Making Music With Note Blocks! ▫ The Minecraft Survival Guide (Tutorial Let’s Play) [Part 258]

Hello everyone my name is Pixar IFS and welcome back to the Minecraft Survival Guide hope you guys are having a good day and I hope you’re ready to make some noise because today’s episode is going to be about noise of making specifically with a block that we have used several

Times in the game before but never really for this purpose and that is note blocks no blocks are incredibly versatile for a variety of things most notably recently they have become the darling of the redstone community for their ability to trigger observers only once when you right-click on them to

Tune a note block it changes the state of the block which is very useful for various redstone contraptions and I’m pretty sure I first used it in this world in a build that was no longer here anymore I heard but the cobblestone generator that we created first over in

This direction where the trading hall is now was the first place I think I used a note block in a redstone contraption in this world I also find the really nice full building with the texture is actually quite unique only the jukebox has a similar texture and the jukebox

Just has a slot on the top of it for the music discs to go in but it’s basically the same texture on the site but I kind of like it for medieval building especially it makes a really great accent block and you’ll notice in the micro build that we did in yesterday’s

Video I actually used a few note blocks around the the top part of some of the wooden pillars just to create a join between the pillars and the upper part of the structure but today we’re going to be using note blocks for their intended purpose and that is for making

Music in this shelcha box here we have a variety of materials and you might be asking yourself what is the common theme here the common theme is that each of these changes what a note block sounds like it changes the instrument that a note block plays with the exception of

The grass block which I’m bringing with me basically as a default any other block because I’ve been looking through a Minecraft Wiki to make sure I’ve got some comprehensive information for you guys that we’re not missing anything out and there is a list there of all the different instruments that can be played

At using no blocks and a combination of these blocks so grab the Shilka box we will head out over here and I think we’ll find a nice open space somewhere maybe not here maybe whoo-hoo maybe we’ll go all the way onto the other side of the mountain past where

The end crystal is and we’ll come down on this grassy flat plane over here because I feel like we need a little bit of room to work here we’ve got a lot of stuff to layout we’re going to go through the instruments and stuff first we’re going to go through how to tune

Note blocks and or what exactly tuning them does what notes you can create with the various note blocks and then hopefully by the end of the episode I’ll have been able to compose something using note blocks and a redstone because no blocks can be activated by redstone

Of course we’ve seen that throughout the series already but you can activate a series of note blocks in order if you want them to play a tune and I think that’s going to be a decent goal for today’s episodes so with that stuff cleared out of the way let’s take out

Each of these blocks and pop them down and we should be able to demonstrate the wide array of instruments available to us so here we go we’ve got all of these blocks that laid out in a long line we’re going to be placing a note block

Over the top of each one because this is how you change the sound a note block makes you simply put another block below it or you put it on top of another block and one thing you do need to remember about note blocks is that if they have

Anything on top of them say for example that we place a scaffolding block on there we’re no longer going to be able to play the note block I believe we can still tune at the note block you’ll see over there on the targeted block data on the right-hand side the note is still

Changing in value between 0 and 24 when I right-click on this so we can tune it without hearing it but we’re not going to be able to hear it until we take that block off the top and then we can play it again and that’s that’s an interesting sound

We will come back to that one in a moment so now we’ve got all of these materials laid out let’s go down the line and test each one of them so right here we have a note block on top of wood and this is basically anything in the

Wood family it can be something that you’ve crafted out of wood like for example a chest or a pressure plate I’ve got a pressure plate over so I could make this example right this is going to give you a base sound effect although right now yet it’s tuned pretty high but

Yeah if I hit that a couple of times that is a base sound effect and this note block here we’ll also make a bass sound effect over the top of that wooden pressure plate likewise if I put one here over a chest like so bass guitar again and a well bass

Technically upright bass but not necessarily a guitar but then if I place that on the ground that is doing the harp sound effect it’s listed as harp or piano I kind of think of it as harp sounding so basically anything you make out of wood whether it’s pressure plates

