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Organya Music Format

Organya Music Format

Overview

Organya (org) is a custom music tracker format created by Pixel in 1999 as an improved version of his other music format - Pixel Music Data(pmd), which was used by his other music editor PiyoPiyo. It is most prominently known for its use in Cave Story, but several other games use it, too, like Stargazer and Azarashi 2001.

The format allows the playback of 14-16 simultaneous channels, with 8 note polyphony and 6-8 different percussion instruments, depending on the player used.

Cave Story only allows 6 of the 8 available percussion tracks to be used, and each is hard-coded to a specific instrument. Changing percussion instruments in the editor will not affect which one will be used during playback ingame. Any notes put in tracks U and I will crash the game. These instruments are:

Channel Q: Bass01
Channel W: Snare01
Channel E: HiClose
Channel R: HiOpen
Channel T: Tom01
Channel Y: Per01
Channel U: Unused (Bass01 by default in OrgMaker)
Channel I: Unused (Bass01 by default in OrgMaker)

This is the case because unlike the org editors which use .wav samples for drums, Cave Story uses the .pxt (PixTone) format. This means that drum samples in Orgmaker2 can be replaced by downloading the source code and replacing the .wav files, but the other drum formats used in Cave Story will need to be edited using a PixTone editor, such as PixTone or SeaTone and can also be extracted via SeaTone’s sfx pusher.

Editors

Two original versions of the org editor have been released to the public, titled Orgmaker and Orgmaker 2, respectively.

The Orgmaker 2 editor allows for different drum instruments to be specified.

Several other community efforts have been made to update or completely replace these editors and add some missing quality-of-life features. A notable example of this is Orgmaker 3.

There is also a project called OrganyaMaker-16, whose initial goal was to double the number of channels from 16 to 32. Since it’s still in active development and may be unstable, its file format is not described in this article.

File format

The ORG music file is in binary.

The instruments are baked into the reader (the file tells the player what instrument number to use)

The first 18 bytes are header info.

Block offset (bytes)	Size (bytes)	Name	Description
0	6	Org Type	This can be `org-01`, `org-02`, or `org-03` and corresponds to the capabilities that the file has, such as fancy drums or using more tracks. However, starting with version v1.3.2, OrgMaker writes `org-02` instead of `org-01`, regardless of whether pipi is used or not.
6	2	Wait	Tempo. See Org Tempo.
8	1	Line	Number of beats per measure. Can also be thought of as the number of vertical "lines" the editor shows between each measure.
9	1	Dot	Resolution, number of notes in each beat.
10	4	Repeat_x	Start of repeat loop. These values are per “dot” individual note, despite the player only allowing these to be set at the start of each measure.
14	4	End_x	End of repeat loop.
Total size:	18 bytes

Example: The header of ACCESS.org

4F 72 67 2D 30 32 64 00 04 04 00 00 00 00 80 00 00 00

Track Info

After this, there is a chunk of (16 (tracks, including drums AND notes) *6 (bytes of info each)), for a total of 96 bytes.

Structure of the info block for every track is as follows:

Block offset (bytes)	Size (bytes)	Name	Description
0	2	Frequency	-
2	1	Wave_no	Waveform/percussion instrument.
3	1	Pipi	Makes the selected instruemnt play in a pizzicato state. Only regarded if org type is `org-02` or greater, otherwise is set to 0, is a binary value.
4	2	Note_num	Total number of notes in the song from this track, including note modifiers, such as pan or volume events.
Total size:	6 bytes

Example: The track info section of ACCESS.org

E8 03 46 00 00 00 E8 03 46 00 31 00 E8 03 20 00 00 00 E8 03 00 00 00 00 E8 03 00 00 00 00 E8 03 00 00 00 00 E8 03 00 00 00 00 E8 03 00 00 00 00 E8 03 00 00 18 00 E8 03 02 00 08 00 E8 03 05 00 2C 00 E8 03 06 00 00 00 E8 03 04 00 03 00 E8 03 00 00 00 00 E8 03 00 00 00 00 E8 03 00 00 00 00

Note Data

The file then goes by individual tracks, starting at track 0 and incrementing to 15 (covering all tracks)

Each track length has the note data in the following order, each piece of data is repeated by the number of notes in the track in question (I.E all the note values are written back-to-back for the first track, then all the pan values, etc.):

Block offset (bytes)	Size (bytes)	Name	Description
0	4	X location	Placement of a note.
4	1	Y location	Key, doesn’t need to be as big of a number, 00 is low, FF is high, FF if the note does not exist (is instead a modifier event like pan/vol).
5	1	Note length	From X location, 01 if note is just something like a volume change.
6	1	Note volume	`0x00` is quiet, `0xFF` is loud (it's given to undefined notes). Orgmaker limits this between 4 and 252.
7	1	Note pan	Left pan is `0x00`. `0x0C` is right pan, given `0xFC` if undefined.
Total size:	8 bytes

Each note has a total of 8 bytes allocated for it.

When all of the above data is read for each note in the track, the dataset for the next track is presented. If there are no notes in the track, it is skipped. There is no separator data between note data. There is also no termination value; the file ends with the last piece of note data.

Access.org uses only 1 non-percussion channel: channel 2. This means that the examples below represent the melody of everybody’s favorite Cave Story song.

Example: Note X offsets for the second track in ACCESS.org

00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 08 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 0C 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 12 00 00 00 14 00 00 00 18 00 00 00 1A 00 00 00 1C 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 22 00 00 00 24 00 00 00 28 00 00 00 2A 00 00 00 2C 00 00 00 30 00 00 00 32 00 00 00 34 00 00 00 38 00 00 00 3A 00 00 00 3C 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 42 00 00 00 44 00 00 00 48 00 00 00 4A 00 00 00 4C 00 00 00 50 00 00 00 52 00 00 00 54 00 00 00 58 00 00 00 5A 00 00 00 5C 00 00 00 60 00 00 00 62 00 00 00 64 00 00 00 68 00 00 00 6A 00 00 00 6C 00 00 00 70 00 00 00 72 00 00 00 74 00 00 00 78 00 00 00 7A 00 00 00 7C 00 00 00 7E 00 00 00

Example: Note Y offsets for the second track in ACCESS.org

26 26 2A 24 24 28 26 26 2A 24 24 28 26 26 2A 24 24 28 26 26 2A 24 24 28 22 22 26 20 20 24 22 22 26 20 20 24 22 22 26 20 20 24 22 22 26 20 20 23 25

Example: Note lengths for the second track in ACCESS.org

01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01

Example: Note panning for the second track in ACCESS.org

06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06

ORG Tempo

ORG music can handle 1000 individual notes per second. The wait time is expressed in milliseconds, with the shortest time possible for a single note being 1 millisecond (having a wait value of “1”).

To convert BPM to “WAIT”, use the following formula: 60000/(BPM * NPB) = WAIT

To convert from “WAIT” to BPM, use the following formula: 60000/(WAIT * NPB) = BPM

Where:

WAIT is the time in milliseconds each note takes to play (ORG’s internal tempo format)
NPB is the number of notes per beat
BPM is the number of beats per minute

Example, with a new org file, the wait value is 128, with 4 notes per beat. Plugging this in yields: 60000/(128*4)=117.1875

Converting 117 BPM back to WAIT yields: 60000/(117*4)=128.205

Note that ORG Wait time is in whole numbers only, so 128.205 would be truncated to 128.

Music in Organya

Below is a list of songs created with an Organya Editor to show how it looks and sounds.

Cave Story Soundtrack by Studio Pixel

Azarashi 2001 Soundtrack by Studio Pixel

Azarashi

Cave Story Modding Wiki