roncoallstar
08-14-2019, 09:25 AM
All I ask in return for this rip is that you consider supporting Woody Jackson, Daniel Landis and the many others who have spent 5 years creating this beautiful music, by purchasing 1 or both of the official albums if you have not already. As far as I am aware, this is the single largest music production in history. If there is anything bigger, I have not heard of it. These people deserve all the support they can get in appreciation for their hard work. There are no tracks from OSTs that appear in my rip besides some of the vocal tracks, which are much higher quality on the official album, so I would recommend buying the albums for those tracks. Also, the albums contain many completely original mixes and even new melodies found nowhere in my rip. We want Woody and the team back for Red Dead 3, so please support the official albums if you are able!
The Music of Red Dead Redemption 2 Original Soundtrack (https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/61033/The-Music-of-Red-Dead-Redemption-2-Original-Soundtrack-Out-Now)
The Music of Red Dead Redemption 2 Original Score (https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/61078/The-Music-of-Red-Dead-Redemption-2-Original-Score-Out-Now)
WARNING : IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE, READ THIS!!!!!
These tracks are recorded at their default volumes in real time, the way they are mixed for the game, using an optical cable directly from my PS4. Some stems are MUCH quieter and some MUCH louder than others. This is due to the way the stems are mixed. They all need to be able to play at the same time without clipping, which is the reason for the wide variation in volumes. Be careful with your speakers with some of the high energy tracks. I can confirm there is no clipping as whoever did the mixing did a good job, but the shift from low volume tracks to high volume can be quite jarring. I have not "normalized" this music. In fact i believe it would be quite difficult to remaster these tracks so that all volumes match. Doing so would compromise the music and create large shifts in volumes of stems in tracks. I experimented quite a bit with the volumes, especially the quieter ambient tracks. It is very tempting to increase the volumes of the ambient tracks because they can be very low, but I can assure you that increasing those volumes will create large amounts of noise. If that sort of thing doesn't bother you, feel free to increase them, but these are raw recordings. If you compare this rip the the official releases, the quality is much higher on the official albums. This is due to compression as far as I can tell. I have done some testing with the Equalizer in MusicBee, which is my music player, and I have found that the "Acoustic" preset really breathes life into the recordings, especially the quieter tracks. It's not 100% consistent though, so be warned the louder tracks can create artifacts with an EQ. You may want to experiment with an EQ in your player, but I would only recommend it if you are experienced with them. Maybe someone out there has enough skill to "remaster" or decompress" this rip and improve it's quality, but that is beyond my skills. If this is something you might be interested in attempting, please send me a message. If an EQ can improve the quality I can only assume that a skilled audio engineer can improve it as well. I will be as concise as possible, but there is a lot I have to say about this rip and the process of recording/editing the music. The rip is gigantic and it will be a long thread. I will try to avoid walls of text to make it easier for those that are interested.
I'd like to thank AchillesPDX and IzzyBlues very much for assisting me in ensuring the best possible quality while recording this music. They pointed out some major errors with my rip and the quality would not be nearly as good if not for their help.
I also need to give a VERY special thanks to Heidl who has graciously spent months creating hundreds of beautiful pieces of custom art for this rip. Every track is embedded with a custom piece of art. If space is a concern for you and you opt to not use the embedded art, here is an album with a whole bunch of amazing custom artwork created by Heidl. If using a single piece of art is your preference, you will surely find something here you like. The embedded artwork takes up about 300mb total. He does great work, so please be sure to show your appreciation for his efforts, and have a look at his website!
Album Art (https://imgur.com/a/DUJW3AA)
https://hqcovers.net/soundtracks/
IzzyBlues is working on creating 5 albums full of custom mixes created from my rip, and he has some fantastic ideas, so please be on the lookout for that release soon! Here are some samples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbVW-4LheSg&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-tt5SLzNbo&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU-AakASFd4&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEhmzslhzdc&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kelq8WoSriE&feature=youtu.be
When I started to record the music for Red Dead Redemption 2, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Having done a rip of the original RDR, I expected it to be massive, but not 5 times the size of RDR 1 massive. I began expecting to record a decent amount of music for my personal use and it turned into something much bigger. This rip is the result of countless hours of recording and editing over the past 8 months on and off. When you see the amount of music here, you will understand why it took me 8 months. Every track is manually recorded in real time using an optical cable directly from my PS4. However, it wasn't as simple as just pressing record and walking away, and I will elaborate more in the sections below. I highly recommend you read the sections below if you are interested in the details of the rip. If you have questions about the rip, please read the sections below because there is a high chance you will find the information you need there. Also, if you want to contribute to improving the rip or adding tracks, I ask that you please read the sections.
I have divided the music into 3 sections.
Story - 617 tracks
Strangers - 128 tracks
Territories - 279 tracks (Open World, Random Encounters, Horse Races, Fishing, Poker, Loading Screens)
NOT INCLUDED IN THIS RIP - Camp music, anything tied to 3d positional audio and about half of the cut scene music. These are all tied to the sound effects slider and there is no way to record them without a large amount of sound effects, as far as I am aware. Unless someone manages to extract these sound files from the game, there is no way to hear them.
