Note Block

Crafting
Note Blocks can be crafted by placing 8 planks in a square with redstone at the center.

Music
Note blocks play a note when hit or when powered by redstone. Redstone current only causes the note to play once, even if it is a continuous current. A note block must have at least one block of air above it to play a sound. Notes can be heard up to 48 blocks away.

A simple video tutorial on how to use note blocks can be found here.

Each time a note block plays a note, a note particle will fly out of the top, with the color depending on the pitch (but not the instrument).

Right clicking increases the note pitch up a half step, with a total of two full octaves being available to play. The range of notes span from F#3 to F#5. After reaching the highest note, right clicking again resets it back to F#3, as does breaking the block and picking it back up. The exact pitch to click assignment is shown below.

Alternatively, there is a graphical version available:



The instrument played depends on the block underneath the note block:

A video showing the different sounds can be seen here:

Wiring


In order to wire Note Blocks to play a note, power must be applied to the side of the Note Block using Redstone Dust, or below using a redstone torch. Simply placing a switch or pressure plate on an adjacent block or providing power to the block beneath the Note Block will not work.

Very basic wiring tutorial:

It is also possible to play a song with a single click by adding delays between each note blocks, here are four examples:

Chords with Note Blocks


If want to get a richer tone in the song/sound you're creating you can bind different notes together into a chord, just like on any other kind of instrument. This will not only get a better sound to the song, it will also be simpler to place the Redstone. You can connect almost how many Note Blocks as possible to the same redstone wire, that eventually will lead to a pressure plate, lever or button. Here's a video that shows how good sound and simple redstone placing you can get with chords:

Other Information

 * Note Blocks can only play when there is at least one block of air above them.
 * Note Blocks use the same texture as jukeboxes but the top texture is the same as the side textures.

History
Note Blocks were released on 13 January 2011 for the Beta release 1.2.