[HN Gopher] Wintergatan Marble Machine (2016)
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Wintergatan Marble Machine (2016)
Author : kaycebasques
Score : 230 points
Date : 2024-03-02 15:20 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| adzm wrote:
| This is cool but have you seen barcode scanner music?
| https://youtu.be/2CvnajExX-A
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Actually I did stumble across it on my "weird music
| instruments" rabbithole last night! They also figured out how
| to somehow play TVs and a space heater as guitars??
| https://youtu.be/A0VYsiMtrNE?si=8SUpClphR2f1hBFf
| Trellmor wrote:
| He is currently working on the 3rd evolution of the marble
| machine and posts build updates on this YouTube channel.
| Interesting intersection of music and machining content.
| kzrdude wrote:
| What happened to his 2nd evolution of it, that one was being
| built for a long time too?
| fl7305 wrote:
| It is up and running in a music museum in Germany.
| proteal wrote:
| I haven't followed it too closely, but he posted a video
| saying that previous iterations of the machine didn't make
| good music. They were really loud (mechanical noise drowned
| out musical noise) and didn't play music in time. In fact,
| the video from the submission has had its audio significantly
| edited to sound pleasing. I believe he posted the raw audio a
| few months ago in a video. His current design looks much more
| promising.
| vintermann wrote:
| I think it was also throughput and reliability issues. He
| gave up on it in connection with a marble tube bursting.
| DrSiemer wrote:
| The guys that actually finished it also agreed that it
| would not have been possible to tour with this iteration
| of the machine.
| kibwen wrote:
| It's a bit of a touchy subject. It's clear that he's a
| brilliant musician and self-motivated to the brink of mania,
| but he struggles with perfectionism and his insistence on
| reinventing the entire field of mechanical engineering from
| scratch precludes him ever actually finishing the project to
| his own impossible standards. If he didn't have a huge
| community of experienced, fascinated, and often frustrated
| engineers and manufacturers pointing out his most egregious
| missteps, he'd be sunk. The past near-decade has involved
| being sucked into fractal rabbit holes due to unknown-
| unknowns while obsessing over imperceptible details. The
| second machine was thrown out entirely and he started from
| scratch in an attempt to fix what he saw as fundamental flaws
| with it, and while his process with the third machine seemed
| promising at first, at this point it doesn't seem like he's
| really any closer to success.
|
| His videos are often entertaining (he's very charismatic and
| enthusiastic), and you'll learn a decent amount about
| engineering. But the most important thing that you'll learn
| are the unstated lessons: the necessity of compromise and the
| importance of setting measurable and realistic goals if you
| ever hope to actually achieve a given result. Though if
| nothing else, I applaud him for being so open with his
| efforts, especially when things don't pan out like he was
| expecting.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| I think in the last video or 2 he finally had the
| revelation he needs to have a chance at success; he's found
| that the engineering must support the design, not control
| it. We'll see if it holds up.
| barnabask wrote:
| I enjoyed watching his videos for a few years, but I
| eventually had to stop because it was so hard to watch what
| you describe. You put it very kindly; I would have called
| it a channel documenting a slow descent into madness. Maybe
| it was my own latent perfectionism that made me so
| uncomfortable watching him obsess, repeatedly restart,
| second-guess, overanalyze, self deprecate, etc. It's a hard
| thing to relive vicariously.
| neontomo wrote:
| Exactly how I feel about it. When he made his video about
| engineering principles from Elon Musk (who I admire as an
| engineer), my heart just sank. I recognised that he'd
| begun setting standards for himself that are necessary
| for mission critical projects like space flight and
| driving, but lost touch with why we are interested in his
| Marble Machine - which is fun.
| krisoft wrote:
| He was always clear on his expectations. He wants to make
| a machine he can take on a world tour. That's his stated
| goal.
|
| The consequence of that is that it has to be reliable
| enough to play through a full concert without maintenance
| or breakdown, and it has to be robust enough that it can
| be transported from place to place. These are his hard
| requirements.
|
| Then there are some less well defined requirements. Which
| is that the machine has to play nice music and has to be
| a marble machine as Martin understands it.
