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Converting GBA music to MIDI

Technical discussion which is not directly related to VGM files. Talk about Hardware and Software.

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Converting GBA music to MIDI

Post by Soniccis96 »

Tell me please how to convert in-game OST to MIDI. I have gsf files from Turok Evolution but I can't open and edit or convert it. GBA2MIDI doesn't work.
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Post by Shywolf »

IIRC, those converters work only with games that use Nintendo's "Sappy" audio driver... and if your game doesn't use it, you are basically SOL and you must transcribe the music to MIDI by hand.
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Post by Soniccis96 »

Can you recommend any tracker to see the command list or notes stored in GSF? I tried to convert *.gsf to *.spqr (sorry, do you not know about Supreme Tracker Pro?), but I was failed.
Last edited by ctr on 2018-10-01, 13:27:23, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by ctr »

Soniccis96 wrote:Tell me please how to convert in-game OST to MIDI. I have gsf files from Turok Evolution but I can't open and edit or convert it. GBA2MIDI doesn't work.
Go ask in hcs64.com instead. There are only two programs that I know that deal with GBA music, and if it doesn't work with them don't even bother asking here. The programs in question are gbamusriperor VGMTrans, and I think they only support the Sappy sound driver anyway (Which is used in 90% of GBA games anyway).

Also, there is no guarantee that you can convert any "in game OST" to MIDI, especially if it's streamed or uses a different sound driver.
Soniccis96 wrote:Can you recommend any tracker to see the command list or notes stored in GSF?
It's not possible because GSF files contain ARM program code and data used directly by the sound driver. If you don't have a program that understands the sound driver's specific format (as noted above).
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Post by Soniccis96 »

I got an answer from SYSTEM (general admin of hcs64.com):
SYSTEM wrote: It's better to use Musyx Audio Tools for Game Boy to edit non-Sappy files.
But I can not use Musyx on minigsf...
Last edited by Soniccis96 on 2018-10-02, 13:05:27, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by ctr »

Then you have to get the ROM. Minigsf files usally only contain metadata and commands to play the song using the sound driver which is in the "big" gsf file. Hence the small file size, they're usually not bigger than 1kb.

Also I'm pretty sure they would tell you this as well.
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Post by Soniccis96 »

I have got Turok Evolution. And SYSTEM also told me that VGMTrans is not possible for extract MIDIs or GSF from the game. But they don't know where I can get Musyx for GBA.
SYSTEM wrote:Find it yourself, please, we don't host programs. We also don't know where to find GBA version, only N64 is appeared in The Internet Archive
Last edited by ctr on 2018-10-02, 12:23:27, edited 1 time in total.
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