MichaelHatton's Full Review: MTV Music Generator 2 for PlayStation 2
MTV Music Generator 2, the fourth in the series of music games, but first to be released on PlayStation 2. This game is aimed at people who desire music creation and video editing, it is quite simple the way it works but is more than adequate to make decent songs or music. To prove this, the game features music made using a Sampling Kit. You will find a number of realistic sounding clones including Apollo 440, Clint Eastwood, and Zombie Nation, when you first hear these specific tracks, it is quite promising that they sound almost identical to the originals. Other tracks include the “Around You” music video that appeared on the PS2’s demo disc, including a simplified video.
All you need to make your first music track is set in a simple menu and button interface. You are given as default an “MTV” interface - since the program is made around themes - this being the most user friendly, however other more graphic laden ones are available. Beginning in a pane, which holds blocks in a gird database type area; these blocks each can contain a type of sound, or a video effect. There are additional blocks for settings like Sound Effects (add hall space echo) BPM (Beats Per Min) Volume and labels. The music area is first compromised of four sections, Rhythm, Bass, Melody and Vocals. In these sections you can paste a select amount of samples. The samples run vertically along the track, the track runs down the screen, you paste the samples in blocks in the sections, these are filled up and you begin to build up the song.
You can select from either a Riff Editor or a Riff Library, by pressing the circle button. The Riff Editor lets you customize a block using pre-recorded samples, these are held under many sections such as Metal, Snare, Kickdrum, and over two dozen more. If you chose Riff Library you will be given several sections of genres of music each with a list of different samples, these samples can stretch much longer in length -- they are simply a pre-edited riff. But of course each time you select Riff Editor or Riff Library you are given different libraries depending on what section you are under, for example Rhythm has Drum loops and effects like vinyl scratching Riff.
To create a song, all you need to do is find some Riffs from the library and paste them to the screen, you can load from the libraries multiple Riff or Samples, in the Riff Library you can even demo the Riffs. The fact you can load multiple Riffs makes it much easier than in other Music games. However the Riff samples do not have their own demos, but you can vary the quality of the recording. You can select 11, 22, or 44kHz quality, the latter is CD quality, however does take up more memory. Once you load the samples into memory - which takes seconds depending on how many you select – you can select the ones you loaded from the side of the panel. Each block of music, is categorized by a specific colour, and there is a trend which shows up the Rhythm section in oranges and yellows and the bass in black and blues for example.
The palette – what you store samples or riffs in – has no limitation on how many you load, but be careful, the PS2 has a limited amount of memory for sound, which is about enough for 20 to 40 samples depending on the sample quality. You can of course re-assign all the samples to a lower quality; for example, you could specify it to change all recordings to be 22kHz, which will reduce the memory usage to half from 44kHz. Most Samples are set at 44kHz. And yes, they are all 16 bit. 11kHz samples can be used for distorting, or crackle sound effects for say, a crowd sample. It is quite a shame that the memory seems to go down over a short amount of time, still considering we are loading CD quality samples, it isn’t surprising, since most songs are way over 32MB the PS2 has for spare. If there were any game wanting a hard drive, it is this one.
IN terms of memory card requirement, you won’t need four memory cards just for one song, the files are made of a palette which holds the list for all the riffs held on the CD, and the riff palette for all the samples. Any modification to a sample, is then recorded to the memory card. However, even the largest of the sample music videos are less than 300kb, which is not at all too bad, especially since most of these have their own samples. Don’t expect any sort of MP3 compression, it won’t let you do that, even so, there is no point.
Unfortunately MTV MG2 doesn’t utilize any sort of surround sound system, not even Pro Logic which is a shame. However, there are a number of specific effects which make it appear so, such as adding a “Back Speakers” effect. Stereo is the order of the day, but this is not a bad thing, most music today is only stereo. Another downer for the program is the lack of keyboard and mouse support, this is probably due to the fact of the lag of releasing the official Sony mouse and Keyboard, like the hard drive.
Once you are in the Riff Editor, you have a multitude of settings to tamper with, including the method of altering the actual waves of the recordings, which lets you tailor them to your own taste – you may want to add distortion or lighten their bass details by adding filters. It does require some background knowledge of some of the systems, but otherwise is covered in the manual.
The interface of the program, is particularly simple, compared to Music 2000. You aren’t exactly given “Shortcut” buttons; the Music 2000 program let you shortcut to the Sample Library with R1. You are only given the immediate use of the main controls, including the D-Pad, Select, Start, Triangle to Square, and L3 and R3. You interface with the screen using the left analogue stick, which controls a mouse pointer, this lets you cruise around the screen, it even has its own settings for a gravity of the buttons. The D-Pad is used to negotiate the panels, such as the main panel, or Sample Library, this lets you scroll down while selecting samples on the way, cool. It is also pressure sensitive. Generally the interface is clean and user-friendly, it has very little problems, other than the slight pause when switching screens.
The first song you make; which I would recommend you follow the manual on this one, as there is a neat tutorial which lets you create a pretty neat sounding short track to get you used to the basics. The game is much easier to use than older versions, not to mention sounding much better. There are some great samples, but it takes time to search though the thousands of samples. You can expect about a few hundred for each section (about 50 per genre), making up for the quoted Š,000 kickin’ riffs and over 11,000 stompin’ sound samples”. This does mean that the life-span of the game is extremely long. With the amount of riffs ready, you could potentially make about 30 original tracks, and with custom Riff Editing, over a hundred.
Music 2000, was quite essentially a very good sequel, however the video editing was poorly designed. That’s was okay, because it had very good audio, but MTV MG2 doesn’t’ suffer the same. It may be easy to predict that a console of comparison having a power increment of ratio 90:1 – will have better graphics. Well, it does, but they’re not exactly state-of-the-art. You will find effects such as prisms, glass, reflections, lighting, 3D objects, smoke, shadows, fog, blur, refraction, particle, bounce, motion, and yes, sound effects, which make the video section a very easy yet powerful facility. Some of the graphics, like 3d planets, and rolling rocks, are a little rough, which is probably down to the audio section eating up power. Still though, you can do some visually impressive videos. It also makes quite a good pre-intro for home movies if you can’t afford a proper video card for your PC.
To finalise the audio section summary, the more you put in, the more you get out. You can’t expect to make a great sounding track in five minutes, it could take hours, days or longer perfecting a track, but remember this, the game was used to make clone tracks of Apollo 440 “Stop The Rock”, Gorillaz “Clint Eastwood”, Cassandra Fox, among others. Basically you can make some pretty series music tracks which sound as good as most Pop music tracks of today (not a criticism of the game). Since most pop tunes are compromised of rhythm bass and vocal, then a key change for the chorus. Of course those specific tracks weren’t made from the game’s library, that would be against the law; they were made with the USB sampler, a microphone and 3.5mm mini jack adapter. The Sampler Kit is probably what many Music series fans have waited for, it allows you to record your own voice, or take samples from other sources.
If you do make a song which you feel is as good as Britney’s latest, then you can sell it, the developers issue a Royalty Free license, which means you can use their samples to sell and distribute your own recordings, so long as you tell them about it first.
They have again added a Jam session, which is pretty much useless as nobody knows how it is supposed to work. Who knows what it is for, they should have left it out, for the sake of giving up multi-player support for mouse/keyboard support.
Conclusion
MTV MG2 is a very big game, while it isn’t really a game, it is still quite addictive, and produces outstanding results when mastered.
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