Chest planks slabs stairs or just the full logs will always produce this bass sound effect moving along we have the sand gravel and concrete powder family which includes stuff like red sand and all of the different varieties of concrete powder this gets you a snare drum sound effect

Forming the start of the rhythm section here where we have a snare drum clicks and sticks which is provided by by glass in a variety of pitches and the bass drum which is anything on top of a stone block which I’m pretty sure is any material of stone so granite andesite

Same thing cobblestone same thing and all of their you know variants of stairs and slabs and that kind of thing always produces this bass drum sound effect so between these three you’ve got some some interesting rhythm stuff you can do with those and combine that with the bass

That is the rhythm section right there next up we move into slightly unfamiliar territory right here we have a glockenspiel sound effect by placing this on top of a block of gold and of course that’s something that has quite a resonant and nice sound to it it’s got a

Nice note that means you can probably use this as a melody instrument if you want to it’s also got quite a high range we’ll talk a little bit more about the ranges of these instruments in a minute the next one here is clay play on in an

Unlikely turn of events has a flute sound which doesn’t have a particularly strong attack but you can definitely hear it you know producing the note it’s quite quite a pleasant sound still the thing about note blocks is that you can’t have them hold on to the notes

They always just play a single note and then it’s over you know you don’t end up having like an elongated period of redstone power will like it won’t hold the note for you at least as far as I know that that functionality might end up in the game in future or something

But at least right now I don’t think it is possible with note blocks next up unpacked ice we have this kind of chime almost like a tubular bell sound and it’s quite nice actually I like that I like that a lot it definitely suits the ice as well it’s

Got that kind of like tinkly chime sound next up we have wool and wool sounds like a guitar which starts quite deep not quite as deep as the bass down there but it goes up to a sort of mid-range which is quite nice for acoustic compositions over next to it we have a

Bone block which is very appropriately a xylophone I can imagine doing some really great Halloween soundtracks with this I like that I like that a lot next up next to that we have a kind of similar sound the iron xylophone or the vibraphone and vibraphone czar here

Sounding sounding a little bit 70’s 80’s kind of thing a little bit lounge jazz but I kind of like the idea of playing around with those we can do some stuff with that recent additions to the game have included a cowbell played on Sol sand which is really strange but I guess

It kind of works if you’ve got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell look no further than soul sand with a note block over the top of it next up this is an odd one it’s sort of sounds like a distorted guitar sound

That you might get out of an old school MIDI keyboard but this is actually the sound of a didgeridoo and it starts quite low and apparently that was recorded using the same didgeridoo that provides the didgeridoo sound effect for the pillager aids triggering so it’s actually kind of

Interesting to to hear that in like a really short burst but there you go that’s on top of a pumpkin I don’t know how often we’ll use that but maybe we can make it sound like a rock guitar if we want to it’s got that slightly crunchy distorted kind of sound to it

Speaking of crunchy and distorted we have one of my favorite new sounds that they’ve added it I think this was added in minecraft 1.14 even putting a note block above a block of emerald creates a square wave sound effect or the kind of 8-bit sound that you’re probably used to

From old-school video game soundtracks and chiptune music and that kind of stuff it’s the Anamanaguchi of note blocks I really like this one and we’re probably going to be doing some cool stuff with this later I’m thinking maybe we’ll try doing like a Mario themed kind

Of thing with some of these if it has the note range and we’ll come back to the note range like I said in a second the hay-bale of course could be no other thing than a banjo and very appropriate for the farmyard setting I think that’s

Kind of nice to have in the in the note block tool belts I’m not entirely certain health and we’ll use a banjo but worth knowing it is there and then finally glowstone has this kind of electric piano again sort of lounge jazzy kind of vibe to it it’s a little

Bit like a suitcase a Rhodes Marc – piano kind of sound and I like that that’s that’s kind of a useful one again nice and melodic nice and light it’s very clear what the notes you’re playing is doesn’t have too many extra harmonics can you tell I went to school for this

