Who is C418?
A short story written by Neil de Douche
Hello!
My Name is Daniel and I have been born and still live in eastern Germany. As far as I know there is no wall anymore, but Germany seems to insist as a really dull in-joke that the wall is still there and eastern Germany is the stinking armpit part of this country. Well, whatever.
I have been growing up with cheesy 90's pop music and eventually found some of the Aphex Twin CD's my brother had. That pretty much screwed up my musical taste into hipsterness. And that before the appearance of Hipsters as a bad thing on the internet. See how hipster I am? Yes, yes. Yes... yes.
I think I've had a pretty normal and somewhat nerdy life. Being in Kindergarten and dreaming to be a stunt car driver. Being in pre-school and thinking life is utter bullshit. Being in school and not caring about any numbers (or letters for you american-ooos) that I'm supposed to have.
Okay, well, that's probably unusual. So I was never really interested in education, and really just intently listened to the teachers that talked about the things I loved. Like, uh, music. Yeah. Oh, and computers of course. Shame that they haven't been able to teach me anything that I didn't know before.
So I think I got into music through my brother. He was really fanatic about making music, starting with impulse tracker, eventually getting to Jeskola Buzz. I have been watching him making music in those programs, but I was never entirely interested in the art of creation. Until one day when my brother was saying something fairly innocent:
"Hey, I've tried out a new program called Ableton Live and it's really cool. Every idiot can make music with it, seriously."
At the state of mind I was at around that time I thought I am fairly stupid at making music and gave the program a shot. Well. Yeah. The first pieces of music I ever created were unbelievably horrible. They were utter bullshit and should never be listened to anyone. God bless broken HDD's for that.
But the thing is, I never stopped making music. And as years passed I actually ended up having songs that were not so terrible. Around that time I was an apprentice and thought the rest of my life I would do mundane things like screwing bolts. Because I believed that's what a normal job is supposed to be and with my shitty school papers I will probably not end up making something as fun as, say program video games or anything. Even though I think I'm quite intelligent enough for stuff like that.
Now, let's fast forward another couple years and my freetime consists of making music and uploading the songs on bandcamp for my fanbase of ten people. And some couple guys I only know from IRC channels.
And here comes the magical part. Except, it's not magical and very business like. I met Notch on IRC and we happen to have about the same taste in music. So as he was showing off his game prototypes I was showing off my music. And something seemed to click in Notch's mind as he suddenly wanted some music accompanying his prototypes. And as I had nothing else to do wtih my freetime, I agreed of course!
And that is the entire story on how I ended up making music for Minecraft. The surprising part about Minecraft though is that it's extremely fun, and people loved it so much that they spent a lot of money on it. So much money that it ended up being the probably biggest financial success of an indie game ever.
This notoriety also somewhat reflected on me. And I realized that you can also earn with something you love. Like making music.
So I just went ahead, got to my boss and told him I'd quit. He asked me why, and I just said the job is fucking stupid. I assume if I ever want to go back there because I got broke, I'll probably not be invited in again. Well, that's okay I guess.
After that I thought I was free as a bird and had all the time to make all the music I want!
Germany however had a different plan. No, it said, I want you to go to the army for the next six months! I was offended and said something about hating to shoot things. Well, Germany said, then you can just go ahead and help sick and mentally disabled people, have fun!
And that is basically what I did for the first half of 2011. And now it's September and I'm finally independent!
And a musician!
And I'm earning money making music!
It's awesome!
I just don't know how long I will be able to do this fun stuff, but I hope it'll be for a long time. Here's hoping!
TL;DR
Born in Eastern Germany
Fancies IDM music
Not really good at school
However loved music and computer terms
Brother introduced him to music making
Brother mentions Ableton Live
C418 starts making music, shitty music
Years later ended up making somewhat good music. As a hobby.
Meets Notch on IRC
Starts working on Minecraft
Quits boring old job
Had to do conscription
Is now free as a bird and makes music
It's awesome!
He's just stupid
Minecraft - Volume Alpha
Minecraft
I bet that you can count the people that don't know what Minecraft is on a single hand. Due to some magical mishap I was lucky enough to work on this unbelievably popular indie game. I received quite some acknowledgement through Mojangs rising popularity and it also is responsible for my current state in life.
I am not even a freelancer because I don't work on many projects. I am much more of an independent musician. I work on the projects I love working on in the speed that I think is necessary to create unique soundscapes.
Oh well, back to Minecraft. It's a simple game where you place blocks. And you can remove blocks. You start in a block universe, you see. You are free to do anything in that universe, but beware. You need food to survive, oh, and at night monsters come out and most likely will kill you.
That's pretty much the premise of this game. While that received a big fanbase, I think even the simple fact that you can place and remove blocks was somehow enough for Markus Persson to receive a huge customer base. I am basically still in awe.
