Monday, March 30, 2009

Hey Zealousy

Most days my penchant for checking my various inboxes first thing in the morning is a veritable gateway to mediocrity:

Spam. Spam. Facebook message. Email from a PR lackey that hasn't even read my blog about "a hot new band" I'll "surely love." Spam. Play Asia affiliate report that shows I've earned absolutely no money. You get the idea.

This morning, however, I received a most pleasant surprise.

ZEAL, an Australian indie-pop songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, hit me up with some information regarding a track he had made using a game console. The strange part is the console in question was a PS2.

ZEAL's found a handy exploit that allows him to sample directly into MTV Music Generator 2 using nothing but a Singstar microphone. Though the USB sampling kits originally intended for use with the game are hard to come by, the title handily mistakes the mic for its own tech. One can then manipulate the imported sounds via Music Generator's sequencer.

There's a small, dedicated group of artists already making music with this game, but how many of you have a well-worn PS2 and a Singstar mic array in your collection? As used copies of this title are both easily available and laughably affordable, this could open up some interesting creative avenues.

Peep the video below for ZEAL's sampling primer, and then check out his site for step-by-step instructions and a snazzy ringtone crafted from his demo project.

Oh, MTV, you may redeem yourself yet!


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm still rocking this game. Good to see people are still making music with it.

Doctor Popular said...

I know a few producers (myself included) that actually learned electronic production on the MTV Music Generator I (for the original Playstation). I still own my disc, but haven't used it in a long time.

Most of my tracks on this album were made with the MTVMG I.

killsaly said...

I also learned how to make music outside of using guitar/drums with the Playstation 1 version of MTV music generator. I wish I had the cassettes I recorded off our stereo. Someone has them..

Z. said...

Thanks for the input, guys. It's really amazing to see the impact a simple piece of music-making software has had in the lives of some of my favorite producers.