[HN Gopher] Can Lego play the drums? [video]
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Can Lego play the drums? [video]
Author : whocansay
Score : 135 points
Date : 2022-09-25 21:11 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| raydiatian wrote:
| I love how a programmable piano-roll was clearly forgone for a
| great big long manual one, because it looks cooler.
| shahahmed wrote:
| the giant conveyer belt feels like the punch cards of old
| computers, wonderful video and great editing!
| ClearAndPresent wrote:
| Reminiscent of Wintergaten's Marble Machine, which continues to
| evolve as Martin Molin works on it.
|
| Full song, with an earlier version of the machine:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q
|
| Martin is working on V3 of the machine. Plenty of updates on
| Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Wintergatan/videos
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Is he? Last update on V3 was 5 months ago. Last update from him
| was 3 months ago about a new studio.
| jastanton wrote:
| I've been following his journey for years, it's been a
| fascinating and some times heartbreaking story not to
| dissimilar to Sisyphus. Every other chapter is about him
| renewing his mental strength, grit, determination, and then
| months later tearing it all apart because of fundamental
| flaws. Repeat for years. His mental health is an underlying
| theme throughout the story we're watching and I worry for
| him.
|
| With that said, he is truly an imaginative and great engineer
| and musician and while my discipline is primarily software,
| he's taught me a lot about design principles I apply today.
| Namely, keep things simple, emphasis on unit testing and
| measuring results, recognizing and addressing sunk cost
| fallacy and many many others.
|
| I've grown to really respect and admire him. But I fear this
| project has a stranglehold over his mental health and I fear
| for what that means for his future if he cannot get to a
| place he is truly happy with.
|
| God speed Martin, I hope you can get the boulder up the hill
| one day.
|
| edit: Update, after some sleuthing, apparently he is moving
| and taking care of his family right now(?) https://www.reddit
| .com/r/MarbleMachineX/comments/usk6ru/wher...
| tromp wrote:
| I love its mechanical-only design; that really is a piece of
| musical art. And at 1:30 in the video, it looks like LEGO is
| used for the encoding pegs (also possibly some gears and
| supports at 1:36).
|
| Someone else made an entire version in LEGO [1] [2] but without
| marbles and playbacking to/covering the original:
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP9x3t5HUa4
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCsgpq9e2AE
| smusamashah wrote:
| https://youtu.be/WN90HYiFpAw?t=736 His recent update is good
| watch.
|
| He learned after 3 years that he made a few things too
| complicated because 'it looked cool' and he should have instead
| kept the design 'dumb'.
| pbronez wrote:
| His journey post v1 has been fascinating to watch. I hope he
| eventually makes a full length documentary based on his
| vlogs. It's a great story about the relationship between
| ideas, execution, business, and real life in the context of
| the modern maker economy.
| ben174 wrote:
| Don't forget Animusic:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyCIpKAIFyo
| jerpint wrote:
| Incredible! That conveyer belt design... Wow
| Karellen wrote:
| If you look back through the channel's previous videos, other
| versions of that conveyor belt are used as a rolling road to
| test different types of suspension for lego cars and
| motorbikes. Really cool stuff in there.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| It's a music box, a very impressive one. But you don't need the
| Roland kit Lego even has sound modules for it:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mspB1BmO-F0
| squarefoot wrote:
| A possible mod to add dynamics: shape the rear part of the
| "stick", the one being hit by the programmable pins, so that by
| inserting or extracting the pins from the rolling cylinder, the
| sticks can be raised to different extent emulating the hitting of
| a drum with different force when they're released. Dynamics makes
| a huge difference in making electronic drums sound more natural.
| [deleted]
| portlander52232 wrote:
| Once upon a time somebody made a Lego mindstorms robot that
| walked up to objects and then drummed on them. It was very cute.
| Can't find the video now though.
| squarefoot wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RyodnisVvU
|
| Description here:
| https://www.robotshop.com/community/forum/t/yellow-drum-mach...
|
| Although it doesn't seem made using LEGO Mindstorms, I'm sure
| that is the one you mention; it was quite successful at the
| time among robot building aficionados.
| INTPenis wrote:
| eckza wrote:
| What is so fascinating about this? The Internet hasn't been a
| meritocracy since sometime around the turn of the millennium.
| [deleted]
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Ha ha, I suspect the little bit of flex in the Lego plastic,
| other imperfections adds a "humanization" to the drum pattern
| that is output.
|
| It was funny after electronic drums started to gain steam that
| software sequencers started adding a "humanization" attribute to
| take the robotic perfection out of drum sequences. Sort of the
| opposite of auto-tune.
| squarefoot wrote:
| I used a Roland R8 in the late 80s and loved/hated it for the
| humanization functions they added to the instrument; it could
| subtly modify the sound parameters at each hit to make it sound
| like it came from a real person hitting a drum or cymbal in
| different areas, however it lacked the most important one:
| timing. A human drummer will never be accurate to the
| millisecond, but rather will apply very small
| anticipations/delays at each note, with good drummers capable
| of doing it on purpose within given limits. Adding such a
| feature would make it sound even more real. Nothing compared to
| a real drumset played by a real drummer, however: the number of
| variables is just too high to be accurately emulated by today's
| technology. AI might help with that, but don't forget about
| latency: when drumming live, a few milliseconds is already too
| much delay.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| We have found the exception to Betteridge's Law.
|
| Or, perhaps, there is a Lego proviso to Betterige's Law, where
| any question with Lego in the headline is always "yes."
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