Toontrack Cinematic Pads

In the Toontrack eco-sphere, they pretty
much have you covered for the majority of
your commercial music requirements. With the
impressive roster of EZDrummer, EZ Bass and
EZKeys, the ease with which you can assemble
impressive track elements, with equally
impressive speed, is genius personiied.
However, Toontrack have recently been
furnishing their EZ Packs with imaginative
elements of sound design.
The silver Screen
The EZKeys suite started life as an accessible
way to get great pianistic sounds into your song,
(especially helpful to non-keyboardists) and the
lineup has been increasing steadily since.
The opening salvo of pan-swept goodness
immediately inspires conidence, thanks to the
glittering array of sampled content, from
analogue and modular synths, through to
bowed guitars and a Bösendorfer grand piano.
This is the brainchild of Mattias Eklundh,
co-founder of Toontrack and head of sound
design. The imaginative use of sampled
elements ilters down into an easy-to-use
construct: on the one hand, you can take
advantage of the onboard MIDI elements, which
will make easy (EZ!) work of chord progressions,
if your pianistic tendencies are limited. But on
the other hand, it’s a pad-like-powerhouse of
content, which is ready to go.
The elements are arranged into six menus,
labelled for descriptive guidance, with
categories including Atmospheric, Bells, and
Saturated. You can guess the sort of patch you’ll
ind in each arena, and as is always the case with
Toontrack, the GUI is intuitive and pleasing to
look at. With more than 70 patches which are
mix-ready, the collection sounds beautifully
crafted, creating inspiration from the moment
you play a chord. By the nature of the cinematic
pad-shaped beast, many of these patches take a
moment to get going, often with swathes of
movement across the stereo ield.
Attack of the edits!
One of the shortcomings of a product such as
this is the lack of what one might call advanced
control. There is capacity to save user presets,
but with much of the content prescribed
already, you are left with only basic access to
control. It is possible to reduce the attack and
release times of the presets, but in some cases,
reducing the attack envelope phase does not
result in the immediate volume shape that you
might require. Clearly, some instances have slow
attack elements built in, but then again, that’s
what you want for most cinematic pads.
There is also ilter control, in both low-pass
and hi-pass formats. Both cases appear to
exhibit a slight degree of resonance application,
which sounds lovely, but is again prescribed,
with no ability to alter. It’s also interesting to
note that the low-pass cutof operates as a
mirror image, counterintuitive to what you
might use elsewhere.
I could use a little more control for editing,
but the overall sound quality and content is
undeniably good. In fact, it sounds utterly
amazing! This is an expansion pack, so
newcomers need to purchase the host EZKeys
package as an accompaniment, which is also
ofered as a package deal!
Web timespace.com/www.toontrack.com
Info £129/€155 including EZKeys package or
£47/€60 for expansion pack only
Toontrack
Cinematic
Pads - EZ Keys
Expansion pack
£129
With sound design running through its core, Toontrack’s latest visit to
the licks brings complex pads to a DAW near you!
Verdict
For Beautiful collection of pad sounds
Categories for easy auditioning
Extensive MIDI/note builder for non-
keyboard players
Useful shaping control for tone/volume
Against Not great tonal control
Requires host EZKeys package
Another classy Toontrack product,
distilling the concept of the cinematic pad
into a format that’s useful for all
9/10
Alternatively
Spitfire Audio - Cinematic Pads
£29
Modestly priced pads pack created
through the processing of
symphonic orchestral recordings
Sonic Couture - Geosonics
196 » 9/10 » £139
Some utterly beguiling textures
created from pure noise
What sets Toontrack products apart from
some other products which ofer similar
useful constructs, is the quality of their
sound. The MIDI element of all of the
Toontrack lineup is exemplary, easy to use
and very efective. As a keys player, you may
not require this element, but don’t disregard
Toontrack on this basis, as you’ll be missing
out on some fantastic sounds. The fact that
they also categorise their products means
that once you are in the Toontrack zone,
adding new sounds and expansions is easy
and comparatively cheap. In some cases, an
absolute bargain for what you get. Apart
from all shapes and sizes of acoustic and
electric piano, the Hybrid Harp library is
another case in point. Brimming with
originality and uniqueness, these sounds will
set you apart from others that rely and exist
with onboard sounds from DAWs, making
Toontrack very worth exploring. Your music
will thank you!
EZ Playability
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 73
toontrack cinematic pads ez keys expansion pack / reviews <
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