|
| This last is the real constraint. Otherwise he could just
| buy a midi keyboard which would fulfil all the
| requirements about reliability, robustness and quality of
| music, but would fail the spirit of the endeavour.
| okamiueru wrote:
| All the things you describe, are all reasonable
| constraints and goals. However, the issue is in chasing
| sub millisecond standard deviations. Which is amusingly
| the point at which you might as well buy a midi keyboard.
| kristofferc wrote:
| Where does "tight music" come into those constraints.
| krisoft wrote:
| I count that under the first of the two fuzzy constraints
| I wrote about: "the machine has to play nice music"
|
| I agree that there Martin seems to be aiming for a very
| high degree of repeatability in timing, but it also seems
| that he has designs which meet those expectations of his
| and this was not the reason why he abandoned the second
| attempt. (Ad far as i can tell based on the videos.)
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| I have to admit, I find this a bit ironic.
|
| Many of the digital sequencing and notation products I've
| worked with went out of their way (arguably) to play
| "less-tight music" through various "humanizing" features.
|
| Yes, we want music that is sufficiently accurate and
| "tight"... but within the confines of human capability.
| The slight errors of both time and intonation in some
| cases give music a much more human feel. Now to be fair,
| I don't want to suggest that this sort of human
| inaccuracy is mere randomness either: it's typically not
| just random error... there's usually a bias and it
| definitely within limits (unless you're a bad musician of
| course :-) ).
| an1sotropy wrote:
| He actually just posted a video in which he admits he
| lost the plot, and forgot that the real goal is something
| that is _fun_. I hope he finds his way back to that!
|
| https://youtu.be/BpJYqC4PWEw
| magnat wrote:
| One might say he lost his marbles.
| Sharlin wrote:
| I shouldn't upvote this, but I'll do so anyway.
| softjobs wrote:
| Upvoted for the pun, with the sad caveat that also it
| feels like a human tragedy unfolding. :-/
| gabesullice wrote:
| I try to remember that I've learned my engineering lessons
| in small doses, over many years, and often in an
| environment where I wasn't the most senior engineer,
| without the full scope of the design under my control. As
| I've grown as an engineer, more of those things have come
| into my purview, and I still have many more lessons to
| learn. Martin is speed-running the game, in public, and
| deserves a lot of leeway.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> Martin is speed-running the game, in public, and
| deserves a lot of leeway._
|
| This is how I felt at first, and I appreciated (and still
| appreciate) the frankness of his verve for
| experimentation. But by this point I wouldn't use the
| word "speedrunning" to describe his progress; he appears
| to have found the practical limits of autodidactism. If
| his only goal in life was to produce the machine (which,
| to be clear, it isn't), then it would have been much
| faster to go to school for a few years and get a degree
| in engineering, while apprenticing as a machinist on the
| side. His publicly-broadcast education, while
| entertaining, is anything but efficient.
| jacobolus wrote:
| The people who go to engineering school for a few years
| generally get engineering jobs, rather than making crazy
| art projects. There's plenty of room in the world to also
| fit some autodidacts following their dreams in apparently
| inefficient ways.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| You are 100% on the mark.
|
| I really loved his series building the second one, but when
| he decided that it was fundamentally flawed and he needed
| to rebuild from scratch, I stopped watching in frustration.
|
| He's really talented, but I'm just... sad for him.
| whereismyacc wrote:
| It's not just perfectionism, he struggles to get the
| machine functional at all. Afaik the original video (this
| post) is cut together from different runs and generally
| hides a lot of the scrappy issues with the first machine.
| He wants to get the new one actually working well enough to
| play consistently, and to be moved around.
| windowshopping wrote:
| You know, I always remembered the Wintergatan Marble
| Machine and occasionally idly wondered why I never again
| saw anything new from someone who must surely be incredibly
| talented. This explains that.
| kibwen wrote:
| Here's something of his that's entirely unrelated to
| marbles, it's a handheld modular synthesizer of his own
| design with an analogue fretboard that he calls a
| "modulin": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaW5K85UDR0
| mock-possum wrote:
| Reminds me of an Otamatone!
