music. The Drum Workshop collector Siri's, the plethora of Gretch vintage kits from round match all the way up to current models, and then the Yamaha recording Custom Kid, arguably one of the most recorded drum sets in history. So from a modern standpoint, the core library of Easy Drummer to comes with the three most recorded drum sets in history. But then they take it a step further. We have the vintage library because we think that vintage rooms air cool as well. And obviously two of the most sought after vintage drum sets to record will be just a regular Ludwig Club date kit on a Ludwig Vista light kit. So we have both of those recorded with techniques and production that utilize the vintage gear. They have a British growth and sort of bring out. You know, we can hear kind of that different sound very, very different snapping kind of old school kind of a thing. So the idea for Easy drummer to from a pallet standpoint is to give you the best of the new and the old. So if you're writing, you've got some options. And then, of course, all of the original expansion. Leiber's for easy drummer work, and he's a drummer to is you get to have a number loaded. I mean, we goto world class studios two or three times a year to record new studios and libraries for our users. And that's really one of the long term successes of Easy Drummer has been that we've never stopped giving our customers new experiences, because when we go to a studio, we may send our sound design team to capture the sounds. But we always work with a world class producer, someone that doesn't make Sam. They're not a sample producer. Their music producer, Chuck Ainley. We've worked with Path Raul, meal Endorsement. Randy Styled and we go in with folks that make records in the world class Rexall millions of records because they have sort of the perfect view on how to record Rome's for people to use in real music. One of those libraries that you did was with our friends that out of your hammer who are on earlier today? Yes, you don't talk about that one a little bit. Yeah, that is the metal Easy X. And actually, that's one of our newest expansion libraries that came out. I believe it was November of 2013 Metal Month. Every Air Force and we worked with Jason and Mark from Audio Hammer, and they did an amazing job, and they basically the same thing. They have the guys that audio hammer have a very unique perspective on the music they make and how they make it. So they're very familiar with what bands are not only looking for, and I think that's a key ingredient to producer. But they also have a very realistic view of what works on a record. I think a lot of us when we listen to records, it's easy to dream and think this would be greater. This is. But when you are producer, time is money and money is money. So you have to know what's gonna work, and you have to balance the art in the commerce. So they put together the metal Easy X, which will also be showing tomorrow. We'll do a little bit, will go through all these e x is, and it's a really unique take on the metal genre. So again, every time we invest in a recording session, you're getting new producers new drums in a different studio location because we think that's important, too, supporting what's out there. I mean, we could very easily like a lot of companies do just have a studio record, everything ourselves, and here's our libraries. But we go out of our way to spend the time in the money and the effort to work with the best people we confined so that when you pull up a kit, you don't have to think about how good it sounds. Well, before we move on to our Mesa segment one last question for just ah, more philosophical note. So you talked about you know what bands want? And I think an interesting dynamic is that your software has very significantly influenced what bands want. Like drum kit from hell in a lot of ways, defined the modern metal drum sound. Can you talk about kind of the interplay between those two like between, you know, you, influencing them, them influencing you, and vice versa. I think it was the perfect storm for folks that don't know to track. Our company is housed in Sweden, Sweden. Maybe you've heard of this very, very significant banned from that area called Machuca a same time we were in need as a fledgling company of the perfect Sample library. They were looking for a sample library for their own needs, and that's how the original drum kit from hell is a marriage between the two. We've been friends, and the company's still friends with people still use drum kit from now all the time. That was Tomas from Michigan and his sonar kit and the way they recorded it in the way they heard it, Daniel Berg Strand the producer, and it came out at a time that was very pivotal. That product came out in 1999 and I know it's difficult to think back to what was going on musically or even technologically, but their software wasn't like it is now, so you kind of had to make account. And it was revolutionary in the fact that up until that point in time, drum sample libraries were literally it was a sample. It was someone hit a drum. That's the recording. And then when you need the drum to get quieter, you make that sample quieter allowed. And it was a one dimensional product for the most part, drunk it from hell. The original recording was not only the first to really start to utilise the effect of hitting like a drummer would hit at different layers in different velocities, but utilizing what recording engineers always knows. The secret to a good drum sound. It's the room and getting that involved as well and arguably in the sugar to find a generation of artists, metal artists and even rock artists. They kind of their this genre defying entity celebrating their 25th year, no doubt this year, which is amazing, too. And I just think at that particular point time. If you look at the original drum kit from hell and you listen to it critically, you hear what is very prevalent in metal today. The depth and the heaviness of the guitars gave way to the fact that the drums couldn't just be, although end, it couldn't be a big, meaty sound like maybe the eighties or even the seventies. There needed to be some top end clarity. They needed to be defined, and they need to cut through. And that's what we got. And ultimately you never know. I like nobody sits down ago. Today we're going to redefine the way things that just doesn't happen. But asthma sugar became sort of ah sensation in that late nineties early 2000 people were hearing these intricate rhythms for the first time and hearing this new style of music. You could always hear the drums, the drums cutter. So it became this sort of Okay, so the heavier you get, you have to have that sort of drum, and it just sort of I don't think it was ever a spoken or plan thing. But ultimately, that sound just lent itself to always being accessible to bands like in Perfect three guitar. But there's really no room for anything. Sometimes we have three guitar player, so having a really unique take on being there again, it's weird because when you talk to the team they remember, they remember how everyone's like those kick drums, air a little clicking. Things that weren't no was like. That's kind of that's not what. And now, if you hear a metal record where the kick drums aren't clicking like what's wrong, can't hear the kick drum. So they inadvertently kind of changed the way guys work with samples in recorded heavy music. And that's kind of cool