Roland’s MV-8000 has become the go-to box for many of the world’s finest producers and programmers, especially in the hip-hop, rap, R&B, and dance camps. Easy to see why. The powerhouse workstation takes the best of the past — a tactile workspace covered with velocity pads and hands-on controllers — and adds a fader bank, a suite of world-class effects, built-in hard drive, and a top-of-the-line multitrack sequencer. But what really sets the MV-8000 apart from the pack is its VGA monitor and mouse expansion capability. The user-installable MV8-VGA lets you plug any VGA-compatible monitor into the MV, plus an optical mouse, and drive it big-screen computer-style — making it the most powerful, friendly, and musical sampling workstation on the market.

You’re about to hear from three MV-8000 power users. Armand Van Helden, Jermaine Dupri, and Ahmed Oliver have made chart-busting history as producers, remixers, and songwriters. Many of you know their work, but for those who don’t, a crash course can be found below (see “Meet The Monsters” sidebar).

Here’s what they told Roland about their move to the MV-8000 platform, and how they’re using it to create top-selling music.

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What attracted you to the MV-8000?

Armand: Initially when I got the specs on the MV-8000, it was basically the piece that I had been wanting for a long time. “This is it. This is the one.” And of course, when I got into it, it was everything that I expected. Quality sampling. Everything is quick and easy. Making a song, getting tracks put together, even if it’s for house or hip-hop, is extremely fast.

The thing I like most is that it doesn’t take a lot of screens to get your thought to happen. That’s a problem I’ve found with a lot of units — taking too much time with screens that pop up. If I have a thought, I want to be able to click on one thing and be done. I don’t want eight screens to pop up, so it’s like a journey to get through that thought. So with the MV-8000, when I was first learning it, every time I went anywhere, any time I wanted to do something, it would just pop up in that one screen. Good.

The MV-8000, as a whole, is a piece that does everything in a professional way. In other words, it isn’t a toy. It’s not like some little thing you buy at a DJ store. It’s the real, full on — from start to finish — piece that can do full production. It doesn’t matter what kind of music you’re doing, and you can’t find anything else like that. The MV-8000 is all the right stuff in one package.

Jermaine: Overall, it’s a mean machine. It’s like a drum machine with a computer-recording system inside. It does everything you want, plus more. The other day somebody was asking me about it, if they should buy it, and I said “definitely.” For sampling, for rap, for doing the stuff I’m doing, it’s an amazing machine. The MV-8000 is the creative center of my studio. Everything else is built around it.

Making beats with it is easy. Just going through and chopping samples… if you take a little time to sit down with it, you’ll find that it’s much easier than as it looks.

You can use the MV pretty much for anything — you could program entire songs with it if you want. And the sound quality is great. The way it sounds when it samples… it can be nice and dirty when I need it to, but it comes out in a very nice, crisp way when you put it to tape.

Ahmed: A producer is known for his sounds, and a big part of that sound comes from the drums. So the fact that I can load all my old drum libraries into the MV is very cool. It fits right into what I’m doing, and it’s pretty easy to use — dropping in breakbeats and making them fit to tempo right away, it’s a lot easier to do. And having the groove/quantization templates in there is a great idea. The CD-ROM drive and the 40 gig hard drive built in are really nice touches. I like the effects. It has definitely been a step forward for us.

Has the realtime time-stretching feature factored heavily into your process?

Armand: I do like to time-stretch in real time on occasion. It’s not something that is a big necessity for me, but I like the fact that the MV-8000 syncs to anything you want it to by the BPM tap… and it kind of works like Ableton Live in a way. That, to me, is a breeze. When I’m digging into old records, and the live drummers are off, with the Chop and Auto-Divide functions it just makes everything a lot easier to sync up. If the MV-8000 didn’t have that, you could waste a lot of time tightening. You could be making three or four songs in the meantime.

Jermaine: One thing I do a lot of is remixing. So love the fact that you can put vocals in the MV, and change the tempo without changing the pitch. That part excited me about the MV from day one. I also like how you can throw loops in and synchronize everything up quickly — which has always been a problem with samplers in the past.