In total this rip contains 1024 tracks and 63 hours of music! The FLAC version is 12GB and the MP3 version is 8GB.
Story
FLAC - Part 1 (https://mega.nz/#!ZGgD0QBK!Ug5uK_oPAoAdnvettME6k0_K_IyQiA8quMQd6oZ0148) - 4GB
FLAC - Part 2 (https://mega.nz/#!lexmiQrB!Y0Dvtp8hLmdfEJjMv96lvYxx6IsHKe-rw5M5hnzVgqQ) - 4GB
MP3 - Part 1 (https://mega.nz/#!5HgHwSbK!MG6trEczKWl1wHLdv4gVl8Ucj_rx3g64urP7GXs45AE) - 2GB
MP3 - Part 2 (https://mega.nz/#!VCxkXKwS!xDfBFUUqh5JJr8yaccKaJQRiVtf35HDrMeJhTgv34q0) - 2GB
I want to be clear that my goal of this rip was to isolate and record each individual loop/stem, not create mixes from the stems. Basically, there are 15 stems per loop. For example, each instrument in a full track can be considered 1 stem. These stems can weave in an out of each other and ramp up and down as the action changes. Even if we had access to the music files from the game, they would be separated by individual stems, not full tracks. What that means is unless someone managed to extract those files and compile them EXACTLY the way they appear the the game, we would never be able to hear these tracks outside of the game. Since I learned this from my RDR 1 rip, I knew exactly what I was going for, which is the combinations of stems exactly as they appear in the game.
With that said, I would not have been able to get more than half of this music if not for one vital game mechanic in RDR 2. The slow motion. When you open the log or open the weapon wheel, the game goes into slow motion and in turn EXTENDS the music track that is currently playing for many minutes. The game tends to rush you from one checkpoint to the next, so a normal player will player will only hear a fraction of the music that is capable of playing in the mission. In most cases, you would only hear anywhere from a few seconds of music to maybe a minute or 2 max, unless you are purposefully delaying. Even in those cases, the game doesn't let you because it constantly pushes you forward and shifts rapidly into the next music stem. The mission will fail if you lag behind. Most of the time I was able to just open the log and sit back and enjoy the music while it recorded, but there were a lot of high energy action tracks that required me to hold the weapon wheel button for minutes at time. Every loop tends to kick in at what appears to be a few seconds after the apparent beginning of a loop, so I recorded every loop twice when possible, in order the ensure a full loop of music. I know that must seems like a huge pain and a lot of work to some of you, but I can never convey how much fun and inspiration I received from discovering these full tracks that I missed on my first play through. The sheer amount of it and the amazing consistency of how good these compositions are, still blows my mind and inspires me.
Most of the time, I was able to get the entire full loop of a track, but there are definitely some tracks that are impossible to get full versions of, as far as I can tell. Then there are cases where I was able to get a full loop, but I wasn't able to record the loop twice. I wanted to edit these tracks in a way that would work well in a playlist no matter which order you played them, without being too jarring. But I also wanted to make the tracks flow into each other in order when possible. I did my best to start similar stems from the exact same point, and end them at the same point as well. Since I was not able to get a full 2 loop recording of some tracks, they will not start and end at the same point. But as I said, I would say 95% of it is full. My interpretations of where the music starts and ends may be different than yours or what was intended, but I had to make hundreds of decisions using my own instinct and knowledge of music. This rip is not perfect by any means, but I am pleased with most of the decisions and I hope you are as well.
Unfortunately, a lot of the cut scene music in the game is not included in this rip. It seems that in some situations, the cut scene music is tied to the sound effects slider, and in some situations it's not. I never figured out why this is the case. Still, I did record a good amount of them that did play, and I know what you are all thinking. YES, the House Build track is here. :D. One of the biggest challenges of recording the full loops is dialogue. Even when you turn voices/sound effects all the way down, when an NPC speaks in a mission, the music will reduce to 50% volume, unconditionally. I don't know why this still happens even with sound and voice off, but it made recording a lot of these tracks quite difficult. I had to exhaust the dialogue in almost every section of a mission before I started recording, and because of this I couldn't record some loops twice due to time constraints. Even with slow motion, the track will eventually change. The last thing to mention that is connected to slow motion is musical flourishes/stings that can occur during missions and music shifts. The slow motion mutes the top layer in very specific situations, so I had to make a decision to either record a full loop of the stem, or to only record a handful of seconds with the extra layer that will 100% shift to the next stem rapidly. I felt the decision was obvious, so these extra layers are not present in my rip, BUT there are very few of these situations. A lot of the time I was able to record those flourishes and start the track from there, but only if I was able to record the full loop without slow motion.