Stuff I went to school for some of this stuff and then a note block placed on any other kind of material is going to find itself once again at making that harp or piano kind of sound that like slightly soft attack and yeah like nice

And melodic so we can do a whole lot with these and after the break we’re going to see what arrangement we can put these in that’s really going to be most effective hey folks welcome back so let’s talk about the ranges of each of these instruments because obviously you have

Some of these that make relatively low pitch sounds you have some of them that make fairly high pitch sounds and you might be wondering if you’re more musically inclined you can read music or at least you know what the the letters that are ascribed to each of the musical

Notes are you might be wondering what the range of this is what note they actually start on and weirdly it is an f-sharp and I’m not sure quite why that is because like keyboards don’t typically start on an f-sharp even if you’ve got like a piano keyboard they

Usually start on a low a and move up so I’m not quite sure what made f-sharp the the kind of default note but there you go they go from F sharp to F sharp in two octaves or so to full chromatic runs up the scale and like I said they go from a

Value of 0 to a value of 24 when you’re looking at them in the targeted block data over there so basically you get a full chromatic scale twice over in note block form starting with F sharp that low F sharp and then moving up the scale twice

And each of these has a different range of that of course because this is you’re looking at something that’s got a bass and a flute they’re not going to be working in the same range so the bass has a range of F sharp 1 to F sharp 3

Basically the lowest F sharp you could play on a piano keyboard that’s what this bass is playing up to the 3rd F sharp on the keyboard and as you move down the line obviously these ones are all percussive they don’t really have notes attached to them but there are a

Variety of different ranges Pumpkins playing the didgeridoo is also operating in the F sharp 1 to F sharp 3 range all of these over here are basically F sharp 3 to F sharp 5 so they are kind of like they start where the didgeridoo ends so

Like if I tuned this one to the the top note it can manage that note there that’s where this one starts basically so they have this one that’s actually an octave different right now because it’s on yeah about half way up if I tuned that to its starting note like that

Those are now the same note and then this one does two octaves from F sharp 3 to F sharp 5 as does the banjo as as the glowstone and the harp sits in that middle range as well if you want to work with the high mid-range the cowbell

Is actually tuned from f-sharp full to f-sharp 6 and then I think yeah the clay doing the flute is F sharp 4 to F sharp 6 as well the rest of them so the glockenspiel the packed ice and what else the bone block doing the xylophone those all go to the highest possible

Range so those are F sharp 5 to F sharp 7 basically the 7th F sharp if you start on the left hand side and go towards the right the 7th F sharp you can play on a piano keyboard that one I think almost there it is I don’t have perfect pitch

So I can’t quite figure this out like by ear but that is that is the highest note that you can play on a note block so you get a full range of a piano keyboard by combining these instruments you’re not always going to have a coherent sound by

Doing that because they don’t all sound the same as each other but you can definitely get a pretty decent musical range in and if I want to demonstrate that full range I am gonna have to get myself a few more note blocks so of course we’re gonna craft these with some

Redstone dust and some words sacrificing a great deal of redstone here but that’s absolutely fine I wanted a bunch of these anyway and they’re useful for redstone contraptions so I will grab myself a few more of these but yeah for those of you who are more musically or mathematically inclined you really want

To take a look at the Minecraft Wiki article about note blocks because it lays everything out in some very accessible tables for you and a graphical version that has note block references drawn out on a piano keyboard so you can kind of see what each of the

Values is what each of the notes is and the range that they can play in so if you wanted to work out some sort of note block composition on a keyboard before you input it into the game you could very easily tune each of those note

Blocks based on where the note was on a piano keyboard there are even probably virtual keyboards that you could use through free software like GarageBand if you have a Mac or something like that we’ll have a basically a built in keyboard kind of thing but let’s grab a few oh I