What is it about a standalone box such as the MV-8000 that attracts you, versus using a computer?

Jermaine: This is the box for those of us who still love drum machines. Personally, I like using computers and all the various setups you can get, but I prefer to make my beats in a drum machine-like way. And for those who feel the same way, this is the ideal instrument to have. You can make the beats in a familiar way, but the MV also has a lot of the power of a computer-type system. So if you have an engineer sitting there telling you, ‘No, you should work more off a computer setup,’ and you want to work in a drum-machine way, both of ya’ll will get something out of the MV. And with the monitor hooked up, it’s incredible. Like a drum machine with a TV set attached. I guarantee, I’ll be carrying that setup on the road with me wherever I go.

Armand: The MV’s sequencer is one of the tightest I’ve felt. I mean, it is the tightest. Everything is just right there. Since the sequencer is internal, there’s no delay on it. You know, a lot of times with computers, you’re bogging down using your internal hard drive and you’re getting latency. You’re getting a lag in your tracks or the computer starts freaking out. With this thing, it doesn’t matter because it’s part of the engine, and I love that. That’s the good thing about using one piece. It’s a big thing for a lot of people — they don’t like stuff to be dragging. They want everything tight, everything poppin’, and that’s what this does.

Ahmed: That’s a big deal for me. Instead of having musicians come to me, I can go to them. I can compose a whole song on the MV, and then take it to my guitarist’s house and put him right on it without making him come over. It makes it a lot easier to fit musicians into the schedule when you can come to them.

Armand: The MV can definitely be used as a standalone piece. I don’t think you need anything else, especially if you’re working like me — using a lot of vinyl, or CDs for that matter. Honestly, you could be sitting in front of the MV-8000 and just have a CD or turntable plugged into it, and you’re done. That’s it. But I am comfortable with other equipment, and I do incorporate it with the MV-8000 when needed. It’s very easy to do that.

Armand, since you use a lot of vinyl as source material, do you find the MV-8000’s grounded phono inputs helpful for recording direct from turntable?

Armand: Oh, big time. Big time. I think the quality is better that way, because you’re not routing it through another piece of equipment. To me, if you can get that direct vinyl feel right into the sampler… perfect.

How do the pads feel to you?

Armand: I like the pad feel. It’s tight. If you’re a cat who likes to tap drums — which I’ve had to do on keyboards for a long time — you get a better live feel with the MV pads. You seem to be more of a drummer that way; it’s more like a live performance.

Have you explored the internal effects, or do you prefer to process outboard?

Jermaine: There are a lot of good effects in the MV. It depends on what I’m doing, but a lot of times I like to use the effects right inside the box. When you become a successful producer, people try to copy your sounds. They’ll research, and try to find EQs and compressors and outboard things like that to try to copy my sound, but they’ll often overlook the effects in the machine itself.

Armand: The main things I like are the 3-layer effects — maybe a reverb, a chorus, and delay — and you can tweak them all. At first I thought, “Oh, there are only 24 effects.” But when you start layering them, you get all types of things. And then you can start working the knobs, and all types of things start coming out. I always liked Roland’s lo-fi effects… I never found a good lo-fi anywhere else. Also the stereo Auto-Wah effect — I like that one a lot.

When I record, when I’m finishing up a song, I’ll automate my effects. But just to get an idea, I like to mess with the knobs while the track’s playing just to get a feel. If I’m doing house music, I don’t want it too sophisticated. I’ll have a simple groove up, start messin’ with the effects, and get on the knobs. Like you’re in a club. I’ve done that on numerous house songs.

What do you think of the VGA option?

Armand: I’m used to the mouse, and I’m good for that. And the monitor is cool too. Obviously, everybody’s got [visual] monitors at the house at this point, so why not blow it up on a big screen in front of you? The MV-8000 is very nice, very comfortable, and if you have a nice desk you can see everything on the screen fine, but if you have the video option, why not?

Your thoughts on Roland gear, past and present?

