Minecraft - Volume Beta

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Minecraft - Volume Beta

Minecraft - Volume Beta.jpg

AKA Minecraft Volume Beta
Release date 2013-11-09
Genre Ambient, Dark Ambient, IDM, Minimal Techno, Orchestral
Running time 2:20:49
Bandcamp $7 or more
Apple Music/iTunes $9.99
Spotify Ad-supported
Google Play Music $9.99
I failed the quiz.
This article is missing trivia.
The basic details are all here, but if you know some fun facts on these tracks, you should add them.

Minecraft - Volume Beta is an album by C418 released in 2013 containing the songs that were added to Minecraft during its Beta period of development. Like Minecraft - Volume Alpha, not every track is used within Minecraft.

To date it is C418's longest album, at nearly 2 hours and 21 minutes in length.

Official descriptions

The second official soundtrack of Minecraft. 140 minutes in length and extremely varied.

Featuring the all-new creative mode, menu tunes, the horrors of the nether, the end's odd and misleading soothing ambiance and all the missing record discs from the game!

It's my longest album ever, and I hope you'll love the amount of work I crammed into it.
This is the second part to the official soundtrack to the most popular video game in recent history. 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.

The big difference of Volume Beta is that the tone is both more positive and at times very dark. Some of the songs even have percussion, which is something that was a complete rarity with Volume Alpha. For example Taswell or Aria Math.

A bunch of the songs are VERY long.

Alpha, being 10 minutes, while “The End” clocks in at 15 minutes. And a lot of the “creative mode” songs are at least around 8 minutes in length.

Additionally, this soundtrack contains the collectible records, which are little vinyl songs you can find in Minecraft, the game. With the exception of Cat. That song you can find on the previous soundtrack, Volume Alpha.

I released this album in late 2013 when I was about to be doing a gig in Mexico. Every time I think about this album, I get nostalgic about Mexico and how wildly different it is from the life I know from Germany or Canada. Though now that I think about it, I feel like Volume Alpha might be a love record to Europe, while Beta is dedicated to America and Asia. This might sound like gibberish to you, but to me it’s kind of a personal internalized opinion.
—C418

Tracks

Ki

Ki, like Key, on the previous album is an introduction to the album. But this time it’s not quiet, somber and welcoming, but dark and foreboding.
—C418

Alpha

Ki
Length 1:32
Bandcamp $1
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Alpha is a medley of past songs. It acts as the score that plays when you “beat” Minecraft, but it also acts as a celebration of past music from Volume Alpha.
—C418


Trivia

  • Alpha was nominated as "The best C418 song of all times".
  • Alpha plays during the credits roll. The song was composed so it goes in sync with the End poem.
  • The title of the song is a reference to Minecraft - Volume Alpha.

Dead Voxel

Alpha
Length 10:03
Bandcamp $1
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Trivia

  • Dead Voxel only plays in the nether.

Blind Spots

Dead Voxel
Length 4:56
Bandcamp $1
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Blind Spots is the first song I wrote with the clear intention of having a unique soundtrack for Minecraft’s “creative mode”. I tried to create a piece that doesn’t particularly change much, but keeps reiterating on itself, like a constant remixing of its core theme. As the piece ends, it becomes very melancholic and solemn, but quickly returns to being positive. Things end, but that’s not bad.
—C418

Trivia

  • Blind Spots only plays in creative mode.

Flake

Blind Spots
Length 5:32
Bandcamp $1
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Trivia

  • Flake only appears on the Christmas mashup for console version of Minecraft.

Moog City 2

Flake
Length 2:50
Bandcamp $1
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Moog City 2 is a recreation of Moog City from Minecraft Alpha. However this time I actually did use Moog synthesisers, along a lot of other synths that I acquired over the course of making this album.
—C418

Trivia

  • Moog city 2 only plays in the main menu of the game.