Should probably bring myself some wood over here as well shouldn’t I tell you what let’s also get on this train early and make ourselves a bunch of repeat because we will no doubt need a bunch of them if we’re going to make some sort of note block composition by the end of

This video so let’s make a few of those thirty-two should do for now and having broken all of that word down into planks we’re gonna lay 48 of them out in a row here to demonstrate the full chromatic range of the bass note block and then we

Could loop back around and do the same thing on the grass coming back the other way to demonstrate the full range of the harps so yeah we can probably do both of those we will need a little bit of space for this right now though because each

Of the note blocks needs to be powered in turn out there’s a tree here you should probably get rid of that so we’re gonna start with a note block here we’re gonna activate with a button or a lever or some kind of redstone input and we’re

Gonna need to leave a space at between each of these and place them like on alternating blocks because we will need to place redstone repeaters between each of them to space out the nuts for a start we don’t want to play all of them at once but also running a redstone dust

Into each of them is going to be a little bit tricky but having them run in sequence is as simple as separating them up with a simple redstone repeater and repeaters also allow you to control the delay between notes which means you can actually start to insert rhythm into a

Long string of note blocks like this and that should just about do so we’re gonna go through we’re gonna place repeaters going between each one of those so it’s gonna carry the redstone signal down the line once we activate it at the other end here and now the most time-consuming

Part of any a major noteblock project is we have to tune at the note blocks and at this point having the debug information is kind of handy so you can see whether or not you’ve messed up so we want to tune that one once why don’t you in that one twice that one

Three times that one four times we’re going for the full chromatic scale so we need five there six there seven there and so on down the line and now for the full chromatic scale as played on the bass note block there we go and we basically heard every

Note that we had there but unfortunately the range of note blocks is kind of limited you will actually need to be standing fairly close to a note block in order to hear it according to the Minecraft Wiki notes can be heard up to 48 blocks away but

The volume of a note block does decrease the further the play gets away from it so we kind of have to chase the note down the line to make sure that we are hearing the last one over here and yes I realized I’d only placed 23 and I ran

Out of wood at the end here so I decided to just put that on a pressure plate but hey it worked and as I was saying adjusting the delay in between each of these notes is what can change the rhythm of the song so for example we can

Add an extra ticket delay between those and we’ll have a little bit more space between each note as it is played and then it will continue at speed as it goes further down the line there you go so those first four notes there oh yeah we’ve added a couple of piano notes to

The scale at the end there as well those first four notes were slowed down a little bit we can slow them down even further if we want to like so okay I think that was a bit of a lag spike I think that was a bit of a weird example

They did not expect that to play such a glissando the way it did here we go there we go unfortunately a little bit of lag can can change the sound of your note blocker compositions a little bit but hopefully that’s a problem that will be resolved once performance issues

Improve it and hear the next version of the game so if this set up the way it is right now we are limited to only four ticks worth of delay but of course we can space the notes out if we want to and add even more delay between them

This is going to break the rest of the circuit here but of course now we have eight ticks of delay between this note block and this note block there we go and it powered that one so it actually played both of them at once which created a little bit of a discord there

But if we there you go so you had a bit of a jaws theme vibe to that right there but you were you end up with a lot more delay added in just by adding repeaters and so forth in there there are a lot of other very clever ways to delay redstone

Circuits but that is one of them and that is probably the most rudimentary entry an easiest way of planning out songs that can be played by a set of note blocks and I really think note blocks are one of the things that makes Minecraft a little bit more interesting

Than the average sandbox game because you’re giving yourself music creation tools here with a fairly limited range of instruments and a limited range of notes as well but you are actually able to create little compositions in Minecraft you can even use stuff like this as background music for some of

Your builds if you want to if you want to have music playing in a shopping mall that you’ve set up you could have that kind of like tinny music coming through the speakers in the background or rather coming through the floor most likely because if you’ve got a decent amount of