Strangers
Strangers - FLAC (https://mega.nz/#!ZOxQmQKR!utLUVaq0uv03D5GnvWEC_gfMusodGNeaIGUjc1e_GtM) - 1GB
Strangers - MP3 (https://mega.nz/#!9XoXwYBT!5ux62hmkJvGpyGSlBNCAlwviKR-fO3oM4kI4PMVUd-o) - 700MB
This section is straight forward. I applied slow motion when necessary and recorded every loop in order. I don't think I missed much of anything here, but I could definitely be mistaken.
Territories
Territories - FLAC (https://mega.nz/#!9bB1hCCL!KcSD_1F-Ucb_WLLOqVRFR_vVi1Hmtkmq8OrBM5jhnGc) - 3GB
Territories - MP3 (https://mega.nz/#!RfQ1WSaZ!SOGl1A2S6FJRu_9PcG0uHUJLEYqTM_eON_R8HIktQL4) - 2GB
There are 30 main Open World tracks that play in RDR 2, and every main track has 4 versions.
Day
Day - Riding
Night
Night - Riding
It took many hours of testing and recording to isolate and identify each of the 120 Open World tracks. I already knew that there was a day and night version of each track and that each territory has it's own set of tracks that can play, but I didn't discover that there was a riding/not riding version of each day and night track until I was well into the process. The slow motion mechanic made recording all of these tracks a LOT easier, especially the riding tracks. If you slow down for more than a few seconds to less than a gallop, the music will 100% shift to the "b" version every time. Discovering which tracks play in which regions was quite a challenge as well because there are some tracks that play in other territories and some that ONLY play in 1 territory. I had to label them in some way that made sense to me and as a way to differentiate them, and you may personally identify a track with a different region. I labeled the tracks according to where they played most for me in those cases. I will break it down as best as I can.
Heartlands - These 4 tracks are the only tracks that play in the Heartlands, but they can also play in any other territory from what I can tell.
Cumberland Forest - Cumberland Forest 1 can also play in Roanoke Ridge. Cumberland Forest 2 and 3 seem to be exclusive to this territory.
Big Valley - Both tracks can also play in Bayou NWA.
Grizzlies - These 3 tracks only play in West and East Grizzlies.
Scarlett Meadows - All 4 tracks only play in Scarlett Meadows.
Bayou NWA - Bayou NWA 1 can play in Scarlett Meadows. Bayou NWA 2 only plays here.
Roanoke Ridge - All 4 tracks only play in Roanoke Ridge.
Great Plains - This track can play in the Grizzlies, and also New Austin.
Rio Bravo - This only plays in Rio Bravo.
Online - All 6 tracks can play anywhere.
Once I sorted out which territory track plays where, tracking down the missing tracks was much easier. I am happy to say that I managed to record the full loops of each of the 120 tracks, even the Online tracks. Getting the full versions of the Online tracks was not easy because the tracks cut off at 3:10 seconds no matter what you do. Without slow motion, I thought there was no way to extend them. However, I recently discovered a method to extend those tracks indefinitely. One of my main goals of this rip was the get all of the ambient Open World music, and I am so glad to have reached that goal.
There are 10 horse race tracks, 8 of which are from Online. All 4 loading screen tracks are here, along with 6 fishing tracks I was able to identify. There may be more fishing tracks, but they didn't play for me if there are more. I also managed to record 3 poker tracks and 1 dominoes track.
Here is where things can get a little messy. The rest of the Territories section is comprised of Encounter/Event music. This can be anything from random encounters, to being wanted and robberies. Basically, anything that plays in the open world that isn't an open world track. If you were to look at the way the files are allocated on the disc, all of these loops would be linked to at least 1 of the 30 main Open World tracks. Here is how it works. Depending on which open world track is currently playing, that determines which "Encounter" track kicks in. Since random encounters are limited in single player, there is only so much I was able to get, but I did manage to record quite a bit. Keep in mind that there are tracks in both the Story and Strangers section that can play during an encounter as well. Overall I think I captured most of the recognizable stuff and every main track is represented. However, I wasn't able to record the loop twice in a lot of cases, and sometimes I wasn't even able to play the full loop once. I did the best I could, but without spending a ton of time waiting for the perfect storm, there is no way of knowing how many combinations of stems there are without seeing the files on the disc, and even then we couldn't say which combinations will play. I can say with certainty that the number of missing tracks that can possibly play in RDR 2 is at least 100, if not hundreds.
I am a huge fan of Woody Jackson's Red Dead scores and I am extremely passionate when it comes to this music, which is the reason I set out to preserve it. Being a huge fan of the RDR 1 music as well, and after recording a rip for that game many years ago, I was determined to complete this rip and make it as high quality as I could. The RDR 1 music is very special to me, and if I had to choose between the RDR 1 or RDR 2 score, I couldn't. I look at this music as more of an extension of what I consider to be the greatest and most beautiful game soundtrack ever created.
Any feedback you can give in order to improve the rip with missing tracks etc., would be appreciated. It's my pleasure to share this with you all and I hope you all find as much joy and inspiration from this music as I have. :)