| Zondartul wrote:
| I won't say anything about the viability of the design #2
| vs #3, but from purely entertainment point of view, it was
| fun and relaxing to watch his regular tinkering videos
| while he was working on the second machine, but once he
| stopped, his channel became an emotional rollercoaster.
| It's just too emotionally draining to watch the later
| videos involving machine #3, so I stopped.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Reminds me of my first coding job - I obsessed over writing
| the best code and as a result I never delivered anything on
| time and it was full of bugs because I never finished
| anything and refactored and restarted.
|
| A kind old hand took me aside and taught me about KISS
| (Keep it Simple) and it must be good enough.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| The "reinventing" issue is so huge in all fields. I've
| watched many smart people try to reinvent or discover
| things that are well known and tested because they're not
| "perfect".
|
| You really need to be able to evaluate if something is
| worth your time and it's often best to just try what exists
| and only iterate if needed. Especially when you actually
| need to deliver a product
| DrSiemer wrote:
| The second machine turned out to be unfit for one of the main
| goals: live performances.
|
| Following Martin's journey has been a privilege. His honest
| insights on the struggle of trying to balance hard design
| requirements with keeping that which made the original
| project fun and playful have been insightful and fascinating.
| spamatica wrote:
| The second one is being completed (as far as I understand) by
| a team in germany at a music machine museum (Musikkabinett).
| Their channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Musikkabinett
| Waterluvian wrote:
| His MMX video blog is the textbook go-to example for letting
| perfect be the enemy of good.
| gexaha wrote:
| was there any other music done except for this track?
| boxed wrote:
| Don't know about the original, but there are some music on
| the channel with unfinished versions of the v2 machine.
| u320 wrote:
| I think music machines like this would be a perfect application
| of digital computers.
| QuackyTheDuck wrote:
| Could you please explain?
| whereismyacc wrote:
| The whole machine is just an overgrown midi player in a
| sense, but also that's not the point.
| mock-possum wrote:
| It's a lot cheaper to set up something like this in a virtual
| space - it also takes up a lot less _space_.
|
| VCV Rack 2 is a free way to very closely replicate the
| experience of building eurorack module synthesizers - without
| the cost of buying all the rack gear, and without needing to
| devote space IRL to assembling and organizing all the parts.
|
| I could imagine a similar approach for designing and
| operating musical marble machines like this (in fact I'd
| almost be surprised if something doesn't already exist, akin
| to roller coaster tycoon's coaster design tools!)
| shlubbert wrote:
| Perhaps one could even apply AI and put it on the blockchain!
| ysofunny wrote:
| the programable part of the machine, the tracks themselves are
| comparable to a midi file
|
| I think part of the point of this project is to avoid
| electronics and digital tech in the final machine. personally I
| think it's what makes it so interesting, he's interested in the
| mechanical design and engineering aspects, not the digital ones
| shagie wrote:
| Have you watched the Animusic series (
| https://www.youtube.com/@animusic ) ... especially Pipe Dream -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyCIpKAIFyo
|
| Be sure to watch the "Creating the Animusic DVDs" pair of
| videos.
|
| https://animusic.fandom.com/wiki/Pipe_Dream
| fellerts wrote:
| Martin has said that those videos were his inspiration for
| the first marble machine. Those, and Matthias Wandel's gear
| template generator!
| rzzzt wrote:
| One of the early Radeons were advertised with a real-time
| demo that plays Pipe Dream: https://youtu.be/uG1XkEnYyUc
| calibas wrote:
| According to the artist himself, this video is a bit misleading
| as the majority of what you hear in this video is not from the
| machine. There were some fundamental flaws in the first designs,
| he almost gave up on the whole project, but he's recently come
| back with plans for a whole new version:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbmMnu-NpaI
|
| He's very open about the whole process, it's quite interesting
| from an engineering perspective.
|
| Designing the marble divider:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y83I8mLKufo
|
| Testing the new fly wheel:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ouH21npL58
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| He's on his third iteration of the machine because he keeps
| over engineering parts and starting over, in a way which is
| simultaneously impressive and heartbreaking.
