Music hacking help topic

(xposting with SF)
Hello! So I recently began to wonder if anyone would benefit from a cozy little group chat to which they can specifically ask for help with music hacking. It seems to be an area that people are a little scared of. Just wanted to get some expressions of interest. I was also wondering if anyone would perhaps benefit from me recording how I put different types of songs together.

The cost of the Skype chat would only be that I’d ask you to write a tutorial on whatever it is you just learned how to do so that anyone else with the same question can simply read what you’ve learned. Call it self-reflective learning.

^That’s the original post to this thread, but I think I’m going to repurpose it into a music hacking help topic since I feel that would be much easier for everyone to communicate on.

I think I’ll just stick to pming you on skype when I need music help

I think I can only read docs myself.

While I wouldn’t mind learning… I don’t think I’d be a wise choice. I suck at writing up any sort of documentation. Sorry.

I’m willing to join the chat as another music insertion tutor if you want/need one more. While I honestly probably have a lot more to learn in terms of fine details (and can’t do the ELF method to save my life), I know my way around Sappy and Anvil and think it’s a shame that so many mods shy away from custom music.

I’m going to upload a “music from other games as inserted in FE” video soon so I can into relevant have proof online that I can do something, and also to function as a teaser for a near-future project that uses a lot of the music that will be featured. After that, I intend on making a video tutorial on inserting music (which will include exactly how to get Sappy to work), which I’ll get done as soon as I have both internet access and solitude (currently I can only find either one or the other χ_X).
What I’m saying is that I have knowledge to both give and take, I guess. And really, it kind of sucks to run into a problem of whatever sort and then realise that I have nobody to ask about it because no-one else in my skype chats does music. Music-insertion activism is go?

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Ohhh, I forgot to mention I know how to use Sappy and Zahlman’s music thingy too. So, yeah… If anyone wants help there and cannot find anyone else er… gimme a ring?

Now that there are so many experts here, maybe you can research the way to insert the sfx I ripped from snes fe to the gba fe. The music files I ripped are in the format of .spc. It is obvious that the audio CPUs in GBA and SNES are quite different, so is a high fidelity possible to realize?

The audio files I ripped can be found in each spell animation package.

You need to do the following:

  1. Extract the WAV from the SPC using something like SPCTool. You may need to adjust the pitch/frequency as it may play back at a very high/low pitch.
  2. Create a MIDI with a middle C note of the same length
  3. Insert the WAV into the game
  4. Make the MIDI play back the sound

If you’re not sure of any of these steps, stop me at any of them and I’ll elaborate.

Is this topic still a thing? Because I could use a bit of help on this. Actually, not a little, a lot because I suck. I for the life of me don’t know how to keep bends for the midis to actually make them bend in terms of music when you port. Thus, I have a song this:


<div style=font-size:9px;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;width:127px;font-color:#44a854;> Original Version

converted to this:


<div style=font-size:9px;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;width:127px;font-color:#44a854;> Midi Version

But when I try to convert, it just… Doesn’t keep everything I added. Any insight?

what program are you using for conversion/insertion?

Sappy was the one I tried using, and Anvil Studio was what I used for the converted midi from FLStudio because I don’t have the midi sounds in FLStudio. Realistically, I got papershredder noises on some things and it just failed to work on other midis. The one I used here was the main one I wanted to try first because I figured it may have been something wrong with the other MIDIs I chose.

I can’t see any pitch bends in the MIDI itself so I’m thinking the problem is more to do with FLStudio than anything I can help you with (I have no idea how to use FLStudio)

I see. That stinks. I’m a novice with FLSTudio, and primarily use it to make music, and it was one of my first attempts at pitch bending for midis, so that might be my fault here. However, I’m even worse with Anvil Studio, do you know how to bend pitches in Anvil Studio? I might try to emulate it based off of the original.

You have to insert each little bit of the pitch bend individually with Edit→Insert Midi Event. A good way to do this is to insert a bunch of silent 32nd/64th/[some small amount] notes right on top of the note that you want to bend, then on each silent note insert another pitch bend event that increases/decreases the bend ever so slightly. After that, delete the silent notes and the pitch bend remains.

Of course, if you don’t want to do that, you can try using Aria Maestosa, which gives you a sort of line graph throughout the song, on which you can adjust pitch/modulation/etc easily. It doesn’t have the accuracy of inserting each part of the pitch bend yourself, but it’s much faster and more user-friendly.

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Oh my gosh. Thank you. I see. It’ll take a little bit of fudging, but it bent! It actually bent! I can actually compare what’s in FLStudio from the original version and bend from there.

It does make me think that FL Studio is not using proper MIDI events for pitch bends and is instead using its own system, whatever that may be… Might be worth asking their development team for support or googling around for it.

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Thanks for the advice. I’m going to look around, because you’re right. It doesn’t even keep the pitch bends when I tried copying and pasting the track from the non-MIDI version for the MIDI version. So I guess that’s something to note for FLStudio users.

I did find out that you can make MIDIs in FLStudio through the mixer. The issue is that the mixer itself has to actually have the tracks aligned for what they are “mapped to in the mixer” rather than simply assigning the MIDI instrumentation for each track itself. Then for each Pattern that’s the non-master Inserts, you have to assign instrumentation.

While it might not be useful for hacks, this means that you might actually be able to have each track change its instrumentation mid-song based on patterns. I don’t know enough about musical insertion in GBA files, but I’m curious if you could swap instruments mid-song. Since you’re not actually exceeding the amount of tracks allowed, but rather telling the track to play with a different instrument at a certain point.

You can, using the Program Change midi event. :wink:

You can more or less do anything that MIDI is capable of, save a few options like Reverb etc.

Hello. I have a little problem with a MIDI, this one : Take The Offensive This is the MIDI File with the soundfonts

I extracted it with VGMTrans, and if you can find most track’s respective instrument without too much trouble, the last one is a mix of multiple samples. And I don’t really know how (if it’s possible) to make it sound good.

Here’s the original music : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71h4kBwxP_E

Is there any way to solve this? Thank you =)