Jermaine: Roland has always been the top of the line when it comes to rap — from the TR-808 to the newer machines — MC-909 and MV-8000. I pretty much have every Roland drum machine sitting in the studio.

Armand: I’ve been a long-time Roland user, big time. The R-8 drum machine was my first, and then I picked up the W-30. With the R-8, I had the 808 card. That was a big thing. Wow. It was like an 808, but you didn’t have to go find a vintage 808. In the beginning I also had some samplers, and the R-8 was the trigger. But then, when I picked up the W-30, I found that it could do everything and it had the R-8 samples in it. Everything was in one piece, and I’m that type of guy — I love it when everything is in one piece, and that’s the MV-8000. It’s basically that one unit that everybody wants. You get tired of buying this and that, and it’s not quite… you need to get something else or add to it. With the MV-8000, you can just use it and you’re done.

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Meet the Monsters

Ready for a crash-course in MV monster? Here are the abbreviated bios of Armand, Jermaine, and Ahmed — direct from their promo pack and/or straight from the artists themselves.

Armand Van Helden
Armand Van Helden championed the raw, energetic, fun sound of hip-house long before it became a fashion accessory. He spent his childhood at army bases in Europe before settling in Boston, where he honed his tough, sample-heavy sound with X-Mix Productions. He soon built up a rock-solid fan base with both English and American DJs, thanks to a stream of club cuts, including 1994’s Witchdoktor. Then came the famous Armand bass lines that virtually commanded you to the dancefloor: Tori Amos “Professional Widow,” Sneaker Pimps “Spin Spin Sugar,” CJ Bolland “Sugar Is Sweeter,” and Nuyorican Soul “It’s Alright, I Feel It!” And a string of hits followed. Today, one of the world’s most sought-after DJ/remixers is back with New York: A Mix Odyssey, a mix album that fuses his joint passions for rock and house. “I just do what I feel,” he reasons. “Honestly, when I wake up, I love to make music in my studio. That is the number one thing in my life. Everything else is secondary. I love to lay down whatever is in my head, to get whatever is in my head out there into the public eye.”

Ahmed Oliver
The newest heavy hitter on the scene is St. Louis native Ahmed Oliver, whose rise to hop-hop heights didn’t happen overnight. “It was a long process,” he tells us. “I had the goal of getting my music placed, but it just wasn’t happening at that time. Then Nelly blew up, and it made it a little bit easier for St. Louis producers to get recognition, because St. Louis was suddenly considered a new, up-and-coming town.” Oliver and his colleagues moved to New York with high hopes, “but we weren’t quite on the path we hoped to be. So we put a CD together for our production company, Mo Beats [with partners Doerian Moore and Luther Claxton], and sent it to Nelly. Eventually he called us back, and since then, for the past couple of years, we’ve been working closely with him. We made the new album with him, and the rest is history.” Ahmed’s work can be heard on the second of two consecutive Nelly’s releases due out by the time you read this. Ahmed and Mo Beats also produced music with Nelly for the Playstation game NBA Street 2. They’re busy at work on new records with the St. Lunatics and a variety of artists on Nelly’s Derrty Entertainment.

Jermaine Dupri
Even before making hits with his own So So Def Records, the Atlanta-based Dupri was guiding the careers of the quadruple platinum Kris Kross. Dupri’s success with Kris Kross set the stage for his breakthrough work with Lil Bow Wow, Jagged Edge, Da Brat, and Xscape, as well as a host of work with such artists as Usher and Janet Jackson. In 1998, Jermaine branched out and released his debut album, Jermaine Dupri Presents Life In 1472. Chock full of hits such as “Money Ain’t a Thang” and “The Party Continues,” the disc went platinum. Now, with his second album Instructions, Dupri is eyeing the charts again. To date, Dupri’s So So Def Records has earned more than 20 gold and platinum certifications since emerging in the early 1990s. With a steady string of hits, Jermaine and company have established themselves as ground zero for artists seeking chart-topping hits in the fields of rap and R&B. New JD material is in the works with Mariah Carey, Nivea, Sierra, BoneCrusher, Faith Evans, 112, and more. Stay current at: www.jermainedupri.com.