Minecraft - Volume Alpha

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Minecraft - Volume Alpha

Minecraft - Volume Alpha.jpg

AKA Minecraft Volume Alpha
Release date 2011-03-04
Genre Ambient, IDM (Intelligent Dance Music), Minimal Techno, Orchestral, Soundtrack
Running time 58:51 (digital and CD)
38:13 (vinyl)
Bandcamp $6 or more
Apple Music/iTunes $9.99
Spotify Ad-supported
Ghostly $10 (digital)
$12 (CD)
From $18 (vinyl)
From $21 (vinyl, international)

Minecraft - Volume Alpha is an album by C418 containing the music added into Minecraft between 0.0.14a_08 and the Halloween Update, although several other songs never used within Minecraft are also included.

Minecraft - Volume Alpha was C418's first album to be released outside of Bandcamp, additionally being released to iTunes, Spotify, and Google Play. To date it is C418's most successful album due to the popularity of Minecraft and its soundtrack.

Official descriptions

This is probably why you’ve come to this website! Minecraft is one of the most popular video games in recent history, and Volume Alpha is the first official soundtrack to the game. Critics like to compare the style of my album to Erik Satie, Roedelius, and Brian Eno. Aphex Twin also once said I stole his style.

Minimalism was and is definitely key when it comes to the soundtrack. Although Minecraft in and of itself is a very frantic and wild experience, I wanted to give the game a contrast by essentially giving the player a pentatonic chill pill. Some fans actually like to listen to this album while they go to sleep, which is just as well another interesting use for it.

Volume Alpha has been released in 2011 and was the first commercial release I’ve ever published, and luckily also the most successful, kickstarting my career as an independent composer and game dev. There is a lot that I have to thank Minecraft for, and there will be much more that I can thank it for.
—C418, C418.org
This album contains most of the songs in Minecraft! It also contains even more unreleased music! In high quality! Meaning FLAC if you want!

If you have a problem or just want to chit-chat, mail me under myself@c418.org !

Also, if you're wondering where the other songs are, those will appear in Volume Beta!

[...]

The OFFICIAL soundtrack of the critically acclaimed multi award winning indie block game!

Features 15 additional soundtrack exclusive minutes of music you haven't heard before!

Features Cat! In STEREO!

Features CD quality music! No more extremely low bitrate youtube videos of the soundtrack!

Features a high quality image of the album cover!
—C418, C418.org

Tracks

Key

Key
AKA nuance1
Length 1:05
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
opens
—C418, Bandcamp
key is the song that sort of introduces you to the album, whereas door is a little bit of a small medley that welcomes you to the world of Minecraft.
—C418
With “key” I had the thought of getting some more background’ey music into the main world. In technicality it’s just “Subwoofer Lullaby”, but slower and with a ton of more echo, but it effectively sounds wonderfully creepy, and I just enjoyed that.
—C418

"Key" is a short period of a somber, inquisitive piano improvisation piece applied with excessive reverb and a smooth, effortless fade between each note, allowing what sounds like voices to combine with the central mix, before ending on a single chord that endlessly echoes.

Connections

Door

Door
Length 1:51
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
Welcome!
—C418, Bandcamp

Subwoofer Lullaby

Subwoofer Lullaby
AKA hal1
Length 3:28
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
Imagine a forest with a subwoofer on overdrive...
—C418, Bandcamp
Subwoofer Lullaby is a song I named that way because I always imagine a big speaker somewhere far far in a forest blasting this odd little melody.
—C418

Connections

Death

Death
Length 0:41
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
Totally worth it though
—C418, Bandcamp

Trivia

Living Mice

Living Mice
AKA hal2
Length 2:57
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
Yes, I mean you.
—C418, Bandcamp
Living Mice, or the opposite would be deadmau5, hah. Joel did help me a bit with making this album, so there’s that reference.
—C418

Trivia

  • The track title is a reference to Joel Thomas Zimmerman, better known as deadmau5.

Moog City

Moog City
Length 2:40
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
Imagine that!
—C418, Bandcamp
Moog City is a fun track. Moog actually contacted me on it, telling me how much they liked it. I’m glad they never found out I actually didn’t make it with a Moog device. I kinda created this song because I ordered a Moog, but I didn’t have it yet.
—C418

Trivia

  • "Moog" is an American electronic synthesizer company,this music may be a tribute to their classic synthesizer.

Connections

Haggstrom

Haggstrom
AKA hal3
Length 3:24
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
MHG MHG MHG
—C418, Bandcamp

Trivia

Minecraft

Minecraft
AKA calm1
Length 4:15
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
The very first and last song.
—C418, Bandcamp
Minecraft is by far the most minimalist song and also the first song I created for the game. It’s purely pentatonic in scale, builds up very slowly, and then slowly fades away. This is kind of what I built the entire soundtrack around on.
—C418

Trivia

  • The track is called the simple title of "Minecraft" to cement the concept that the song is the first ever song that C418 created for the game.

