At the top left of the screen, you will see the six main menu icons:

Song Track: Create and play songs
Video Track: Create and play videos
Music Jam: Jam with 1-4 players
Load and Save: Load and save songs and information
CD Player: This lets you play audio CDs or record samples from them
Options: Allows you to clear songs / video and get sound / video related options.

At the top center of the screen is a box telling you details of the song currently being played: its tempo (in beats per minute) both numerically and graphically, current and overall time in hours, minutes and seconds, amount of memory the song takes up and its name. At the top right is the on-screen menu.

Most of the screen is taken up with the song track display. There are 99 channels running vertically. Each channel is 999 bars long (more than enough for even the longest of songs), and is split into boxes. Each box represents a bar of your song. Every four bars there is a light blue box to represent the start of each four-bar section. There are scroll bars on the right hand side and also below the main track display, which show where within the screen you are. Under the track display are numbers displaying the bar number of each bar on the screen. As you may have guessed, time moves horizontally. The start of your song is at the left hand side of the screen, and as your song plays, the song will move to the right.

F1 - Paste riff
F2 - Delete riff
F3 - Play
F4 - Area selection
F5 - Riff palette
F6 - Riff library
F7 - Song start
F8 - Song end
F9 - Song bottom
F10 - Mixer settings
F11 - Undo
F12 - Help

Wherever you are within MTV Music Generator, refer to the shortcut icons on the top right of the screen or right click to display a menu showing you all the options available for the current screen. Move up and down the menu and choose the option you want. If you want more information about any of the options, move down to 'Help' at the bottom of every menu. This will allow you to choose which item you'd like help on.
Click whichever option you want for a full description of what the option does.

If you make a mistake, most menus have an 'Undo' option - selecting this reverses the last action you made. If you then decide that you did want to perform the action, you can select 'Redo' to reverse the 'Undo' option. The Undo shortcut is CTRL + Z and CTRL + Y will Redo.

Underneath the 99 channels are four more channels, each of which has a specific function. The first is the volume channel. The very first bar here can be used to set the volume for the entire song.
Clicking on this bar will allow you to choose the initial volume (at the start of your song), and the final volume (at the end of your song). This allows you to fade your song up or down. If you just want to alter the volume throughout your song, change the start/end volume.
If you click on any bar other than the first, you will then be asked to select a range of bars, and again you can alter the start and end volumes for your selection. For example, to fade out your song over the last four bars, move to the fourth bar from the end, click and drag the area and when you let go of the mouse button you will be able to change the start and end volume levels in the volume menu.

Underneath the volume channel is the reverb channel. Reverb is an effect similar to clapping your hands in a large hall - the sound seems to hang in the air for a while. The first bar allows you to set the reverb setting for the entire song.
You can also change the type of reverb and its depth, delay and feedback rate.
If you want the reverb to alter over a number of bars, click on the first bar, and then move over and click on the last bar of the sequence. You can then set the depth, delay and feedback settings for both the start and end of the sequence, but only in conjunction with 'Note Repeat' in the 'Riff Editor'.

Underneath the reverb channel is the BPM (beats per minute) channel. This allows you to set the tempo of your song. The first bar allows you to set the tempo for the entire song. If you want a constant tempo, alter the start/end setting. Otherwise, you can get the song to speed up or slow down by changing the start and end tempos.
If you want your song to speed up or slow down over a number of bars, you can select the first bar, select the final bar, and then set the start and end tempos.

The track at the very bottom is the transpose key track, allowing you to change the key of all the music. Simply select the bar you want to transpose and then choose the key you want.

Most of the standard riffs are in the key of 'C', so a very simple key change is to cycle repeatedly between C, F, G and then C again. If you don't want to alter the default key, choose the icon on the left. You can also specify whether you want the key to be changed into a minor or major key. Select 'None' if you want to leave the minor/major notes as they were by default. Please note that you need to select the key to transpose to before placing the riffs into that bar.

If you go to the menu from the song track screen and choose 'World View' you will be able to see 60 channels on screen at once, as well as 96 bars as opposed to the standard 23. This can be very useful to get an overall view of your entire track, and to see how it is working. To get back to the normal view, go to the menu, and select 'Cancel World View' .