> So you want to learn how to use Piyo Piyo?

(Posted by CHIPY on August 31, 2025)

Hi there. As promised long eons ago, I've managed to overcome my stupid lazyness and write an actual tutorial on How to use Piyo Piyo.

The reason I'm writing this is not only because Piyo Piyo is my favourite of Pixel's music softwares, but also due to the scarcely amount of material on how to actually RUN it, to begin with. It involves a tricky process, and it had me searching like a lunatic to finally be able to open the program. So, to help whoever might want to make music with Piyo Piyo in the future, I hope this tutorial serves as a nice, concise guide, so you won't need to suffer like me and many others before.

You're welcome! So, let's begin.

> How to install it

You can download Piyo Piyo in the Cave Story Tribute Website, right here. It doesn't really matter which one (Piyo Piyo or Piyo Piyo Combined Set (old)) you choose. The combined set come with more of Pixel's PMD files, though, so it might be a good choice if you want to study his old work.

Now, if you try to open it just like that, you may notice it's kind of crappy. The reason for that is because Piyo Piyo wasn't made for cool, futuristic computers like ours. Pixel very likely didn't think a bunch of n e r d s would want to use his old software anyway. So, for not having a "fullscreen mode", it forces itself to fit in your actual resolution, ultimately failing to do it, and getting all laggy and weird, which isn't what we want.

Also, for some reason, it requires you to load a PMD file to run it, so you can't open a blank project, for instance.

Fortunately, there is a way to correct all these problems. All you'll need are an HEX editor and a little program, which we'll cover in a minute.

Let's do the HEX editing first. There are a lot of good HEX editors out there, so you can choose the one you like the most, I guess. I don't remember which one I used originally, so for this tutorial I'll be using this one, HxD. It looks cool.

With all instaled, open HxD (or the program of your choice), go to > File > Open, and then load Piyo Piyo. It will load all its HEX data, so now we can edit it and fix the booting problem.

Go to > Search > Go to..., and type 00000AB0. This is the offset we're gonna edit. You shall be present with this line (click to zoom it).

Now you'll want to replace the first six codes - 0F 85 80 00 00 00 - to EB 75 90 90 90 90, like in the image below.

Now (and this is REALLY IMPORTANT), go to > Save As and name it "Piyo Piyo 2.exe" or whatever name you feel like. It is important to save it as a different version so you can still load PMD files if you want.

If you try to open your new executable, you'll see that it boots up an instant blank project instead. This covers the first part of the instalation process. Now, let's fix the fullscreen problem.

To do this, you'll need to download a little program called DxWnd. What it will do is force whatever program you choose into window mode, the way Piyo Piyo was supposed to work (assumedely), and so you can run it normally, without lags.

You can download it here.

From here there should not be any complicated. Open it, then go to > Edit > Add, and search for your Piyo Piyo Files. It should look like this.

You'll need to keep it running for the time you use Piyo Piyo, or it will crash otherwise. And with that, we're finished! Congratulations, you can now open Piyo Piyo Player.

> Learning the interface

At first sight it looks all cute and kind of complicated. Which it is, since you don't have any actual text showing which thing does what. But bear with me, for it is not that hard once you get the hand of everything.

This is the main interface, and it where's the magic happens. You can switch between 3 different wave Tracks and one Drum track. But, aside from that, clicking in the values doesn't do anything, does it? We're almost there, don't worry. That little button with a red light is a Loop Function. Clicking the Low Spec switch bellow will blackout the GUI at playtime (which I assume was intended for... runtime problems?).

From left to right, top to bottom, these are:

Click the Settings Button and let's get to work.

This is a blank wave mode. Go on, draw a wave! The oscilloscope experts among you shall get better results than me. I'll not waste your time trying to explain how it works, 'cause frankly I don't know it myself. Take some of Pixel's soundwaves and study it, modify it, I don't know. The sky is the limit!

You can choose any of the various Note Icons to decorate cutely your Piano Roll.

The Envelope Window let's you handle the nature of the sound wave.

Picture the wave running this envelope note by note and you can better visuallize how to work with it. By drawing something like this, the note will have a short Attack and Release, for instance.

You can make some cool effects, like Delays, by drawing something like this.

Finally, let's take a look at the Settings.

Use the Arrow Keys (Up and Down) to set the values such as the song's Volume and the wave's Length and Octave. Music Size defines the end point of your track, while Music Wait sets the Tempo. The higher it is, the slower is your music.

(As a side note: For some reason Piyo Piyo kinda messes with the speed of the PMD files. So your song will run slower than it actually is while into Piyo Piyo. So keep in mind to adjust the Music Wait function before saving your file. Usually, I adjust it by 10-15 slower so it will run at intended speed.)

> The Piano Roll

This is the Piano Roll. Click anywhere to add a note. Make a little melody! Switch between the different tracks and you can edit each track's individual piano roll. When finished, hit the Play button and listen to everything at once!

This is the Playback Bar. The song will start at the point you setted the cute chick.

Click and drag to select multiple bars.

Click, drag and slightly move the cursor to the left and you'll select all.

With the notes selected, click the Copy Button. Now all the notes you've selected are copied. Click anywhere in the Piano Roll to paste the bars you just copied. Be aware that it will overwrite a bar if there's already something in it.

With the notes selected, click the Clear Button to delete it all.

Finally, do you see these little green thingos?

The right one is the song's end point. You can adjust it with the Music Size function. I setted it to 16 so it will end in the second bar.

The left one is the song's loop point. Click with the mouse's left button to drag it around. When the song ends, it will start at that point. You can just leave it there so the song will loop normally as well.

Below the Playback Bar is the Panning Roll. You can mess around with the bars's panning by clicking anywhere in the panning roll.

When you're finished with your sick tune, click the Save/End Button to save your PMD file. You can play it with the Piyo Piyo Player that comes within the program's folder. Open it and click the pendrive icon to load your PMD's.


Congratulations! You've just learned how to use Piyo Piyo! You can now make your own Ikachan-ish songs and such.

As a final consideration, you might want to use a desktop recording program such as Audacity to record your Piyo Piyo songs and covert it into actual audio files. Personally, I like to use OBS Studio to do so, because for some reason Audacity makes the audio sounds really crappy. It is up to you!

If you'd like to listen to cool Piyo Piyo songs, there is a video with all of Pixel's old songs (which are in the Piyo Piyo Combined Set folder). I'm putting it here.

There's also this really cool musician called Shinkeikatsu who makes lots of Cave Story inspired music, using programs such as PxTone, Organya and Piyo Piyo. Here's my favourite music by them. Go support the artist!

Finally, I'm using Piyo Piyo to make the soundtrack of my dream game, Cheap Odyssey. You can listen to a beta OST here.

I hope this tutorial may have served you well. I want more people to use Piyo Piyo and make awesome songs with it, because I really really love this program. So, please, if you're reading this, and have made a song with Piyo Piyo, feel free to send it in my e-mail or something. If there's at least one submission I'll make sure to spread it on my next blog post or something. Maybe release them all on YouTube (with proper credits obviously).

Thank you so much for reading, and have fun!

- CHIPY