Connections

  • Technically predated by its first remix, Minecraft is acid, though this track made its first appearance in a video on 2009-06-07 testing sound in the game Minecraft. The version shown is Classic 0.0.14a_08, from 2009-05-28.
    • It also made an early and very brief appearance in a 2010 preview of the Minecraft soundtrack.
  • Remixed on this album as Beginning.
    • The theme also appears on this album in Door, Chris, and Beginning .
  • Remixed on Minecraft - Volume Beta as part of Alpha and The End.
    • It was also remixed directly there as Mutation.
    • Remixed by extension in Beginning 2.
    • The theme also appears in the music discs. It can be heard towards the end of Far, the middle of Strad, and in parts of Chirp, .

Oxygène

Oxygène
AKA nuance2
Length 1:05
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
Accidental reference obviously.
—C418, Bandcamp
“Oxygène” and “Équinoxe” are naturally references to Jean Michel Jarre.
—C418

Trivia

Équinoxe

Équinoxe
Length 1:54
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
No reference in here!
—C418, Bandcamp
“Oxygène” and “Équinoxe” are naturally references to Jean Michel Jarre.
—C418

Mice on Venus

Mice on Venus
AKA piano3
Length 4:41
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
Or mars.
—C418, Bandcamp
Mice on Venus, or Mouse on Mars. MOM is a definite inspiration for me, and this album directly. It’s a highly experimental German musician duo that has been super active in the late 90’s and early 2000’s and I obsessed over their work. The song started as a piano solo, but as game development went on, I added a kind of, uh, addendum to it. A little cheeky piece that kind of says, Minecraft is also quite silly.
—C418
[Mice on Venus] evolved into more and more stuff, really. I started with the super simple piano solo, and then added everything else to it. Back then people complained that there was too much depressing music, so I tried to make something optimistic.
—C418

"Mice on Venus" begins with warping ambient synthesizer chords that are layered with a somber piano melody before the piano is made predominant, converting the ambient synthesizers into strings for an orchestral sense. Melodic elements are introduced that use erratic sequences of echoing water-like sounds with bells as the piano intensifies, allowing the extra melodic elements to rise in pitch and gain extra rhythm, accompanying them with strings and pizzicato matching their frequency. The bells wind down and the piano disappears before the bells and strings return for the second section.

In the second section, the bell melodies increase in pace and use a bouncing up-down style melody accompanied by synthesizer strings, as well as a descending glockenspiel melody and a rhythmic piano and harp sequence. The glockenspiel plays in coincidence with the bells as the bouncing descending melody plays on repeat before the introduction of a voice-like synthesizer, eventually leading the melody to gain a consistent rhythm using all instruments together as pizzicato and pianos are hectically played. In the final phrase, the bouncing descending melody also gains a more electronically-based layer of synthesizers while playing in coincidence with the voice-like synthesizers, eventually leading to the layers gradually being removed, making the bell more predominant and the song eventually concluding with the background pizzicato and bell melody.

Trivia

  • The track title is a reference to the German electronic music duo Mouse on Mars.

Dry Hands

Dry Hands
AKA piano1
Length 1:08
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
Yep!
—C418, Bandcamp

Wet Hands

Wet Hands
AKA piano2
Length 1:39
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
And cold too.
—C418, Bandcamp

Clark

Clark
AKA calm2
Length 3:11
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
<3
—C418, Bandcamp

Trivia

  • This track title and the following track title Chris are a reference to English electronic musician Chris Clark.

Chris

Chris
Length 1:27
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
He likes it.
—C418, Bandcamp

Thirteen

Thirteen
AKA 13
Length 2:56
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
No human was harmed in the making of this recording.
—C418, Bandcamp
Thirteen is a creepy little record you can find in Minecraft. I always wanted the player to find it somewhere deep within a cave, because it’s being played by a device, creating a creepy atmosphere. But it turns out it’s just a creepy song being played. We never actually did that in the game though.
—C418

Excuse

Excuse
Length 2:04
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
...
—C418, Bandcamp
Excuse was originally intended to be a song for Minecraft’s hell world, the “Nether”. However when I started creating this album, I wanted it to be more than just carbon copies of what’s in the game. I wanted to give people more. So I ultimately decided that Excuse would be one of several exclusive songs only to be found on this record.
—C418

Sweden

Sweden
AKA calm3
Length 3:35
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
Wonderful country
—C418, Bandcamp
Sweden is by far the most popular song, and I think it’s because of it’s very minimalistic chord progression that you can follow very easily. It is also based on the principle the song Minecraft is built on. Slow buildup, slowly fading away.
—C418

Trivia

  • As C418 himself points out, "Sweden" is the most popular, most played song in the entire Minecraft soundtrack. It is also the song most used in the background when a YouTuber discusses Minecraft in ties with the actual soundtrack itself.
    • It is also C418's most popular song in general.

