I cannot tell you how much this has helped me (and shown me how wrong I've been doing it this last year or so). Thank you very much for taking the time to do this.
Just downloaded EZ Drummer and decided to look up some tips on using it before I dove head first into using it. You just saved me A LOT of headache! Thank you very much.
Thanks for taking the time to put this great tutorial together. I was struggling to understand how to use EZ Drummer and Reaper, but this has helped me so much!
Why do people “thumbs down” on videos where someone is trying to assist newbies with features? Are they so expert they think it’s arrogant of someone to demonstrate their simple ways of doing things? I just don’t understand what people are thinking when they swipe at someone trying to help others...must be the “way of things.” Creating music used to be utterly cool...dude, thanks for the learned assist!
It took me several tries but I finally got reaper to recognize ez drummer. There's no way I would have figured this out on my own. It got me off the ground for sure. Thanks
I REALLY enjoyed your tutorial. In 20 minutes I was able to get Reaper and EZ Drummer to communicate and lay down a drum track. 20 minutes! Keep 'em coming.
I agree with Matt. Well done and still a great resource 4 years down the road. Much good info here, not only on EZDrummer, but nice coverage on some REAPER basics that are mighty handy. Thank you for posting!
Unfortunately my toontrack and vstplugin folders don’t have a .dll file for ezdrummer but maybe because they do it differently now. I can’t figure out how to get multiple tracks for the drums :( it’s just one track
Great video. I'm just getting started on my own home studio and YT channel, and want to start using ez drummer in my guitar tutorial vids. Thanks, this was a big help.
I followed right along, with windows 10 and my EZderummer2 not showing up in the VST list on Reaper. When I hit rescan, it gives me 3 options. Thats not covered in the video because you had it installed already. Any ideas? thanks
Perfect, perfect, perfect. I"ve been using outboard drum machines but wanting to get it all "inside the box" with more control and EZ Drummer does this like a champ. But I had no idea, once I'd paid the money for the app, how to get it to work in Reaper. And now I do. Thanks! (Jack)
Thank you so much for the video! You convinced me to use Reaper over other more expensive DAW software. And what is more, now it makes more sense how the channels and different effects work together. Thanks!
First of all: THANK YOU!!!! This is the answer I was looking for. Second: I HAD TO RESTART REAPER to make it visible. Maybe this helps someone. I'm using the Evaluation License of Reaper 5.965
This video really helped me after I transferred my reaper files to a new pc from my external hard drive and found that ez drummer and ez miz didn’t transfer perfectly so I had to reset them up in reaper. Thank you!!!!
Man, thank youfor making my life so easier. I was miserable before watching your tutorial. Thank you thank you thank you (and I did not copy/paste those three thank yous)!
Hello again dude, wondered if you might be able to help. I finally managed to add EZdrummer 2 as a VST plugin to my Reaper DAW. My problem is that when I click to Insert Virtual Insrument On New Track and select the EZdrummer VSTi in Reaper, it will open up EZdrummer within Reaper and ask 'Build Routing Confirmation' so I select to open multiple tracks for recording my individual drum tracks etc. I make sure that within EZd menu I have selected 'Enable Midi Out'. If I arm a track to record in Reaper and hit a drum the noise level meter for that track indicates that the drum is registering properly, but when I come to record the drum to the track selected, Reaper does not actually pick the drum up on playback and basically the track monitor is like a flatline instead of seeing peaks etc. I'm sure I must have missed something, but I can't think what, so any help would be appreciated. Sorry this is so long winded, and thanks.
It may be as simple as enabling monitoring for the track that's running EZDrummer. I'll have to play with it next time I'm in the studio to make sure, but give that a try.
Do you need to run the desktop version at the same time as running it as an FX plugin in the app? The reason it's loud is because it's basically running twice isn't it? I don't think you need the desktop app open at all unless you won't be using a DAW in your ezdrummer session. It should just be added as an FX on the track and you can use it through there. Guitar Rig works in the exact same way.
Hey I have followed all these steps to a T but for some reason after I drag and drop my midi file into reaper and press play I have no audio coming out of my monitors but yet all my meters are showing signal. Is this a common problem? Please forgive me if this is a simple fix, I am a newbie. Thank you in advanced if you have a solution! 🙏
Hi thanks for this incredibly helpful starter video. One question: I have a Windows laptop which I'm using for Reaper and EZ Drummer. And I intend to use an electric drumkit with it. So I want to be able to use ASIO as sound driver. But while Reaper is configured to use the ASIO driver EZ Drummer just sends the audio through my laptop speakers. And I can't seem to find a solution for sending the audio to my usb audio mixer into where I connect my headphones. Do you have any experience with that sort of problem and do you have a solution to that? Thank you!!
7:57 - It's loud because it's playing from the track and the plugin. Mute the midi file (right click the groove and choose Mute) in the plugin to get the correct drum volume from the project.
MIDI doesn't produce any sound on its own. So muting the MIDI media item wouldn't actually accomplish anything other than not sending MIDI data to the plugin. That would effectively mute the entire track (I just tried it out of curiosity, and it no longer sends MIDI data to the VSTi, so the entire track mutes as a result). It was loud because the audio samples in EZDrummer are normalized to pretty close to 0dB. Compared to the other audio tracks we record where we try to keep peaks to -6dB and RMS to -18dB, 0dB is pretty darned loud!