My work on Minecraft
Almost everything you can hear when you play Minecraft is all my fault.
The sound design currently is a big mess. In July I have been working on nearly every single sound effect and redid them to give them game some professionalism. I hope you will be able to hear that effort in future updates to the game.
The biggest part I worked on and still do is the music. I hope I achieved what I believe to be very unique and distinct music. Music that will make people think of Minecraft specifically. Right now the music however is also somewhat that can be built upon. At it's current state you pretty much hear music in random intervalls. What I hope to do in future updates is much more than that.
Think of entirely different genres of music in every single different game mode. Giving each game mode a different unique feel to it. I want battle music, biome themes, constant but extremely minimalistic ambient music, nether music, dungeon music, boat riding music. And much much more. That is what I'm currently working on and I hope it really will be awesome once I'm finished.
To your right you see a player. That is the first volume of the Minecraft soundtrack. You can buy it if you want, which would be awesome because that would support me!
Listen to the soundtrack!
My modest little studio
Apparently this is important
People keep asking me over and over and over! What does my studio look like? What software do I use? Do chimps love bananas?
Well, I hope this segment clears all confusion on what I use to work with!
My studio isn't really a high quality expensive mothership like Hans Zimmer's private bedroom, but I think it has all the essentials a modern composer needs, and much more awesome stuff! For example, I'm pretty proud to be an owner of a monophonic synthesizers (hat means it literally is only able to play one note), namely that blue glowing one called "Moog Voyager". Then I also have that device directly under the Moog, which is called the Virus TI. It's not as harmful as computer bacteria, but is quite the synthesizer beast. Other than that, I don't really need much to compose. Just give me Ableton Live and a soundcard that is somewhat fast and I'll make your song.
If you want to know details, just look to the right over here!
Hardware
Synthesizer
That's the blue glowing one in the pictures. As I said, a monophonic analog synth. A cutie! I mostly use it for bass synths, or some really cute chiptune like lead bleeps.
Virus TI
That's the thing directly under the blue glowing one. It's a digital synthesizer. The software for it is pretty boss. Amazing sound.
Controllers
That's the thing on the very right on my table. It has a lot of knobs
Novation Launchpad
That's the thing with the smiley. You can use it for quite random things. Controlling volume, play pong against a friend, start song cues, use it as a drum pad. That sort of stuff. It's not the best utility to peel a banana.
M-Audio Oxygen 49
That's the keyboard on the left of my desk. It's a keyboard. It has keys. To play on.
CME UF80 Classic
This keyboard is behind my big desk. It's for piano training. Hence the monitor on top. I use it for Synthesia.
Audio Interfaces
A soundcard built into my computer. Nowadays I only use it for the MIDI port.
Phonic Firefly 808U
That's the thing on the last picture. With the apple sticker on it. It's a pre-amp and soundcard with basically a lot of inputs and outputs.
Speakers/Headphones
Those are the two speakers (actually called monitors) on the stands. They have been really expensive, but I think it's worth it. They go up to 120dB. My neighbors keep reminding me too. Very loud.
AKG K271 MKII
My headphones. I love em. I'm so used to them that I know quite exactly what a song has to sound like to not be too shabby on other speakers. If they'd break, I'd buy the exact same pair again.
Computer System
16GB DDR3 RAM
Intel i7 2600k
5TB HDDs
One SSD
And a backup drive!
On a random note, my tour-setup is basically just a Macbook Air and an iPad. Sometimes I also use the Novation Launchpad.
Software
DAW
Now I have used Ableton Live for about 8 years now. I'm too used to their software to change to anything else. So I just ended up making EVERYTHING sound related in Live. Imagine I have the urge to brush teeth if I were a TRON program. I'd use Ableton Live. Just because I'm too used to it. Yeah.
VST
Fabfilter is damn amazing. Just saying. I use their programs in absolutely every single song I make.
D16 Complete
Now D16 have really damn amazing emulations of all the classic Roland stuff. 303, 606, 808. And their effects are not too shabby either!
EastWest Hollywood Strings
EastWest Symphonic Orchestra EastWest Pianos and more
Notch donated me all the East West software. And it's amazing software. So thanks mate! Much love!
NI Komplete 7
Plogue Chipsounds
And a lot of random stuff!
72 Minutes of Fame, my most recent original album.
72 Mintes of Text
72 Minutes of Fame has been probably the project I worked on for the longest time. It took around 7 months to finish and I'm still working on getting the physical version of this album out.
The premise behind this release was fairly simple. I wanted a music album that you can listen to on the loudest volume setting. Something you can dance to. And as it is hard for me to focus on one specific theme alone and not go crazy with different genres, it has been quite a hard project to me.