Connections

Concrete Halls

Moog City 2
Length 3:00
Bandcamp $1
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Trivia

  • Concrete halls only plays in the nether.
  • The song's title could be a reference to a Nether fortress, the in-game structure which appears only in the nether.

Biome Fest

Concrete Halls
Length 4:14
Bandcamp $1
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Biome Fest is a song that I created when Minecraft Alpha was done, but I felt it had no place anywhere in the game, until the creative mode was sort of reintroduced to the game. It’s one of my favourite songs I’ve ever created. I do love minimalism and achieving tones with just very few notes, and I think this song does that extremely well.
—C418

Trivia

  • Biome Fest track on Bandcamp has a link to a YouTube video called "Minecraft Biome Test".
  • Biome Fest only plays in creative mode.

Connections

Mutation

Biome Fest
Length 6:18
Bandcamp $1
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Trivia

  • Mutation only plays in the main menu of the game.

Haunt Muskie

Mutation
Length 3:05
Bandcamp $1
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Haunt Muskie, if I remember correctly, an anagram for Hatsune Miku. Not entirely sure why anymore, but there you go. This song is very nostalgic for me, and I didn’t expect anyone to like it but just me. It turns out it is a little bit popular though. There was this fairly old video game I used to like. Some game where you solve puzzles of broken rollercoasters you have to fix. The music wasn’t particularly good, but the emotion it carried was something I always remembered. Haunt Muskie is what I remember that music to be.
—C418

Trivia

  • Haunt Muskie only plays in creative mode.

Warmth

Haunt Muskie
Length 6:01
Bandcamp $1
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Warmth plays in the game’s hell. Or as it is called in Minecraft, “Nether”. This song tries to play with the idea that even hell isn’t all bad, and there’s good things to be found. But it’s still a very harsh environment.
—C418

Floating Trees

Warmth
Length 3:59
Bandcamp $1
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Trivia

  • Floating Trees only plays in the main menu of the game.

Aria Math

Floating Trees
Length 4:04
Bandcamp $1
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Aria Math is a song full of Pan Drums and old synthesisers rhythmically dancing to ping pong delays. It’s also one of the creative mode songs. I wrote it with the beauty of the more extreme creations in Minecraft. Gigantic statues, entire cities, paintings, people, all recreated in this game. It’s awe inspiring, and that’s what I wanted to kind of symbolise. Not sure if I succeeded?
—C418

Trivia

  • Aria Math only plays in creative mode.

Connections

Kyoto

Aria Math
Length 5:10
Bandcamp $1
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Trivia

  • Kyoto only appears on the Christmas mashup for console version of Minecraft.

Ballad of The Cats

Kyoto
Length 4:09
Bandcamp $1
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Trivia

  • Ballad of The Cats only plays in the nether.
  • The song's title could be a reference to Ghasts, the in-game hostile mobs which only appear in the nether.

Taswell

Ballad of The Cats
Length 4:35
Bandcamp $1
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Taswell is a farewell to a friend I only met for a little bit, but they passed away faster than anyone could have imagined. It was shocking, but I didn’t want to remember them for their death, but the happiness they showed every day of their life.
—C418

Trivia

  • The track title refers to Ryan "Taswell" Davis, founder of the video game website Giant Bomb. Davis passed away unexpectedly at age 34 due to natural causes.[1]
  • Taswell only plays in creative mode.

Beginning 2

Taswell
Length 8:35
Bandcamp $1
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Beginning 2 is just like Beginning on Alpha, perhaps the end to the album, or just the beginning. This album is now in the progress of changing tone rapidly, but not before going to The End.
—C418

Trivia

  • Beginning 2 only plays in the main menu of the game.

