In Summary

Following on from the release of EZkeys2, Toontrack recently supercharged their venerable keys supremo once again with the release of Session Organ EKX. Does it deliver EZ tonewheel nirvana? We put it to the experts.

Going Deeper

What Is EKX?

Toontrack are known by many for their EZ line of virtual instrument (VI) bandmates. Beginning with EZdrummer in the late 2000’s (now in its third incarnation) the line was later fleshed out with EZkeys, followed by EZ bass later on.

Rather than lumber composers with enormous instruments covering every possible scenario, like other EZ line instruments, EZkeys 2 (EZK2) lands with a compact high quality Core Library of sounds and MIDI. This is centred around an expertly sampled Fazioli F212 medium grand piano with a comprehensive range of microphone perspectives and ambiences available.

For composers who need to go beyond EZK2’s Core Library, EKX is a range of expansion packs that brings extra genre-specific sounds and MIDI. This makes it much easier for composers to better customise their keys player to their own needs.

Toontrack Session Organ EKX Overview

There was a time when many pros’ keyboard rigs would have looked a little light without a tonewheel organ providing the pulsating, ethereal magic carpet that is the Hammond sound. Either from smaller ‘spinet’ style instruments, through to the better-known console A100, B3, and C3 organs, Hammond’s additive synth in disguise provided a curious collision between all things ecclesiastical and the Devil’s Music. Becoming a sound in its own right, the organ’s impression on western music lives on.

Bringing this legendary presence to EZK2 is Session Organ EKX. Recreating the sound of the ‘Hammond-on-table-legs’ B3, this VI uses a combination of tonewheel sampling and advanced modelling of the organ’s voicing and traits including key clicks, percussion, vibrato and chorus. Also included is a user friendly recreation of another essential Hammond ingredient: the rotary speaker.

Toontrack Session Organ EKX Features

• Two full 61-note, five-octave manuals (keyboards).

• A fully featured 25-note bass pedal console.

• Three sets of user-controllable drawbars.

• Editable dynamics, key clicks, percussion and Scanner Vibrato effect.

• MIDI automation functionality for all drawbars and controls.

• Mix-ready presets inspired by rock, gospel, blues, jazz, hip-hop and more.

• A broad selection of MIDI for a wealth of playing styles and genres.

Toontrack Session Organ EKX Features And Sound

Expert Panel - Hit or Miss?

In every Expert review we ask three of our team of contributors to give their first impressions of the product. We ask them to give the product a hit or miss, based on factors such as originality, innovation, usefulness, quality and value for money. For each hit the products gets an Expert Award. One hit and it gets our bronze award, two hits gets silver and for a hit from all three of the panel it gets a coveted gold award. Of course if there’s three misses, there’s no award.

Alessandro Panella On Toontrack Session Organ EKX

This was my first experience using a product of the EZ line; the “easy” has always been a sort of deterrent, but I admit I was totally wrong.

This Hammond organ expansion sounds as good as it looks, with a nice warmth (even in the more rock patches) which to my ears makes it more… well… organic, compared with my now ‘ex go-to’ library from a notorious suite of famous keyboard emulations.

I particularly appreciated the clean GUI of the editing pages; I find that vector graphics are often simpler to read than bitmaps.

As regards effects, my mindset doesn’t agree with putting the Mic Controls in this section. A dedicated page with more extensive controls would have been more in line with the details given in terms of sound.

All the functions offered in terms of patterns, arrangement creation, MIDI grid editor and so on are shared with the other products of this line, so you all know how good they are. For me, that definitely makes it a HIT.

Luke Goddard On Toontrack Session Organ EKX

Full disclaimer: when it comes to Toontrack EZ line instruments I’m a fan. That’s not to say that I expect all of their offerings to be completely flawless, especially when it comes to something as complex as the Hammond organ sound. Taking on the triple-headed monster of the instrument itself, the rotary speaker, and the MIDI, it’s fair to say that there are a lot of places where this EKX could get itself into a spin (pun intended).

As a long time aficionado of the sound (and previous owner of the real thing at several points), I know how these things should sound to me at least. That ownership came from the Bad Old Days, where if you needed the sound of something you simply had to use it. I’m so glad I no longer have to move one of the damned things, and I’m still having nightmares about the horrific sound module impressions of the Hammond from the 1990s coupled with a certain “Lezlie” patch on a studio’s Quadraverb…

All this said you can see why in the 2020’s I still have to pinch myself when I hear a great VI that does the Hammond sound in the box. Does Session Organ EKX sound like a real Hammond? Very nearly. Is it good enough to use in a mix? Absolutely. OK so the day the next update comes complete with the wind off the horns and the smell of oil and wood might never come, but until then, if you want the sound with simple controls, this one is a HIT.

Julian Rodgers On Toontrack Session Organ EKX

I’ve liked the EZ keys line ever since I tried the EZ Keys Vintage Upright all the way back in 2015. The function of the instrument and its associated library of MIDI is much the same as the rest of the EZ Keys 2 line so I’ll just leave that as if it works for you elsewhere it will work for you here. Personally I like it. The library and the bandmate features are excellent. the reason I put my hand up for this product is that it was a Hammond and I was interested to see how it sounds.

I’ve engaged with all things Hammond to a far deeper level since getting a keys gig in a band and playing probably 60% of a set playing organ parts on my Nord Electro, so to really check things out I set up my Nord as a controller and A/B’d between the internal sounds on my Nord and Session Organ EKX. The results were interesting.

I was very pleased to see how easy it was to map everything to the physical controls on my keyboard. The option to reverse-map drawbars wasn’t necessary for me but will be for many. I was concerned not to see the Leslie fast/slow control in the Organ panel with the drawbars but it’s in the Effects section, which is fair enough. Once up and running, and forgiving the latency in the VI compared to the hardware instrument, I found a really great sounding Hammond. The Nord’s natural thickness sounded overblown and tubby compared to the Session Organ EKX which had more grind and rub by comparison. Checking the percussion it had the correct effect on the corresponding drawbar when engaged and the Leslie was markedly different, with more of a pronounced amplitude ‘bump’ on each spin.

To say which sounded more like a real Hammond and a real Leslie is a bit pointless because they all sound different but, while I really like the Nord Hammond, if you played me a recording of each and asked me which was a real one, I’d have to say the Session Organ EKX!

This instrument sounds great and the EZ Keys concept is a good idea which is well executed. There’s not much here not to like - HIT

Toontrack Session Organ EKX gets the Experts’ Gold Award