Music Insertion Guide for Beginners

Do you happen to know the password for mid2agb? When i try to extract it it asks for a password. Maybe it was shown before but I don’t think I was paying attention.

Maybe I should just Download a different version of mid2agb?

THANKS ALOT FOR YOUR HELP!!!

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I would like to ask I’m getting this message
“The Newly Created File does not retain all features of the currently loaded song, including things like loops, staff styles, track synthesizer assignments etc.”
Am I doing something wrong here?

These are things that midi format-0 does not support, but we don’t use any of them so it’s nothing to worry aobut

I have 1 more question, why am I getting this error and how do I fix it?

That error message tells you a lot about what’s going on. Is there something about it that you don’t understand?

Without knowing anything about music myself, I decided to search FEU for EOT TIE (two keywords here that I don’t know the definition of and thus might need help with) and found this post in this thread.

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As stated in the error message.
Read carefully.

TIE is an instruction to leave the sound on until EOT.
It is used when you want to play a note longer than N96 (whole note).

For example, the following code plays Cn1 for two bars.

 .byte   TIE, Cn1

 .byte   W96
 .byte   W96

 .byte   EOT, Cn1

To loop a song, a goto instruction is required

Label_0178F79F:
 .byte   TIE, Cn1

 .byte   W96
 .byte   W96

 .byte   EOT, Cn1

 .byte   GOTO
  .word Label_0178F79F
 .byte   FINE

If you are getting this error, it means that the EOT is not written or is in the wrong place under GOTO.

Forgot to write EOT!

Label_0178F79F:
 .byte   TIE, Cn1

 .byte   W96
 .byte   W96

 .byte   GOTO
  .word Label_0178F79F
 .byte   FINE

The EOT instruction is not permanently executed because it is written under GOTO.

Label_0178F79F:
 .byte   TIE, Cn1

 .byte   W96
 .byte   W96

 .byte   GOTO
  .word Label_0178F79F

 .byte   EOT, Cn1
 .byte   FINE

Forgetting to write the EOT and the sound will be left playing all the time.
So even if the song loops, the sound will remain playing.
When this happens, especially with songs that may loop and work over and over, such as player turn background music, the result can be very unsightly.
The problem is also easy to overlook, as the song has to be looped for it to occur.
For this reason, FEBuilderGBA detects it as an error.

This link redirects to the website’s homepage. The tool might not exist there anymore, is there an alternative way to get it?

This seems to be an actively-maintained copy of the program, can’t fully verify right this second it’s the same thing but when I can if it is I’ll update the guide link

Edit: Yeah this is the right thing. Updated the link

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Where can I get Mid2agb? Unlike the other software, it’s not linked in the OP. I tried to find it myself and all I came up with was Midi2agb, an enhancement of Mid2agb, but not the actual software itself, a combination download with Sappy (which I already have) that is password protected and then one on a dodgy pokemon website my antivirus blocked which was probably fine, but, ya know, at this point best to straight up ask where people are actually getting this program.

it’s bundled with febuildergba or something idk I just know it’s in my febuilder folder mysteriously

mid2agb is actually a leaked GBA devkit tool that’s just been floating around the internet for 15+ years and as such linking to it directly could potentially cause issues. midi2agb is functionally identical but open-source and doesnt have this issue so you can just use that instead

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But even the midi2agb github download I found doesn’t seem to have an installer or an executable I can link to from Fire Emblem Builder GBA.


Hey, thanks for the guide! I have been following romhacks since I was young and recently have really been considering getting into making music for them. I have a question in regards for using MIDI music:

So I have to use a .midi file and not a .wav or .mp3 with all of this, I get that much. My question is, how do I get a MIDI file with multiple tracks? I can export any singular track as MIDI from the DAW I use, Ableton, but not mulitple tracks onto one file. Do I just not have that functionality, and I’ll have to use Anvil Studio to make MIDI music w/multiple tracks from scratch? I can’t find a function that lets me insert multiple single-track MIDI files into Anvil, either. I can only get one single MIDI track in. Thanks for your help.

You should post your question on an Ableton user group

I use Mixcraft which is lower-end software and it does both of those things with drag and drop so I’ve no doubt that Ableton is able to do the same

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That’s a good idea. I’ve been looking it up but had no success on finding an answer; I’ll go and post the question myself, thanks.

Edit: So it turns out Ableton doesn’t have it implemented, for some reason. I guess I’ll see if I want to mess around with another DAW to make my midis instead.

I just started work on my romhack in FEBuilderGBA yesterday (I’ve already finished the script and all the assets ahead of time; all I have left to do is the technical nitty-gritty), and even after replacing the main theme AND changing which song plays on the main menu (i.e. after inserting my desired track over a blank track), the standard main theme still plays on the menu. What’s going on here? The main menu theme shouldn’t even be there anymore.

Also, fwiw, the debug emulator feature (press F5) doesn’t work, and I have to use an external emulator.

There’re two versions of the main theme in the ROM, one at 02 (plays when the opening cutscene isn’t skipped) and one at 43 (plays when the opening cutscene is skipped)

If you’re using the patches in FEB that automatically skip the cutscene, make sure that you either have it set to track 43 or use patch “MUSIC_Main theme(OP title screen) 0x43” and change it to the one that you want to play.

Oh! Well, I guess that makes the topic I just created kinda pointless. I’ll try that later and let you know how it goes.

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