Connections

Dreiton

Beginning 2
Length 2:56
Bandcamp $1
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Dreiton is a remembrance of the times when I wrote albums like Zweitonegoismus. When I was still scared to embrace minimalism and simplicity in music. When I was still keen on making my music as crazy and varied as possible. Turns out there was no reason to have such a fear. And with Dreiton, the are essentially only two sections on a song that clocks in at over 8 minutes. I hope I accomplished to have repetition that nonetheless isn’t boring in any way. Like all the other “creative mode” songs, this one is also about the awe of the creativity to be found in Minecraft. At minute 7, the song abruptly builds up to nothing and fades away. Sometimes creativity doesn’t need to have a reason. Sometimes you just build.
—C418

Trivia

  • Dreiton is German for "three tone".[2]
    • The track title is a reference an earlier track by C418 zweiton, which name translates to "two tone".[3]
  • Dreiton only plays in creative mode.

Connections

  • Later remixed on 148 as Vierton, the name of which is the German for "four tone".[4]

The End

Dreiton
Length 8:17
Bandcamp $1
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The End is a 15 minute piece for the namesake in Minecraft, a place called “The End”, a dark and sinister place full of creepy things called Endermen. Oh, and there’s a dragon. Since The End is also the final stage the player has to go to to “beat” the game, this piece contains a lot of references to past songs. If you listen closely, you can essentially hear most of Volume Alpha embedded within. After building up the drone, the song breaks, as if some sort of audio device couldn’t handle it anymore. Lastly you hear someone fixing it, and it starts from the beginning. At least in the game.
—C418

Trivia

  • The End is one of the longest C418 tracks.
  • The End only plays in The End dimension, after killing the Ender dragon.
  • The End features other songs from Minecraft - Volume Alpha, such as Minecraft, Wet Hands, etc.

Chirp

The End
Length 15:04
Bandcamp $1
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Chirp, is where we switch to the records you can find in Minecraft as collectibles.
—C418
Chirp is not a song from LittleBigPlanet, but both the song in LittleBigPlanet and my song have one similarity. We used an instrument called the Mellotron. The Mellotron is a very fascinating instrument when it was new. It’s the very first sampling based piano you could say. You press a key, and a tape behind the instrument plays a sound. Every single note has its own band. And with that you were practically able to play anything that has been recorded. They advertised the Mellotron as an orchestra you can play at home.

When I created records for Minecraft I wanted them to have one or two sounds that all of them share. In this case it was both the Mellotron and the Roland TR 808.

I should have cleared that up when making the song.
—C418

Trivia

  • Chirp uses a sample from the Optigan disc "Bossa Nova Style".

Wait

Chirp
Length 3:07
Bandcamp $1
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Trivia

  • This song's title used to be Where are we now, but because of a whitespace bug, it was renamed to Wait.

Mellohi

Wait
Length 3:54
Bandcamp $1
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Stal

Mellohi
Length 1:38
Bandcamp $1
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Trivia

  • In Swedish, "stal" means "stole", but can also be "stål" with the ring diacritic, which means "steel".

Strad

Stal
Length 2:32
Bandcamp $1
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Eleven

Strad
Length 3:08
Bandcamp $1
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Ward

Eleven
Length 1:11
Bandcamp $1
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Mall

Ward
Length 4:10
Bandcamp $1
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Blocks

Mall
Length 3:18
Bandcamp $1
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Far

Blocks
Length 5:43
Bandcamp $1
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Intro

Far
Length 3:12
Bandcamp $1
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See you next time
—C418, Bandcamp
Intro, an improv piece to say goodbye. Or hello?
—C418

Trivia

Album trivia

  • There are two extra tracks which weren't added to the album.
    • The first one being a music disc 11.
    • The second one being an in-game music when fighting the enderdragon, boss.
  • The discs appear to be based on older 78 rpm records. These usually held a single 2-3 minute song on one or both sides, were made out of a noisy material called shellac (which was notorious for its fragility and hissing sound when no music was playing, both of which can be seen in "11"), and were larger than later, 45 rpm vinyl records which replaced them.
Intro
Length 4:36
Bandcamp $1
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