There are exactly 8 tracks on this album, and with 72 minutes of lenght, I think the big theme of this album is not a specific genre. It's songs that are long in general without getting too repetitive. Songs that sound at first like they'll stay the same, but if you try to skip a bit forward, you feel like you are listening to an entirely new song. So in the end I didn't achieve what I wanted to, an album with about only one genre. But what I did achieve is probably something that is as near as a concept album as can be.
I wanted just one genre, but ultimately I realized that what I love about making albums is to surprise not just a group of people, but everyone. If you don't enjoy techno, why not skip a couple songs to listen to breakbeat? I guess being eclectic is one of my trademarks, and I think I have to keep at making eclectic stuff.
The title, 72 Minutes of fame is not a way of saying how awesome I am. What I was trying to say with that name is that I had the feeling people only knew me because of a single work, the Minecraft soundtrack. At the time of working on this album, I had no idea of knowing if people would even try to buy anything else I did. I think this is also the reason why this album lacks a lot of ambient music. I love to do ambient, but overall I wanted to have an experiment on how far my supporters would go to help me being a musician independent of labels or a lot of freelance work.
And my fans taught me that they not only bought the Minecraft soundtrack just because they wanted to prove a message or anything, they genuinely like my music and support me.
So 72 Minutes of Fame could also be called the beginning of my hopefully long career as a musician.
This will be awesome.
And terrifying.
Listen!
Life changing moments seem always random
Life changing moments seem minor in pictures.
How about you listen to the album by clicking on the player to your right. Gives it the right mood.
The funniest thing a friend said about that album title was, "Huh. That's actually smart".
I'm not sure if it is, but I think the title describes the album perfectly to me.
The thought to release this album came in Summer 2010 when I was in Berlin, meeting a lot of old friends. At the last couple of days my mother called me saying that the german government sent me a mail, declining my beg to delay the conscription every healthy german male person had to endure. Because if they would force me to do conscription, I'd lose a stable job and had to do 6 months of work that would have low payments and lead me to nothing at all.
So I was in Berlin, meeting good friends, and Germany just screwed up my holidays.
Paul Veer gifted me this polaroid he did, featuring me, Increpare and a guy that likes to be called Esq.
Looking at the picture I realized how boring this sudden change in my life seemed to be. And thinking more about it I actually thought that if anything, Germany finally went ahead and did the thing I was too scared to do. Getting rid of my boring job as a guy that screwed bolts for some rich monopoly company.
This chapter of my life felt to big to just leave it there, so I decided to collect the music I produced the previous 6 months and put it in a big music album.
At first I released this album for free on Bandcamp, but thanks to Notch of Minecraft fame it got downloaded so often that it probably made quite some terrabytes of traffic on the Bandcamp servers. After that Bandcamp introduced their relatively good payment system, but that also meant I had to put a price tag onto that album.
So with the amount of music in it (about 80 minutes), it's probably the cheapest album I am selling.
Probably too cheap. But I love you, so it'll stay one dollar fooooreeveeeer.
Listen!
There's a lot I've worked on, it's just all independently released albums.
Random accomplishements
This here is a little collection on other stuff I've worked on. Let's go!Zweitonegoismus - Winter 2008
This album is weird. And I can't recall what state of mind I was in when producing in. However I think it's a lovely accomplishement. If I still had the original files of the album, which got lost due to HDD cancer, I'd probably merely remaster it and be done with it. Because I think it's the most original thing I've ever done. It's also free. What are you waiting for?
Bushes and Marshmallows - Summer 2009
This album is very simple. I just wanted to make an album. I didn't have any artistical reason for it. I just wanted to fill 60 or 70 minutes. And have fun creating it. So this album is not really professional. It's just me learning how to make music. And you can listen along. Nothing more than that!
SINE - Summer 2008
This is pure laptop music. That summer I was in Berlin to just visit the City and go sightseeing. What I didn't realized is that I personally hate sightseeing and rather love meeting people. I didn't meet anyone that holiday, so I ended up working on sine.
Circle - Sometime 2007
Circle is a canned indie game. I just met a cool italian guy that made quite interesting game prototypes. Ultimately he didn't finish the project and I had made a soundtrack without a game. Not knowing what to do with it, I released it in 2010 and people liked it, much to my surprise. It's very weird progressive electronic music. Not even really ambient. I guess you just have to try and listen for yourself.
I forgot something, didn't I. - Summer 2011
While working on 72 Minutes of Fame I thought to myself that I should thank people that bought my music in general. So I collected these songs, and sent it to everyone that purchased something from my Bandcamp store, for free. I think people really loved that gesture, so I think next time I release a new original album, I will do the same again.
A Cobblers Tee Thug - New years Eve 2009/2010
Now bear with me, because this album is most definitely not quality work. It's been produced in under a week, by a good friend of mine and me. I decided to go crash his place at new years, and as we didn't have anything else to do really, we decided to make a crappy album at all cost. While most of the songs are indeed somewhat terrible, I think about three actually are worthwile. So. Yeah.