How To Use The Playsound Command In Minecraft – Step By Step Tutorial

Hey everybody, it’s UnderMyCap and welcome back! Today I’m going to be showing you how to use the Minecraft Playsound command. Before we dive in, I did notice something a little sad about my channel — only about 0.9 to 1.9 percent of people who watch my videos are actually subscribed. I’d love to try and get that up to 10 percent, so if you enjoy this content please consider subscribing and hitting the bell icon so you never miss a future video. Now, let’s get into it!

Understanding the Colour-Coded System

To make things easier to follow, I’ve colour-coded the types of commands from blue through to yellow to red. Blue represents the easiest commands and red means a little more thinking is required. The green blocks in the video are where I actually demonstrate how each command works. Let’s start from the beginning!

The Basic Playsound Command

The first and most straightforward command is the normal Playsound command. It looks like this:

/playsound minecraft:entity.player.levelup ambient @a ~ ~ ~

This will play the level-up sound at the location of the command block. Every time you trigger it, you’ll hear the same level-up sound. The reason we use entity in the command is because the level-up sound is specifically made for player entities. Other entities like creepers and spiders don’t produce this sound naturally, and blocks such as an anvil being placed won’t play it either. Different sounds belong to different categories, so if you wanted to use a block sound instead, you would simply change entity to block in the command.

For the target selector, @a will play the sound for all players. You can also use @p for the nearest player or @r for a random player. After selecting your target, you add the coordinates for where the sound will play — using three tildes (~ ~ ~) means the sound plays at the command block’s location.

Adjusting the Volume

To add more customisation, you can alter the volume of the sound by adding a number at the end of the command. A value of 1 represents 100% volume, which sounds the same as the default. If you change it to 0.1, the sound becomes much quieter — that’s 10% volume. You can also increase the volume beyond 1 (up to around 200% or higher), and a louder volume means the sound can be heard from further away. Here’s an example:

/playsound minecraft:entity.player.levelup ambient @a ~ ~ ~ 0.1

Adjusting the Pitch

Following on from the volume, you can also change the pitch of the sound by adding another value after the volume. A pitch of 1 plays the sound at its normal pitch. Setting it to 0.5 lowers the pitch, and setting it higher — for example, 1.5 or 2 (which appears to be the maximum) — raises the pitch. Here’s how that looks in practice:

/playsound minecraft:entity.player.levelup ambient @a ~ ~ ~ 1 0.5

Using the Execute Command With Playsound

Now let’s move on to the slightly more advanced commands. These involve using the Execute command alongside the Playsound command. The key difference here is that instead of playing the sound at a fixed location, you can execute the sound at specific mobs, players, or entities that meet certain conditions.

Executing Sound at All Non-Player Entities

In this example, the sound is executed at every entity that is not a player. The exclamation mark in the command is what makes this work — it tells the game to target everything except the specified type. Here’s the command:

/execute at @e[type=!player] run playsound minecraft:item.totem.use ambient @a ~ ~ ~ 0.5 1

When I tested this near some mobs, it got quite hectic and loud — but it clearly showed that the sound was being executed at the entities and not at me directly!

Executing Sound at a Specific Mob

You can also target a specific mob by simply replacing the !player with the mob type you want. For example, targeting spiders:

/execute at @e[type=spider] run playsound minecraft:block.barrel.open ambient @a ~ ~ ~

In this case, when the command is triggered, the barrel open sound plays specifically at the spider’s location — which is a great way to create unique sound experiences tied to specific mobs.

Testing for a Block Above the Command Block

The final example is a bit more complex and is probably my favourite of the bunch! This command tests whether a specific block is placed above the command block, and if it is, it will execute the Playsound command. If the wrong block is placed above it, nothing happens.

For example, placing wooden planks above the command block does nothing, but placing a red concrete block on top triggers the sound. Here’s the command:

/execute if block ~ ~1 ~ minecraft:red_concrete run playsound minecraft:block.beehive.work ambient @a ~ ~ ~ 1 1

This is a really cool and creative use of the Execute command — it opens up so many possibilities for map-making and interactive builds!

Wrapping Up

And that’s basically it! Thank you so much for reading through this tutorial. I hope you found it helpful and that you now feel confident using the Playsound command in Minecraft. If you enjoyed this, please consider leaving a like on the video and subscribing to my channel if you’re new. I love posting Minecraft tutorials and all kinds of random content. If you have any ideas or questions, drop them in the comments below — I try my best to read and respond to them as quickly as I can. If you’d like me to make a specific video, let me know and I’ll do my best to make it happen!

You can also visit my website at UnderMyCap.com to support me, browse a few products, and check out blog posts about previous commands I’ve covered. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you in the next one — see ya!