Toontrack EZkeys 2 Complete – Piano Writing Partner with Huge MIDI Library

EZkeys has always been aimed at a particular musician: the writer who thinks in songs but does not play piano like a pianist. Version 2 Complete expands that idea into a full composition environment, pairing Toontrack’s sampled keyboard instruments, grand pianos, electric keyboards, organs and more, with a MIDI library of more than 30,000 professionally crafted files spanning pop, rock, jazz and cinematic styles. For composers, the appeal is double. The sounds cover the keyboard roles a cue most often needs, and the writing tools, chord recognition, drag-and-drop arranging, editable performances, help a harmonic idea become a finished part before the moment passes.

An Instrument That Helps You Write

Smart chord recognition detects what you play or import and suggests complementary notes and inversions, which quietly teaches voice leading while it speeds up sketching. The MIDI library is the engine room: thousands of performed patterns that can be browsed, combined, quantised and edited, then dragged directly into your DAW timeline. Presets tailor the instruments from warm, analog-leaning character to crisp digital clarity, and the sound engine’s sampling delivers the dynamic detail and harmonic richness the EZkeys name is built on. Velocity, modulation and expression can all be automated, and layering multiple keyboard parts is straightforward, so a simple piano sketch can grow into an arranged keys section without changing tools mid-thought.

Harmony at the Speed of Thought

In scoring, EZkeys 2 works beautifully as the first ten minutes of a cue: find the chord movement and the rhythmic figure with MIDI, commit to the emotional register, then either keep the part or re-perform it once the scene’s shape is certain. Piano and keyboard parts in a score live close to the emotional centre of a cue, so touch matters more than complexity. Leave space around dialogue, let harmony change at the pace of the scene rather than the bar line, and use register deliberately: low notes for consequence, middle register for companionship, high notes sparingly for light or fragility. Audition a part with the picture muted and then with dialogue only, because a figure that feels elegant alone can easily mask speech. Where the same theme returns across episodes or levels, keep the keyboard choice consistent; audiences may not name the instrument, but they recognise its weight, its brightness and the room around it, and that recognition becomes part of the storytelling.

Record the simplest playable version first. Ornament can be added in the edit, but the timing and weight of a natural performance are much harder to reconstruct afterwards.

Formats and Installation Size

EZkeys 2 Complete runs in VST, AU and AAX formats across the major DAWs, with Ableton Live, FL Studio and Logic Pro X named for its drag-and-drop integration. It supports 64-bit Windows 7, 8, 10 and 11, and macOS 10.12 to 12.x on Intel and Apple Silicon. A multi-core processor is recommended, with at least 4GB of RAM and 8GB or more preferred. Allow approximately 50GB of free space for the full installation, reflecting the combined weight of the sampled instruments and the extensive MIDI and preset content. That is a substantial but one-time commitment for what is effectively a keys department and a writing assistant in a single install.

For Writers, Not Just Players

Choose EZkeys 2 Complete if your cues start with chords: songwriters, production-music writers and composers who need piano-led material quickly and convincingly. Players will enjoy the instruments in their own right, but the real beneficiaries are writers, for whom this turns the keyboard from a bottleneck into the fastest route from idea to arrangement.

Small contrasts matter in long-form work, and changing one element per scene keeps a musical world coherent but alive. When time is short, a familiar tool used well will beat an unfamiliar one used cautiously almost every time. Listen again the next morning at low level; choices that still communicate quietly are usually the choices worth keeping.