“Wet Hands” isn’t the loudest or the longest song on the Minecraft soundtrack, but for many players, it’s the one that crystallizes what it feels like to play the game. It’s calm, a little lonesome, and unexpectedly emotional. Like the rest of composer C418‘s masterful scoring for the block-based video game, the song seems to drift in from out of nowhere, adding a sense of meaning to the open world’s random adventures. The lo-fi piano turns an empty pixelated landscape into a place that feels lived-in, even nostalgic. 

C418, also known as Daniel Rosenfeld, explained the phenomenon in a keynote address. 

“We basically made the music just randomly happen between 15 or 30 minutes, just like for no reason at all,” he said. “And what happens because of that is players do their terrible dirt hut, and it’s an ugly thing, but they had effort put into that. And if the music just randomly happens to play because of that, just because they made a dirt hut, it makes them remember that moment more specifically.”

Today, we’re digging into what makes this song so great.

“Wet Hands” is written in A major and has a slow, flowing tempo of around 72 beats per minute. Paired with its general minimalism, the piece is perfectly attainable for novice players, while seasoned pianists can dig into its nuances and phrasing.

C418 writes on his website that critics compare his style, in part, to Erik Satie, the French composer of pieces like “Gymnopédie No. 1,” and “Wet Hands” is a good explanation as to why. Similar to Satie’s masterpiece, the song’s primary theme gently alternates between the I and IV chords. They also feature Major 9th chords that enrich the music’s mellow mood and texture. Rather than block chords, the piece relies on arpeggios in the bass clef to spell out the harmony and give a subtle sense of motion. For pianists, it’s a good exercise in left-hand accuracy as the AMaj9 chords require crossing over your thumb to cover the arpeggio’s range.

The melody also leans into the chord extensions by beginning on G#, the major 7th of A, but things get shaken up in the fifth bar with non-diatonic harmony. A G natural chord and melody note are introduced, implying we have shifted to the chord patterns found in A Mixolydian rather than A Major. This creates a more curious or suspenseful shift in the piece, contrasting with the static I-IV opening motion. As you wander a bit in the middle section, the music starts to feel less like a loop and more like a small, evolving story. 

Today, we’re checking out a score provided by Torby Brand, accompanied by a playthrough by YouTuber Yotta. The clip features him playing on a slightly out-of-tune piano at his grandmother’s house. The warbly pitches add a nostalgic charm to the already wistful piece, and as one commenter wrote, “this piano is perfectly out of tune.”