Custard Cookie III's Ripping Guide - Part 1: Rips
Author: Sexeyparfaitcooki3
For part 2, click here: My Ripping Guide - Part 2 Mashups - 8/15/2023
Welcome to my ripping guide
The point of this guide is to welcome beginners with open arms. This will be a beginner friendly guide.
A rip for those who don’t know is music extracted from the game files.
In this context, a rip usually changes the notes that play in the ripped track to reference another piece of music. I’ll call these kinds of rips Melody Swaps. An example of this is Once Upon of Time - Undertale’s melody being changed to Ballin’ by Roddy Ricch and Mustard.
There’s also another kind of rip, called mash-ups, mash-ups are combining two songs and mixing them together. An example of this is Monkey’s Love - Mother 3 mixed with Reeses Puff rap. We’ll also be talking about these in the guide
External Guides:
Obtaining Sources for a High Quality Rip
Official Guide
Now that the bare minimum has been explained, let’s get on with the guide.
Devices:
One limited thing about ripping is that it’s
mainly PC only, which creates a barrier to entry for
mobile only users. However it is possible to rip on
mobile, you’re just limited.
Getting editable Music:
In this section of the guide I’ll be going over how to get editable music, so you can actually make the rips you want to make, I’ll go over the consoles, individual games and certain songs.
NES:
First, find an .NSF file or .NSFe file. It’s the original file formats for NES music. You can find them on Zophar's Domain, a website that contains high quality audio for music, and also the original music files, including .NSF.
On Zophar’s Domain’s landing page click “Music” on the navigation bar, then search up any NES game, let’s say Kirby’s AdventureOn the page click “Download original music files” You’ll now have a folder, extract it
You now have an .NSF file, Use NSFimport to import it into an .FTM file.
Click import NSF and import the NSF you just downloaded
You’ll be greeted with this screen,
type in which track you want to use by typing the track number
You should now have a 100% accurate NES song, now save it as an .FTM. Then, download Famitracker and open the .FTM with Famitracker, and then you can edit it from there
If Famitracker is too complicated for you use Famistudio. It's more limited but is easier to use because it has a piano roll view unlike Famitracker's view.
Another thing you can do is export each individual track, then you can use them as samples and recreate the track by ear using your DAW. Which is personally what I do.
SNES:
Find an .SPC file, using Zophar's Domain, search up the game you want to rip and download original files. Download VGMTrans and use VGMTrans to open the .SPC file.
Then rightclick and export as MIDI and DLS. In FL Studio import the midi file and select "midi out with fruity LSD" then import the DLS file in the fruity LSD
You should have an accurate recreation of the song, just edit from there
There will be some innaccuracies, and some songs aren't rippable using VGMtrans, to mitigate this you can render stems of the song using
SPC700 and recreate it that way. It says it's a virus for me when I downloaded it, but that's a fallacy in windows defender. It's safe to use.
GB and GBC:
First, find a .GBS file, use Zophar's Domain again. Use GBSImport to import it into an .FTM. Then import it to Famitracker. This is pretty much the same process as the NES part of the guide so refer to that if you have trouble.
GBA:
First, get a rom, the file format with be .GBA, for legal reasons I can't show you where to get it. Then use GBAmusRiper to extract the midi files from it and .sf2.
To do this is a little complicated, you have to get your command prompt file in it's original folder, and copy it into the folder GBAmusRiper extracts in. You can do this but opening start menu, typing in command prompt > open file location > open file location again. You'll be on the system32 folder where cmd is located, copy it to the GBAmusriper folder. Then in command prompt you type "gba_mus_riper [File name].gba".
Now you download a midi editor, personally I use Synthfont, you can assign a soundfont to the midi, and using the extracted soundfont from gba_mus_riper will get you an accurate recreation
The main issue is that, there's so many instruments in the soundfont that it's difficult to find which ones, and they all have generic names, usually along the lines of "@ type 128 =". So I'm never was able to recreate a track. You can download Awave, which is paid but you can convert the .sf2's into MIDI's which can save some time.
Some kind people have already ripped the midi and made some .dls files for popular .GBA games, Mother 3, Pokemon Fire red, and Pokemon Ruby. Which is pretty much all you need when ripping .GBA games. These can be found in the external guides section of this guide.
DS:
This is the easiest. You find either a .DS rom file or a .2SF file, insert it into VGMTrans and export as midi and DLS. Then import the midi in FL Studio as MIDI out with Fruity LSD, then import the .DLS into Fruity LSD and wallah!
There is complications to this, such as the fact that pitch bends aren't supported, but it should be fine for most tracks.
N64:
Use the N64 Soundbank Tool, unfortunately when I download it, it doesn't open for me, not sure why, I'm just gonna hope this problem doesn't happen to you. I don't really know how to use it but I know that it exports .dls and .midi files so I assume the process is nearly the same as VGMTrans
Specific Games:
Undertale and Deltarune have amazing communities dedicated to recreating the music, there's comprehensive google docs for both Undertale and Deltarune. They also have .flp files you can use as a base, which is just the project file for FL Studio.
You can find some project files for pizza tower songs on youtube, same goes with OMORI.
Final notes:
Out of the kindness of your heart, don't ask musicicans for project files, they probably don't want to share it and it's best not to heckle them.