Minecraft: Musical Wonderland

Have you ever wanted to ride a rollercoaster while listening to Lady Gaga? Or have the Star Wars theme auto-play when you enter your house? You can with Minecraft. Search Youtube for a popular song + Minecraft, and chances are there will be a video for it!

Minecraft gives players the basic tools for creating and repeating musical notes to construct any song or musical piece they like! It can range from a simple real time piano to an orchestrated techno song across the galaxy. Yes, the galaxy! Take a look at this example:

Awesome right? But even for regular Minecraft players, what the heck did we just see? Just watching the video, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Let's break it down a bit.

This is a music block:

Depending on the material underneath, it will play a different instrument. Wool and dirt give the musical block a piano type of sound. Wood is bass guitar, sand for snare drum, glass for clicks, and stone for bass drums. If you left click the block, it will play a sound. If you right click the block, it will play a different note and stay in that note unless you right click again. This piano example shows a person who has already right clicked each block to play a certain note, and then left clicks the boxes to play the song manually:

Now that the sound is done, you can string the blocks together to play at a certain interval to play the song you like. Redstone powder, switches, and red lights are used for this purpose. This is the most basic setup:

When a user clicks on the switch, the redstone powder turns on the musical block to play one note once. If you add more blocks and connect them via the powder, you'll get something like this:

Scroll down for a great tutorial video on how to make looping sounds!

Putting all these components together along with lots of free time and dedication from players have created some really amazing things!

My personal favorite, done with the musical tones from the game:

There you have it. If you're tired of building or digging, then give music a try. It doesn't have to be as complex as the videos above. It can be a simple door bell melody to your house or a few notes along the rail to give it that special something.

To go into further details on the notes available, check out the Minecraft Wiki on musical blocks.

The following video is the best tutorial I've found on how to automate and loop music. The video is very simple and to the point. Best of all, no annoying voice or techno music in the background: