0. Absolute Basics
music-software-basictutorial
You move your cursor using DPAD;
X button selects and pastes things;
Triangle usually goes back one menu level/screen;
Square deletes things from under your cursor;
Circle button is beginner's best friend: it opens up menu wherever you are, presenting you with options what to do in current screen you're in!
If you don't remember what key you need to do something, press Circle and look for option you need!
If you don't understand specific things, at the very bottom you should have Help button, which can explain you some parts of M2K!
Every single action can be accessed through menu screen!
To try out MTV Music Generator / Music 2000,
once you start up the software, you should find yourself on that particular screen:
This is the Song Track screen, this is where you put together your song!
Before we start making our own, let’s check out demo songs so we know what we are dealing with:
Press Triangle and press Right 3 times and you should see “Load and Save” button being highlighted:
press X to enter it
Let’s load some demo song!
Your cursor is highlighting “Load file” button at the bottom left - press X to select which song to load:
Find song named Colours, and load it up!
When you try loading it, “Load Components” screen should pop out - just press X to accept it, and once song is loaded, press Triangle twice to exit “Load and Save” menu and get back into Song Track screen, so top-left button!
Those green blocks with icons you can see on the screen are riffs: Riff is a collection of notes or sounds.
On the very left side, those 2 numbers with an arrow on each row are channels - PS1 has 24 of them!
Scroll down with your cursor, and you can see that on channel 19 there’s string of riffs, and below channel 24 you got special tracks for total song volume, reverb, BPM, and key - those first 3 are most important for us!
1. PREMADE RIFFS
M2K allows you to lay down parts of your songs using already made bass/melody/chorus/drum riffs!
While on Song Track Screen, Press L1 to access riff library, START plays it back, and X to load it up into your song, and place it with X!
Note: they might max out your sample memory quick, so don't be shy to inspect those riffs and remove elements you don't want!
2. Making riffs yourself
on empty grid, pressing R1 will turn your cursor purple, enabling you to select how long your riff is going to be, and how many channels you want to dedicate to it;
For drums you might like to keep those riffs short, eventually cloning some riffs and making variations;
For something like chords, if you want to make them fully yourself, make riff that's 3-4 channels big
Press R1 on your newly-made riff to enter it!
3. INSTRUMENTS
you might notice that you cannot place down any note if you don't have any instrument sample selected
Press L1 to access sample library, and choose sound you want: press left/right to change subcategory, and eventually whole category;
(like on the picture above “bass” is main category, and “acoustic” is a subcategory, meaning there’s multiple subcategories inside each main category!)
there's many buttons for loading and prelistening samples, so press Circle to familiarize yourself with keys you need!
Hold Select, then press left/right in order to switch cathegories quicker!
4. Placing down notes
once you got your instrument selected, press X anywhere in the riff screen to place down your note!
if you want longer ones, then hold X while placing down note, and make note longer by pressing right!
if you placed down many notes, and want to move them all together easily, then press SELECT to enter selection mode, select your notes and go up or down, pressing X where you want to place them!
Press START at beginning of that riff to hear it all!
Let’s actually make couple riffs! Let’s do one with kick:
Then exit this riff go channel below, and let’s make new riff for hihat:
And new one right under hihat riff, this time for snare:
after making those 3 riffs, your Song Track screen should look like this:
Let’s extend our song!
Press SELECT button and select those riffs you created;
then press X to confirm selection, and paste those riffs to the right by pressing X again!
Press Triangle when you’re finished
5. Playback
while inside riff, when pressing START while having cursor at the very left, it’s gonna play that whole riff from cursor position onwards - sometimes you want to play back the whole song - there's button for that in Circle menu!
6. Cloning your riff
so you made a melody, placed it couple times in the Song Track screen, and you want to modify just one of them to create some variety? Press O, and select "Clone riff" option to create separated riff, which you can modify without modifying the original!
7. UNDO/REDO
If you make a mistake, then inside menu close to the bottom you'll notice Undo button - M2K keeps track of what you did in current window, so placed/deleted riffs/notes
If you change window, then edit history for that screen is lost!
8. Reverb/Delay
TODO
9. LAST FEW TIPS
Familiarize yourself with all samples included in M2K: Find your favourites across all categories, so you can make music that comes to your mind much faster!
Also practice, practice, and once again practice: that’s how you get better and more familiar with the software!
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