Toontrack EZkeys 2.1.5 — Mac version

You might know Toontrack for its drum software. EZkeys 2 takes that same idea — an instrument that listens and plays along — and puts it under a piano lid. Instead of just another sampled grand, you get a writing partner that can pull chords from a guitar riff you hummed into a mic and turn them into a full keyboard arrangement.

• Bandmate — feed it any audio or MIDI and it suggests chords, grooves and voicings. The quickest way from a scrappy voice memo to something that sounds like a song.
• Chord Wheel — a circular chord map that makes harmonic choices feel less like music theory homework. Click around until the room nods.
• Mix-ready presets — the core grand piano was captured with multiple mic sets and room sounds. You get a range of finished tones, from close and dry to cinematic, without touching a fader.
• Resizable interface — scale the whole window to fit a cramped laptop screen or a studio display. No squinting, no wasted space.
• Plays where you do — runs as VST3 or AU, on Intel or Apple Silicon Macs, back to macOS 10.13. It slots into most setups without a fuss.

The library centres on a grand piano that can sit bold in a mix or tuck behind a vocal. Like the rest of the EZ line, the idea is speed — get a part working while the idea is still fresh, then tweak the detail later.

A song from a voice memo, start to finish

Most of my sketches begin as a hummed line into the phone. Here’s how that turns into a piano part inside EZkeys.

1. Drag the audio file from Finder straight onto the Bandmate panel. The software analyses pitch and rhythm — takes about three seconds on an old Intel iMac.
2. Hit Listen. Bandmate throws up a chord suggestion and a groove that matches the phrasing. You can nudge the complexity slider if it’s overthinking a simple folk melody.
3. Pick a groove from the MIDI browser that sits under your vocal. I usually audition four or five by clicking through the library while the transport loops.
4. Drag the MIDI block into the Song Track. Now you have a full piano arrangement — left-hand bass movement, right-hand chord stabs — all played by a session pianist who actually knew where the sustain pedal goes.
5. Swap the sound. The default grand is lovely, but sometimes a felt-treated upright or the new Transistor Organ EKX fits better. Scroll through presets with the arrow keys while the part plays.
6. Export the MIDI and drop it into your DAW, or keep building inside EZkeys with extra sections from the Chord Wheel.

The whole thing, from dragging in the memo to having a usable piano track, runs about the length of a cup of tea.

Turning a stuck verse into a chorus with the Chord Wheel

Picture a Wednesday evening. You’ve got four chords and a verse that won’t lift into a chorus. Open EZkeys, click the Chord Wheel tab, and stare at a circle of roman numerals lit up in the song’s key.

Clicking a chord previews it through the current piano sound. One click on the IV, then a jump to the minor vi — suddenly the verse breathes differently. The wheel suggests relationships: the dominant V pulls toward the tonic, the ii adds a little ache before the turnaround.

You land on a four-chord lift and drag that into the Song Track. Click through the MIDI library for a chorus groove that pushes harder — more movement in the right hand, wider voicings. Fifteen minutes later you have a structure that wasn’t there when you sat down. That’s the point of the tool: it doesn’t write the song for you, but it clears the fog fast enough that you don’t lose the feeling.

Garbage in, garbage out with Bandmate audio

Beginners often treat Bandmate like a magic wand — feed it a muddy phone recording with two people talking in the background and expect a clean chord chart. Garbage in, garbage out still applies. Give it a single melodic line, hummed clearly and on pitch, and it’ll return something useful.

Another common stumble: ignoring the velocity and timing controls inside the MIDI browser. The patterns are played by real humans, but dragging one straight to the timeline without adjusting the feel can sound stiff against a loose vocal. Pull the swing knob a few percent right and suddenly the piano breathes with the track.

People also forget the standalone app exists. You don’t need a DAW open to sketch ideas. I keep EZkeys in the dock for exactly that — a scratchpad that sounds good enough to keep.

If you’ve grabbed an ezkeys torrent or an ezkeys free download mac package from a shared drive, check that the EKX sound libraries actually installed. The standalone app loads, but the preset list stays greyed out if the sound data lives in the wrong folder. Point the library path under Settings and restart. For anyone still on an older ez keys torrent that’s version 1, the MIDI packs work across both — just make sure the core install is healthy first.

• Support added for the Transistor Organ EKX expansion.
• Standalone and project icons updated to the macOS Tahoe style.
• Multi-core CPU performance improved, particularly on Mac.

• macOS 10.13 or newer
• Intel 64-bit or Apple Silicon processor