@@YHRS I think it was loud because you're actually running two instances of EZDrummer... You shouldn't need the desktop app open if you're running it as an FX plugin inside Reaper. You should just be manipulating the program through the track fx, not the Desktop app.
@@YHRS I think @B Vines is correct. There is an option to mute the midi file in EZ Drummer as he says. Drove me nuts editing the midi in Reaper to remove toms and wondering why I could still hear them when they were gone from the track in Reaper; the original midi in EZ Drummer plays when you hit play in Reaper so you have two sources playing at the same time.
Hello this question has nothing to do with your video but I remembered you actually responded to one of my questions before. I was watching a reaper tutorial video about file management and he had me messing around with preferences and creating back up folders. I did everything he said and now I can’t see any sound waves on my tracks. It’s just blank there’s nothing there. I asked him about it but he hasn’t responded and I can’t figure it out so I’m desperate. And yes I tried view show peaks. I wonder if there’s someway to go back to default preferences because he had me change so much I can’t remember what it was before. Got any ideas on how to get the sound waves displayed again?
No worries! This almost certainly has to do with the peak files. If you go into Options->Preferences->General->Paths, there is a box there that lets you control where you store the peak files for every WAV that you record. If the "Store all peak caches in alternate path" box is checked, then they'll be stored wherever that path points. I always leave that box unchecked, since it doesn't bother me to have peak files mixed in with my WAV files in my project folder. I think that if you're having issues with the waveforms displaying on your timeline, I'd just uncheck that box, then close and reopen Reaper and see if the waveforms get rebuilt and displayed.
Thanks, but when I grab my MIDI track out of EZ drummer and put it into a Reaper track, all is good, then I save it, but when I open Reaper back up it's gone. What would be erasing my MIDI?
How do I split channels/MIDI to another partition? What I am saying is: Let's say I have a simple drum track, and I added that to Reaper, also created exact channels for drum parts like kick, snare etc. As in the video. Then you make kick as solo and only it sounded. But, how do I add kick "lines" or "MIDI notes" to the exact "kick channel"? So I can edit them, maybe? Or easily see where I did kicks. Thank you so much for your video. Really appreciate it.
I think that in order to do it that way, you would need another instance of EZ Drummer running on the kick track, with a MIDI item that only has kick hits on it. Then another instance of EZ Drummer running on another track with only snare hits on it, etc. That'll add up pretty quickly and start to choke your computer's resources, but it should work. As for splitting the MIDI into its individual kit pieces, I'm not sure how to do that. But it looks like Jonathan explains it here on his excellent Reaper Blog: reaperblog.net/2018/06/midi-merge-split/
I’m having issues with latency.. I’m using reaper and easy drummer. I got a midi controller but still I’m having the problem. Any suggestions.? Thank you
You can add/remove individual notes in the Piano Roll in Reaper. You can double-click on any MIDI item, or you can insert a blank MIDI item, click and drag its edge to make it as long as you like, then double-click on that to open the Piano Roll editor grid where you can add notes and adjust their duration/velocity/etc.
Is there a way to collapse all those separate drums and just have the Master drum track showing in the pane? Just to make it easier to see other instruments.
If you add the drums to a folder track, you can collapse them to a couple of different degrees in the track window. Full tracks, narrow tracks, and tiny tracks with just a slim meter. It's very handy! I need to figure out how to do something similar on the mixer window. I'd love to show/hide tracks in that view as well.
I'm currently using a trial version of Reaper to test it out and see how I feel about it before fully licensing it. I can't for the life of me find EZ Drummer as a VST plug in. I've done everything you did in the video so far, and added it to the list, but it still won't show up as an available instrument in a new track. Is this because I'm only using the trial version? Any ideas? I've tried manually finding the location of the file the way you showed and copy/pasting it into the Plug In Path bar, and I've also tried clicking "edit; Add" and finding it that way. It shows up in the list all the way at the end, but it's still not giving me an option to add it as a Virtual Instrument.
Hey, did you ever figure it out? Im sure you did since this post is a year old but I hope to help someone with the same problem we had. So, I was having the same problem. When I paste the path name to EZDrummer 2 so that Reaper can recognize it I put a semicolon and a then space (as he says to do around 3:38 of the video) and it didnt work. I noticed that the other paths did not have a space after the semicolon so I deleted the space and then it worked.
@@frvkmana Hey, did you ever figure it out? Im sure you did since this post is a year old but I hope to help someone with the same problem we had. So, I was having the same problem. When I paste the path name to EZDrummer 2 so that Reaper can recognize it I put a semicolon and a then space (as he says to do around 3:38 of the video) and it didnt work. I noticed that the other paths did not have a space after the semicolon so I deleted the space and then it worked.
My problem is at 7:09. I have created tracks in ezdrummer by dragging and dropping, but recently reaper is not supporting the drag and drop on my computer. I tried running reaper.exe as an administrator and the drag and drop still doesn’t work for ezdrummer.
Any idea why ezdrummer crashes every time I hit the rescan button? It wont add it as a vst plugin, it just says if this causes reaper to crash just restart the program.