Cat

Cat
Length 3:06
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
You know what they say - curiosity killed the cat.
—C418, Bandcamp
Cat is a whimsical little track. People seem to like it a lot! I don’t know why!
—C418

Dog

Dog
Length 2:25
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
I don't know about dogs though...
—C418, Bandcamp

Danny

Danny
AKA hal4
Length 4:14
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
All his fault
—C418, Bandcamp

Leading directly from the arpeggiator echo of the final notes of "Dog", "Danny" begins with a filtered acoustic piano playing a gradual, consistent melody, with the sounds of the instrument’s keys being pressed down being audible. The filter is lifted and the piano raises volume as it introduces the first verse.

After holding a chord, the first verse begins to play, the piano melody begins to be layered with a chipper synthesizer melody that is accompanied by sparkling backing chords. An open triangle wave melody begins a transition into the bridge of the song.

During the bridge of the song are filtered, expanded chords of an analog synthesizer played in a low octave, set to a slow mono delay type on ping-pong. The synthesizer has bass frequency increased.

After the bridge, the second and final segment of the song begins to play. The main piano is layered with a celesta, and the sound echoes. When the piano has built up, it transitions into a percussive period featuring synthesizer chords over the piano, along with an additional melody made with chromatic elements formed through a synthesizer and additional effects such as reverb with low dry input and high wet output. After which the song ends itself off by looping over the final melody during a fade, missing out the last note.

Trivia

  • The track title is named after fellow game soundtrack-composer Danny Baranowsky.

Beginning

Beginning
Length 1:42
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
All his fault
—C418, Bandcamp
Beginning because the end is always just the beginning. And with Minecraft, now we do know that this is not the last album and there is more to discover. That’s why I named it that.
—C418

Trivia

Droopy likes ricochet

Droopy likes ricochet
Length 1:36
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
Featured in the video on minecraft.net
—C418, Bandcamp
Droopy Likes Ricochet and Droopy Likes your Face are both songs from life changing moments seem minor in pictures. It’s a song I haven’t created for anything in particular, but the first Droopy song ended up in the first official Minecraft game trailer.
—C418

Droopy likes your face

Droopy likes your face
Length 1:56
Bandcamp $0.99 or more
Not featured in the video on minecraft.net but nontheless completes the song
—C418, Bandcamp
I get a lot of questions on what Droopy says. To be fair, I don’t know. It’s a sample library that you receive if you buy Kontakt. As far as I know, it’s a toy you could buy in the 80’s or 90’s which says random phrases about itself.
—C418, C418.org

A brightly coloured track with a steady beat and robotic sounding vocals.

Lyrics

Note that these lyrics were transcribed by a fan and may not be accurate.

Yoo hoo
Hi
Boing
Yoo hoo (The egg, the egg)
Hi

Yoo hoo
Hi
Boing
Yoo hoo (The egg, the egg)
Hi

Yoo hoo
Hi
Boing
Yoo hoo (The egg, the egg)
Hi

Yoo hoo (Droopy is enormous)
Hi
Boing
Yoo hoo (The egg, the egg)
Hi

Droopy looks in a cave
No one is there
Droopy looks under a tree
Droopy is enormous

Droopy looks in a cave
No one is there
Droopy looks under a tree
Droopy is enormous

Droopy looks in a cave
No one is there
Droopy looks under a tree
Droopy is enormous

Droopy looks in a cave
No one is there
Droopy looks under a tree
Droopy is enormous

Droopy looks in a cave
No one is there
Droopy looks under a tree
Droopy is enormous

Droopy looks in a cave
No one is there
Droopy looks under a tree
Droopy is enormous

Trivia

  • The vocals are from a Kontakt library named “Droopy the Dragon”. It contains text to speech samples from the Magic Wand Speaking Reader made by Texas Instruments in 1982. The Reader was designed to read aloud phrases and sound effects in children’s books that were written for the device. Kontakt includes samples from a book called The Droopy Dragon by Jean Greenlow.
  • More attempts to transcribe the lyrics can be found in the life changing moments seem minor in pictures page.
  • “Droopy likes your face” serves as bonus material for the Minecraft – Volume Alpha album, having originally been released a year prior. The track is orignally from C418’s 2010 album, “life changing moments seem minor in pictures”. After seeing “Droopy Likes Ricochet” in an official Minecraft trailer without any knowledge of it being in, Daniel added the two "Droopy" tracks to Minecraft: Volume Alpha as bonus material.
  • On Reddit, when asked about the lyrics of "Droopy likes Your Face", C418 answered “oh boy I have no idea. It's one of those sample libraries you get when you buy komplete. They sampled a droopy toy? [...] Yeah, I dunno. I never really looked into it. It sounded cool, which is what mattered, haha”

Vinyl tracks

The vinyl version has a different tracklist to the main release due to limitations of the format.

Side A

  1. Subwoofer Lullaby
  2. Living Mice
  3. Moog City
  4. Haggstrom
  5. Minecraft
  6. Clark

Side B

  1. Mice on Venus
  2. Dry Hands
  3. Wet Hands
  4. Sweden
  5. Cat
  6. Danny

Trivia

See Also

References