The album art for Minecraft - Volume Beta
Minecraft - Volume Beta is the second soundtrack for Minecraft by C418, the first being Minecraft - Volume Alpha. It was released on 9 November, 2013 on C418's website at Bandcamp and on the iTunes store, with a release later on Spotify.
The album includes 30 songs for a total length of nearly 141 minutes. It features many music tracks which were added to Minecraft "silently" in the Music Update, as well as the music discs that were missing from the first album and a few tracks that are not in the game.
Official description
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.[1]
Track listing
| No. | Title | Name in Minecraft | Length | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Ki | 1:32 | This is a reprise (a similar but slightly different version) of Key from Minecraft - Volume Alpha (note that both have the same pronunciation). It starts off with Key but includes more electronic music. | ||
| 2. | Alpha | credits.ogg | 10:03 | This track is a reprise of some tracks from Minecraft - Volume Alpha, including Minecraft, Mice on Venus, Moog City, and Sweden. It plays during the End Poem, after defeating the Ender dragon. | This is the first of two longer songs which are "Album Only" on the iTunes online store. |
| 3. | Dead Voxel | nether2.ogg | 4:56 | It begins with ambient music and distant, high-pitched sounds similar to ones heard in Ballad of the Cats and later turns into a serene but dramatic piano song. At the end, part of Beginning can be heard. | This, along with Concrete Halls and The End, was present in Console Edition as of TU9. |
| 4. | Blind Spots | creative2.ogg | 5:32 | Starts off with somewhat dissonant and echoed piano sounds as the theme and goes into an upbeat song with use of ukulele. Later a vocal synth comes in which morphs rather arrhythmically at first but near the end the original beat returns. | |
| 5. | Flake | 2:50 | This song starts with a calm, bell-like synth and ambient sounds and later a glitchy rhythm enters. | This track is used in the Console Edition Festive Mash-Up Pack. | |
| 6. | Moog City 2 | menu2.ogg | 3:00 | This track is a reprise of Moog City from Minecraft - Volume Alpha. | |
| 7. | Concrete Halls | nether1.ogg | 4:14 | This track is a rhythmic song with dark, relatively dissonant ambient music, heavily reverbed percussion, and distant ghast sounds. | This track was also present in Console Edition as of TU9. |
| 8. | Biome Fest | creative1.ogg | 6:18 | It starts with a song of synthesized voices which makes way to an electronic song with bells in the background. | This track was previously used in a video by Notch to demonstrate biomes.[2] |
| 9. | Mutation | menu1.ogg | 3:05 | This track is a reprise of Minecraft from Minecraft - Volume Alpha with a changed melody in some parts. | |
| 10. | Haunt Muskie | creative3.ogg | 6:01 | An upbeat, ambient, rhythmic track. Near the beginning you can hear what appears to be a reversed piano or instrument of some sort. | |
| 11. | Warmth | nether3.ogg | 3:59 | The song starts with loud, hollow sounds of something banging on a metallic object, which fades into synthesizer music with enderman-like sounds. Near the end, the music turns back into banging sounds, but louder and less muted. At the end are sounds of a large amount of a water-like liquid flowing. | |
| 12. | Floating Trees | menu4.ogg | 4:04 | It is an ethereal and calming track in which times of rain(?) can be heard. The end seems to contain the start of the melody from Subwoofer Lullaby. | This appears to be a reference to the well-known annoyance of leaving a tree only partially chopped down, thus leaving it “floating”. |
| 13. | Aria Math | creative4.ogg | 5:10 | It has a main theme played in hang drums throughout the song with electronic music to accompany it. Later the main theme turns into guitar which goes into a slow crescendo near the end. | Featured in the YouTuber BebopVox's Volume Beta preview video as a creative song example. [citation needed] Aria is a music term for a song of air. |
| 14. | Kyoto | 4:09 | A Japanese-sounding ambient song. It is played at the beginning using a flute and piano. Later in the song it turns into a piano song with an unknown woodwind. Birds can be heard near the beginning, too. | Kyoto is a Japanese city and was formerly the imperial capital of Japan. | |
| 15. | Ballad of the Cats | nether4.ogg | 4:35 | A period of techno-sounding music and then a break. Later a second period of peaceful music and then a techno-style ending. Near the beginning and end are distant, echoing screams. | |
| 16. | Taswell | creative6.ogg | 8:35 | It is a haunting track of echoing, ethereal music and high-pitched beeping with odd static-like periods in between. It suddenly becomes an odd-sounding song with steady drum beats. Later it turns into an electronic track with the middle song in the background. It starts playing static-like periods at the end. | This track's title is a reference to the late Ryan Davis of Giant Bomb. |
| 17. | Beginning 2 | menu3.ogg | 2:56 | This track is a reprise of Beginning from Minecraft - Volume Alpha. | |
| 18. | Dreiton | creative5.ogg | 8:17 | An ambient track that makes use of hang drum sounds. It is a slow rhythm that slowly loudens, and then suddenly quiets down again, slowly crescendoing until dramatically quieting into a guitar piece. | „Dreiton“ is German for “three tone” and may be a reference to C418's earlier album, zweitonegoismus ("two tone egoism"), which itself may be a reference to an even earlier album, "Sine" (description: eins- "one" in German.) |
| 19. | The End | end.ogg | 15:04 | It appears to be Minecraft being attempted to play but interrupted by glitching, followed by ambient, echoing sounds with a continuous buzz. Throughout the track, it plays distorted versions of the tracks Minecraft, Dry Hands, Danny, Oxygène, Subwoofer Lullaby, Cat, Sweden and Haggstrom from Minecraft - Volume Alpha. | This is the second of two longer songs which are "Album Only" on the iTunes online store. The track was already present in Console Edition as of TU9, along with Dead Voxel and Concrete Halls. |
| 20. | Chirp | chirp.ogg | 3:07 | An upbeat, catchy tune. | From this track until Far (track 29) are all music discs available in the game excluding Cat and Thirteen, and with the exception of Eleven being an exclusive music track. |
| 21. | Wait | wait.ogg | 3:54 | An upbeat jazzy, techno track. | This track was originally titled Where are we now and for a long time was in the record folder but was not added as a music disc due to issues with the spaces in its name. This was finally rectified by renaming it and it was added as a music disc. |
| 22. | Mellohi | mellohi.ogg | 1:38 | A slow, slightly melancholic waltz. | |
| 23. | Stal | stal.ogg | 2:32 | A moderate jazz-like piece with recorder. | |
| 24. | Strad | strad.ogg | 3:08 | A tropical-sounding synth piece. | |
| 25. | Eleven | 1:11 | At the beginning, the beginning of the music disc 11 can be heard, but is apparently quickly switched to the new tune. | This track references the music disc 11 in its name and length, but features a new track instead of the disturbing sound of a person running away from some unknown creature. | |
| 26. | Ward | ward.ogg | 4:10 | The song starts off with an excerpt from Chopin's Funeral March played on synth organ but goes into an electronic, upbeat, exploration and adventure tune with a dark undertone. | The old-sounding intro to this song was shortened. |
| 27. | Mall | mall.ogg | 3:18 | A calm piece of serene music. | |
| 28. | Blocks | blocks.ogg | 5:43 | An upbeat, retro melody. | |
| 29. | Far | far.ogg | 3:12 | A calm, relaxing, nature-like melody. | |
| 30. | Intro | 4:36 | It appears to be of a person humming and playing notes, as if compiling a song from their head. | On C418's website there is a description for this song: “See you next time”. |
Total running time: approximately 141 minutes.