Music made with no blocks chances are you’ve probably buried it underground somewhere or put it up in the sky where it’s not going to be perceived by the average player behind a wall or something like that but either way you’re gonna be able to to have some

Music playing in the background you can have elevator music you can have theme songs for you as you walk through the door and trigger a tripwire or something like that you can have something effectively play a fanfare to welcome you home and it is super fun to play

Around with note blocks even if all you want to do is make beats all day like this so I’m I’m gonna set up a few note blocks around here I’m probably gonna use some more of those emerald blocks because I really like that 8-bit square

Wave sound and I’m gonna see if I can compose something and I’ll be right back okay I think we have something pretty special here so this is a little bit thrown together and it’s only the first couple of bars of the song but I have put together for a start a little tiny

Drum machine over here that’s going to be keeping rhythm for us and then this loop of note blocks around here which I’ve arranged quite close to me just so I can hear them all and it doesn’t fade out into the distance is the first few bars of the Super Mario theme the

Old-school one because all of these underneath here are now emerald blocks and that those are providing that that lovely 8-bit chiptune kind of sounding toner to them so let’s let’s start the clock over here starting with this one here which is the bass drum like so and we’ve got bass drum

Click snare click like that just to keep us in rhythm like this and it’s pretty slow but this is the beat we’re working with and I’m going to take this button off put it on here and then I’m going to replace a repeater we could automate a

Few more aspects of this and we can have it all start with a single pull of the lever but I didn’t really account for that in this temporary setup but if I time the button press right here it’s gonna be pretty special here we go waiting for the beat just about I think

We just about managed that the timing is a little bit tricky here in there but once we put that second repeater in it loops around a little bit there’s some odd triplets in this one it’s kind of difficult to play by ear but I didn’t take any sheet music or anything for

This I just decided to try and write the entire thing by ear I might not have got all of the harmonies correct but I kind of like this it’s got a it’s got a bit of a beat to it I think yeah the timing over here is a little bit janky but for

The most part this is pretty good and you can do some cool stuff with that obviously we can like add in a bass note here and there if I grab some some wooden planks or maybe even if I place a note block on top of a note block we can kind of like

Add our own bassline to this and of course you can play along manually you can automate some stuff like that and you can have it all hooked up to redstone clocks like this so the bars repeat over and over again and while that’s obviously kind of cool to listen

To for a little while I have a feeling it might get a little bit repetitive after a while so we’re going to shut that off but this is just a fraction of what can be done with note blocks and you’ll find that a lot of people like to assemble their note block compositions

In creative mode because it’s easier to get lots of easy access to the materials but if you wanted to make a chip tune sort of tune like this if you wanted to do something like that attribute to some video game music then blocks of emerald

Are pretty easy to come by if you have a trading Hall setup like the one I have right now if you’re getting single emeralds for single resources then you should be able to gather a ton of emerald blocks in no time and you’ll have free reign to make little

Electronic compositions like this one and you can do a lot more with the percussion as well you can maybe use some of those didgeridoo blasts and bass to provide a neat little baseline to it it would be super cool to hear some of the stuff that you guys have come up

With and there are some people who like to set these things up so there’s a minecart track following the notes around or even triggering them using detector rails so you’re always right next to the note blocks when they go off of course that relies on timing everything using the travel speed of a

Minecart which is another whole ball game in and of itself but the options for powering these things are kind of limitless as long as like you’ve got redstone stuff on your side you can do a whole lot with note blocks so I hope this little crash course has been

Interesting for some of you and entertaining to the rest of you I hope you’ve learned a little bit about note blocks today and once again I do recommend checking out the wicked the Minecraft wiki page about note blocks because there is some really great information there and if you know

Anything at all about reading musical Muse theory you’re going to be ahead of the game in no time so thank you so much for watching this episode of the Minecraft Survival Guide my name is Ben Pixar if don’t forget to leave a like on this episode if you enjoyed it subscribe if

You want to see more and I’ll see you guys soon take care bye for now