By C418 Wikipedia Wikipedia Releases by C418: → Minecraft - Volume Beta Next release by this artist.
Released 3/4/2011.
Duration: ~58:50.

Listen on Bandcamp or YouTube (playlist).

View gallery page or commentary page!

1. (1:05) Key
2. (1:51) Door
3. (3:28) Subwoofer Lullaby
4. (0:41) Death
5. (2:57) Living Mice
6. (2:40) Moog City
7. (3:24) Haggstrom
8. (4:14) Minecraft
9. (1:05) Oxygène
10. (1:54) Équinoxe
11. (4:41) Mice on Venus
12. (1:08) Dry Hands
13. (1:30) Wet Hands
14. (3:11) Clark
15. (1:27) Chris
16. (2:56) Thirteen
17. (2:04) Excuse
18. (3:35) Sweden
19. (3:06) Cat
20. (2:25) Dog
21. (4:14) Danny
22. (1:42) Beginning
23. (1:36) Droopy likes ricochet
24. (1:56) Droopy likes your face

Added to wiki 10/5/2026.

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Artist commentary for Minecraft - Volume Alpha:

C418 ✑ Bandcamp description

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

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.

...

For Volume Alpha, I teamed up with Ghostly to make a high quality vinyl, and I think we did a great job! One of the vinyls is lenticular and it feels really weird to stare at a flat vinyl cover and see 3D pop out of you. If you want the warmth and crackle of the old analog classic, and a great big BIG cover to boast to everyone, check out Ghostly’s store!

C418 ✑ Q&A: C418’s Minecraft – Volume Alpha Soundtrack

I think Minecraft is an exceptional game, but at the time I was just happy to be making the soundtrack for a game again. What really surprised me was when it was mentioned by Valve in the Team Fortress blog. I’ve done quite a few soundtracks but none of these games were ever released. I grew up with a Game Boy in my hands and have never stopped buying videogames and devices, so I think it’s a good thing if you can say, “I do it for my living.”

...

There was quite a lot of work involved, actually. I did change the music a little bit so that it would be seamless between pauses. I also added an additional fifteen minutes of content so that people would consider spending four dollars on it. I think Bandcamp is the most convenient method of selling music digitally when compared with Amazon and iTunes, which will take 30% or more of sales. Even though Bandcamp is not really well known, they’re pretty much the best service to sell your music.

C418 ✑ Minecraft’s Composer Explains Why the Music Is ‘So Weird’

I like to add more stuff to the songs that are in the game because I feel that players are probably not as interested in buying music that’s already in the game. So, extending the album into a more cohesive piece that can be played on its own feels better than just taking all of the sound files and slapping them onto an album.

I have a good friend who is really into video game soundtracks, and I asked him what I should do. He said, “Don’t touch the source material, but if you want to attach something else to it you can make it like a second song type of thing.” So that’s what I did. I would extend the songs into some new territory, then render them as two songs even though they’re the same song with a short pause in between.

...

There’s definitely a narrative to it, but I don’t know what the story is now. The way I structure the album is that I first render out all the songs and make sure they’re all nicely mastered. Then I slap them into one project file and basically see it as a jigsaw puzzle, putting them next to each other to see if they work. If they do, I usually like to put something in between so it makes sense that these songs are on there, but you wouldn’t even know if you listened to the album because it sounds like one whole thing.

...

Let’s say I made 90 percent of all of the visual designs, like all of the cube stuff. Ghostly basically came in and cleaned up the formatting on the text, because I’m not really good at that stuff. [For the limited edition release], I wanted the lenticular print of the iconic Minecraft block—the grass block with a little bit of dirt on it—to be more 3D, so the cubes are way more 3D than they are on the normal release. I’m really happy with the way it looks.