Here we have an exclusive interview with the indie electronic musician, C418. His main achievement being the producer of the music and sounds for the biggest indie game this year, “Minecraft“, he should definitely have some stuff to say!

C418 was kind enough to share en exclusive track with us, Bowl, which is streamable via the player below:

[audio:http://cdn.electrojams.com/audio/Bowl.mp3|titles=C418 – Bowl]

Jack: Tell the readers a little bit about yourself.

C418: Alright. My Name’s Daniel Rosenfeld, living in Saxony, Germany. In my usual life I work as some sort of tester for dialysis machines. My virtual life though is completely towards music. And as I have had some sort of… uuh.. success with a game called Minecraft, I decided to quit my job and try to do music as a full time job in the future. So that’s the plan. Though I still need to do some sort of civil duty, which is kind of the german law… so, that plan will happen after 6 months.

Jack: Awesome, what got you into helping with Minecraft?

C418: Getting into Minecraft as the musician was surprisingly easy. I’m a regular of the tigsource irc channel. And as Notch liked the tigsource community he eventually idled in that channel too. I sort of showed off old songs of mine, and Notch was amazed and really wanted me to make music for that sort of block project he was working on right now.

I haven’t had much experience with video game music, but I liked the idea of it and was on some sort of ambient trip right now. So I accepted and made the first three songs that were in minecraft. From there we never knew that minecraft could be such a success, it was just a little tech demo, haha.

Jack: When did you sort of know that Minecraft was going to be as huge as it is now?

C418: When Notch started getting 100 sales a day, that was kind of surprising given that there wasn’t that much to see yet

Jack: So do you get paid for creating your music for Minecraft?

C418: Yeah, I’m not getting any royalities. I’m just getting single payments per song and sound effect. Though I’m getting paid well and there is a lot of music. So I’m happy.

Jack: Plus the game must have given you plenty of publicity too, which doesn’t necessarily mean money but attentions sitll good.

C418: Oh yeah, there is quite some traffic on my servers now. I think the traffic rate was like 50 gigabytes four months ago, 100 three montsh ago, 250 two months ago, 500 last month and this month a whoping 1,5 terrabytes of traffic. I hope my provider doesn’t suddenly start to hate me.

Jack: Haha wow, so you’re definitely getting popular. But at your roots, what got you really into making music and more specifically, electronic music?

C418: My brother gave me CD’s from Aphex Twin when I was 12, so my musical taste was sort of screwed already. And to that he kept making music, but was never really successful at it. I wanted to try myself all the time but never really did so…

One day a couple friends of mine had a contest to make the worst song possible, so I took the program my brother used and still uses and tried to compete. With success! But I didn’t stop making… uh… admittedly horrible music. And after a year I kinda figured out that I can make decent stuff too.

Jack: So what’s your production process to make your music?

C418: Hm, hard to say. I probably simply fire up Ableton Live, put in a very simple synth and throw effects on it until I like it and start with a melody. Then I generally progress with drums and more synths or instruments and start making the song.

I think. It changes everytime. Sometimes I just take a finished song and stick another song on it. I have this sort of habit of making multiple songs in one project file.

Jack: So there’s plenty of trial and error in your production?

C418: Ooh yes. Though the error rate is sinking increasingly the more I make music. I think if you produce music on a regular basis you have this sort of structure in your mind of how this is supposed to work or should sound like.

Jack: So if there is one thing you could tell a budding musician, be it electronic or metal, what would it be?

C418: Make music every day at least half an hour and don’t stop, or else it might be hard getting into it again. Then you might have a writers or musicians blockade.

Jack: How do you keep your music fresh then, and what’s your inspiration?

C418: Hmm… I guess I have a weird way to listen to music. Instead of putting it in the cd player and doing stuff while the music is running, I always carefully listen to music. So I kinda take some time off when listening to music. Trying to figure out how they did what they did…

When it comes to inspiration from musicians, my biggest inspirations are Aphex Twin, obviously, Mouse on Mars and Clark or Chris Clark. I also realized that if you take your time to reflect, it’s very easy to get ideas. Say take a walk outside for ten minutes and just let your mind go. That always works for me.

Jack: So, any new stuff coming up that you can tell us about?

C418: Well, for Minecraft there is a lot cooking. I think about 13 new records for the jukebox and perhaps 9 new ambient songs, oh, and there is a little collaboration album planned with the sort of famous indie musicians… Danny B, Josh Whelchel and Hyperduck productions… we want to make a sort of free thing.

Jack: So what do you hope that album’s going to achieve?

C418: We don’t know yet. I guess it’s just to have fun and get a bit more attention to all of us.

Jack: Sounds great! Anything else you’d like to share with ElectroJams readers about your music?

C418: Yeah, absolutely! Simply listen to my music on http://c418.org and support people like us so we can make way more!

So with plenty more time spent on Minecraft, and a collaboration project with the likes of Danny B, who is responsible for the soundtrack of the game “Super Meat Boy”, we’ve got lots to see from C418.

Thanks to C418 for the interview! Check out his site here, and his new “Meatcraft” song here: