I know M1 can also output .vgm files, but I don't have any idea what kind of data those hold. Might be worth looking into though.

Hope you can figure something out. I've been interested in finding a way to write music using System 11 tech, although I'm way too much of an audio noob to figure it out. Kind of wish someone would make an emulated System 11 VST or something.

Funny this thread popped back up, I've been looking into trying to get the FM synth patches used in System 11 and WPC games the past few days. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten anywhere. The patches used in those games sound so much nicer to me than what you usually hear from games using the YM2151, but for some reason no one really seems interested in trying to rip them.

I did discover how to play music and sounds through PinMAME though, so that was cool.

So I asked about this on VPforums and a developer working on PinMAME actually went ahead and added support for creating VGM files! You can try it with the latest beta found here: https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=27063&p=456542 There are a few limitations (Notably that non-FM drums and voices are missing), but overall this is way more powerful for ripping pinball music than anything we've had before. Note that I was only able to get the VGMrip functionality to work by opening PinMAME through the command line. Once you get VGM ripping set up, you can use PinMAME's sound command mode (F4) to play literally any sound or piece of music in a game.

You can use VGMTools to do a lot with these files. A bunch can be found here, but there are others scattered around the internet: https://vgmrips.net/wiki/VGM_Tools (Most notably VGMPlay, which I'm not sure is included in this pack)

I'm using this functionality to get the FM Synth instrument presets to make my own music with, since System 11 and pre-DCS WPC games have some fantastic presets I wanted to get my hands on.

I've also messed around with VGMPlay's features, mainly the ability to export waves and isolate individual channels. This might be what Rdoyle1978 is looking for since it makes recreating music pretty easy since you can clearly hear every individual note this way.