The making of a Music 2000 trance song (first 22 minutes)

I was bored last night and decided to do some footage of me making a song in Music 2000 so I recorded the first 22 minutes, which allowed me to setup basic song melody/beat/string pads/basslines. It isn't really much a tutorial but it can help in some ways as it shows how to change the note enveloppe, use the riff editor, load samples and such stuff. The file size is huge and it's in WMV format but here is it anyway:

http://www.mtv-music-generator.com/video/mtvmgsongmakingof.wmv



Differences between Music 2000 and MTV Music Generator





Making a sample sound stereo

First of all to open the following video you need a Windows computer with Windows Media Player or any other video software that play .AVI files on it. You probably noticed that all sound samples in Music 2000 are mono recordings. In some cases it can make a big difference in the song quality. You can add stereo by adding reverb effect to the note, but sometimes you don't always want the reverb effect. The following video will show an alternative:

http://www.mtv-music-generator.com/tutoria...o_sound_tut.avi

Basically you create two copy of the same riff, clone one of them, select all notes, go in notes parameters to change the sample offset in it (not too high though), edit the note pan so you only hear the sound from one side of speakers/headphones. Afterward you edit the other riff so the sound is heard from the other side. DON'T CHANGE the sample offset though.

Once it's done it gives the results heard near the end of the video. See the difference, eh? You can use a different sample offset obviously. Just mess around with it and find out which settings suits your need more. Keep in mind this trick may not work with all sound samples though.

Pros:
-No need for reverb effects to have stereo, good for when they aren't wanted at all.
-Useful for hardsynths like in trance/techno songs.
-Not glitchy like note effects (on top of that the two stereo effects in the note effects menu doesn't even sound stereo at all

Cons:
-Takes two sound channel instead of one, so if you use this effects in many riffs you will run out of sound channels very quickly.
-You may need to do minor adjustments depending of the sample used.




Want to get a "Mark Oh - Tears Don't Lie" stomping/zappy style kickdrum? Easy!

Easy to do, was just hard to figure out, altough with a bit of experiment, I finally found how, since I always wanted to use such kickdrum to make old school style eurodance/happy euro hardcore songs. If you want to know what I mean, listen to this song (not necessarly the entire song but at least enough to hear the kickdrum):



In MTVMG2 or below there are no such kickdrum samples. However, there is one sample from "Percussion->Strange" that you can use to create such effect: "Zap"! I load it at 44 KHz and place it either at the bottom in octave 3 (C I believe) or at the top in octave 2. It will sound different because there is some kind of low fi clap effect created by doing this too, but the kick will sound pretty similar to the Mark Oh song. You can reduce that clap effect by downgrading the sample quality to 22 KHz and setting it one octave lower than you would do at 44 KHz, but you will lose a bit of the zap/stompy effect. At 11 KHz you lose it completly. This might be useful if you want to create songs similar to Tears Don't Lie from 1995



How to avoid each notes cutting each others?

In Music 2000 if you place a note next to the other in the same channel, when that note is played the sound of the previous one is cut, literally. To prevent this you must alternate between two sound channels when you place your notes. For example, note 1 will be on channel 1, note 2 on channel 2, note 3 on channel 1, note 4 on channel 2, etc. You can watch an example here:

http://www.mtv-music-generator.com/tutoria...each_others.avi

Sorry for the bad sound quality, I tried to make the video as small as possible.



Cheats and secrets

Not that this would help music creation very much but I found this at http://www.allps2.net/ps2_cheat.php?game=MTV+Music+Generator+2

View music video:
Enter the options menu, then select "Video Palette". The music video from the Gorillaz's song "Clint Eastwood" can be selected and viewed.

Hidden skin:
Go to block 999 of the song (the very bottom of the screen) and select the option to enter the author's name. Enter JESTER as a case-sensitive name to unlock a new skin in the skins menu. This is how it looks (altough pic quality is shit):




Cheat codes MTVMG3

Not that this would help music production much but I found this here:

Hidden skin 1:
Press Select, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right at the main menu.

Hidden skin 2:
Press Select, Left(2), Right(2), Left(2), Right(2), Left(2), Right(2) at the main menu.

Hidden skin 3:
Press Select, Left(3), Right(3), Left(3), Right(3) at the main menu.

Hidden skin 4:
Press Select, Left(4), Right(4), Left(4) at the main menu.

(The clinical skin gotta be the best IMHO)

Hidden music track:
Press Select, Up, Down, Left, Right, Up, Down, Left, Right, Up, Down, Left, Right at the main menu. A hidden hip hop song by Motley will be unlocked.






I have no time to sort this out, I'll update the vids links and split threads as soon as I move them, now I gtg