Immersive Melodies [Fabric/Forge]

Overview

Immersive Melodies adds 11 playable instruments to Minecraft, each with unique animations, sound profiles, and crafting recipes. The mod comes bundled with 25 songs, but the real appeal is importing your own music. You can drag and drop MIDI or ABC files directly into the in-game GUI, and your melodies sync across multiplayer servers for everyone to hear.

Beyond player performances, the mod also gives instruments to hostile mobs. Zombies, Skeletons, Pillagers, Piglins, and other creatures have a chance to spawn holding instruments and playing random songs. When music plays nearby, Parrots will dance and Allays will start bobbing along too. You can browse all the mod's items and recipes using the tabs on this page.

The Instruments

Each of the 11 instruments has a distinct sound created from multiple octave samples (8 octaves per instrument), a unique playing animation, and a specific sustain value that affects how long notes ring out. The sustain value determines the instrument's character: short sustain instruments like the Flute and Trumpet produce crisp, punchy notes, while longer sustain instruments like the Piano and Tiny Drum create more resonant, lingering tones.

String Instruments

The Lute is a versatile starting instrument crafted from a Stick, Planks, and String. With 300ms sustain, it handles most melodies well and is the mod's icon item. The Vielle is a bowed string instrument with 200ms sustain, crafted from a Stick, Logs, and String. It produces a smoother, more sustained tone suitable for slower pieces. The Ender Bass requires 2 Note Blocks and an Ender Pearl, giving it a supernatural feel with a short 100ms sustain that produces deep, punchy bass notes.

Wind Instruments

The Flute is the cheapest instrument in the mod, needing just 1 Bone and 2 Sticks. Its 100ms sustain creates quick, airy notes. The Trumpet requires Iron Ingots and Copper Ingots and also has 100ms sustain, producing bright brass sounds. The Didgeridoo is crafted from Planks and Lapis Lazuli with 400ms sustain, the longest among wind instruments, creating deep droning tones. The Bagpipe is the most expensive instrument, requiring 3 Flutes and 5 Leather. It has 300ms sustain and produces a distinctive drone sound.

Percussion & Keyboard

The Piano is crafted from Bones and Note Blocks with a long 500ms sustain, making it the best choice for classical pieces. The Tiny Drum uses Leather, String, and Logs with 500ms sustain, ideal for rhythmic tracks. The Triangle is crafted entirely from Copper Ingots (6 total) with 300ms sustain, producing a simple metallic ring. The Handpan requires Copper Ingots and Copper Blocks (the most copper-intensive recipe) with 300ms sustain, creating warm melodic percussion tones.

Playing Melodies

To play a melody, hold any instrument in your hand and right-click. This opens the melody selector GUI, a paper-textured interface listing all available songs. The list is searchable and includes both bundled melodies and any custom uploads from players on the server. Click a melody name to start playing it immediately.

While a melody is playing, your character performs an animated playing motion unique to each instrument. The Lute gets a strumming animation, the Trumpet is held up to the face, the Tiny Drum gets a two-handed drumming motion, and so on. Music Note particles emit from your character's position while playing, and other players can hear your performance from up to 48 blocks away (configurable).

Track Selection

Many MIDI files contain multiple tracks (e.g., melody, bass, drums, harmony). The melody selector has a track toggle button that opens a side panel listing all tracks in the selected song. You can enable or disable individual tracks, which is perfect for multiplayer band setups. Have one player handle the melody track on Flute, another play bass on Ender Bass, and a third keep rhythm on Tiny Drum, all from the same MIDI file.

Free-Play Keyboard Mode

The melody selector includes a keyboard button that opens the free-play screen. In this mode, you can play individual notes using your computer keyboard. The default key mapping uses the home row (A through K) for a C major scale starting at middle C (C4), with the row above (Q, W, etc.) providing sharps and flats. These key mappings are fully configurable in the mod's config file. The mod also supports physical MIDI keyboard input, automatically detecting any connected MIDI device and routing Note On/Off messages to your held instrument.

Custom Melodies & Datapacks

There are three ways to add custom melodies. The simplest is drag-and-drop: open the melody selector GUI and drag a .mid, .midi, or .abc file from your desktop onto the game window. The mod parses the file, uploads it to the server, and stores it under your player name. You can delete your own uploaded melodies using the delete button in the selector.

For server-wide melody packs, you can use datapacks. Place MIDI files in a datapack at the path data/[namespace]/melodies/[song].mid and they will be loaded automatically when the server starts or when resources are reloaded. Datapack melodies appear in the selector for all players and cannot be deleted through the GUI.

The mod also ships with built-in melodies that load from its own resources. You can disable these by setting loadInbuiltMidis to false in the config, leaving only datapack and player-uploaded melodies available.

Mob Musicians

One of the mod's most entertaining features is that certain mobs can spawn holding instruments and playing random melodies. By default, Zombies, Husks, Skeletons, Wither Skeletons, Piglin Brutes, Piglins, Zombified Piglins, and Pillagers all have a 1% chance to spawn with a random instrument. The mob picks a random melody from the available pool and begins playing it automatically.

When a mob musician is killed, it has an 8.5% chance (configurable via mobInstrumentDropFactor) to drop its instrument. Pillagers have special behavior: they can pick up instruments from the ground like they pick up Crossbows. The forceMobsToPickUp config option (enabled by default) makes configured mobs actively pick up instruments dropped on the ground.

Dancing Mobs

Parrots and Allays react to instrument music just like they react to Jukeboxes. If a melody is playing within 5 blocks of a Parrot, it starts dancing. Allays within the same range begin their dancing animation too. This makes building concert venues with pet Parrots as an audience surprisingly delightful.

Configuration

The config file is located at config/immersive_melodies.json and uses a simple JSON format. All changes take effect after restarting the game.

MIDI Keyboard Support

Immersive Melodies has built-in support for physical MIDI keyboards and controllers. The mod runs a background thread that scans for MIDI devices every 5 seconds and automatically connects to any transmitter it finds. Once connected, Note On messages (velocity > 0) play the corresponding note on your held instrument, and Note Off messages stop the note. This means you can plug in a MIDI keyboard and perform live in-game without any additional setup.

The scancodeToMidi config map lets you customize the computer keyboard mappings for the free-play screen. The default layout maps the home row keys to a C major scale (C4 through C5) with sharps on the row above, similar to a piano keyboard layout.