My starting idea on this sky island was to build a large music system housed inside a bright and trendy looking night club. I wanted to use a big lot of red stone for lighting and a music system.
A load more laggy redstone stuff would probably crash the world if it was too close to all the other red stone and mob stuff that I already have running. So the first job was to build a long glass walkway out and away from the central island, that I had to build around the free fall island.
Constuction
I had a good think about how I wanted to build the music system and designed the rest of the island around it.
To generate the red stone pulses for the all the noteblocks and lights I used four Ethiopian clocks. My idea was that I could then have a four track mixer with controls for the clocks from a booth in the centre of the club. The clocks have pistons and are quite noisy, so I needed to build them outside of noise range over 16 blocks below the club floor.
I had to use a lot of red stone and torches to get the on/off and pitch up/down signals from the booth to the each of the clocks, also the pulses from the clocks to go back up and to the note-blocks. It was very tricky to get all controls running from a small both.
I finished the lighting and sound before I’d finished the exterior and once I did finish it, I wasn’t really very happy with its look. It just looked a bit plain.
I decided to add more features to the outside to try to get it to look a bit more other worldly. For inspiration I read the book – A Brief History of Time. After finishing reading I was confused and channeled my confusion into the exterior of the club.
Materials
I used a lot of brown concrete and glass for the flooring and frame of the constuction. Red glass pains and various types of ender blocks and deep slate. I used up all of my stash of red-stone on this build and had to go mine for a lot more.
Interior
The bottom level is for the four pulse generating clocks with a central bubble life for access. Also a lot of flashing lighting running up the outside, all powered by the pulses from the clocks so that they flash in some sort of rhythm to the music (a bit like something you might have found in a 1980’s disco).
The middle level is for all the note-blocks. The music manages to travel up through the floor to the club floor above at full volume. For the music system I used around 50 noteblocks and have space there for double that amount,if I ever felt the need.
The club on the top level is just a large dance floor with a central control both decorated with ender trees. The ceiling of the club is supposed to look like a spiral Galaxy, although sadly it turned out looking more like a swirly whirly lollipop. I had wanted the Galaxy ceiling to be the main physical feature of the club, with hindsight it was never going to look very good. I built a second deep slate roof and ender block decorations on top of the failed Galaxy ceiling and covered them with ender trees for good measure.
Conclusion
Well.. it’s quite an original looking building and that was what I wanted.
The sound system is ok. Ali and I have had fun playing around with it and it’s possible to make some sort of music, although nothing that would get into the charts.
Next up – All the Sky Islands from the air
Minecraft survival world builds 