| rallemoose wrote:
| Pain is temporary. Glory is forever.
| dodslaser wrote:
| *bittersweet angle grinder noises*
| nextaccountic wrote:
| I love his mad scientist project (I liked the
| characterization from some comments below "slow descent to
| madness") and I'm glad he got enough funding from patrons
|
| Is it practical? No, but he had real progress (he's not just
| walking in circles) and he has acquired real engineering
| chops in meantime
|
| Also there are other marble engineers in Youtube and he
| checks out their progress as well, see this
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLD_Nl12oacv he left a
| comment. I think this kind of cross-polination is important
|
| So I think he will eventually ship something (and this
| something might mean a music video on Youtube but I hope it
| also mean a live concert)
|
| edit: if I had to criticize him, it would be only about his
| worship of the likes of Elon Musk. But, it's pretty
| tame/harmless (if a bit cringe) and if it inspires him to do
| better engineering, all the better
| fho wrote:
| There is that one shot where his marble divider tips over and
| 100 marbles fall out. You can see the tears welling up in his
| eyes... my guess is that he was at the brink of depression if
| not full on depressive at that point.
|
| He addresses that in a later video, but that shot really hit
| too close too home for me.
| Aloha wrote:
| Watching him has been watching the second system effect in
| real time.
| guhcampos wrote:
| I follow him and coincidentally (or not, maybe there's some
| correlation with this coming back to HN?) he posted a video
| last week with sort of an epiphany.
|
| According to him, he realized he's been trying to engineer a
| functionally perfect machine this whole time, and that's
| pointless, because it's never been about the machine
| function, but about the artistic expression of creating such
| machine.
|
| From this, he derived that instead of optimizing the machine
| for function, he'll begin optimizing for fun, looks and
| generally the "cool" of the machine. I'm excited to see
| what's going to happen from now on.
| danpalmer wrote:
| > he posted a video last week with sort of an epiphany
|
| He does this every year or so. He always has some big
| takeaway - engineering for fun, getting back to enjoying
| his work, getting anything finished so he can go on tour
| which he enjoys...
|
| I followed the channel for a few years because I wanted to
| see a machine come together, but I realised over time that
| the machine is not the point. It's a self-help channel,
| it's about productivity, burnout, and the process of
| engineering and design.
|
| If that's what you want, great. But I get enough
| pontificating about engineering process in my job, and I
| was there for the machine, so I gave up. If he ever goes on
| tour I'll be there, but I'm not holding my breath.
| pests wrote:
| The best time period was when the entire YouTube maker
| community was building parts for it and making their own
| videos for the process - felt like something really
| special.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| It got a bit strange when he suddenly got into web 3.0. Not
| sure what happened to that but I don't hear much about it
| anymore fortunately.
| pests wrote:
| I literally can not watch another video about the gate
| mechanism. I'll still watch one of his videos here or there,
| but the instant any gate discussion comes up I have to close
| it.
| zerr wrote:
| How does he convert a variable speed hand motion to a constant
| speed rolling? Some spring mechanism?
| pests wrote:
| A problem solved by old music machines. Here's his recent
| video on it.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i63t7ekNFoY
|
| TLDR: speed governor
| barnabask wrote:
| If you enjoy Wintergatan's clever marble videos, check out Ivan
| Miranda's marble clock project: https://youtu.be/JLD_Nl12oac.
| Ivan relies on 3d printing vs. Martin's emphasis on machining and
| welding, but they are both charming and instructive creators.
| itronitron wrote:
| Also, marble video aficionados might also enjoy this >>
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lso6OSfKrrk
| iseanstevens wrote:
| Robotic fun instrument I worked on this back in the day. flying
| balls and wine glasses and drums. I did the lighting and later
| redid the real-time low latency streaming:
|
| https://bea.st/absolut-quartet
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| Awesome!!
| gclawes wrote:
| Hey, it's the DarkHorse Podcast music! I forgot that was
| Wintergatan, cool!
| quasarj wrote:
| I watch it every once in a while. He's done a lot more, but
| somehow this one is still the one that really excites me.
| zabzonk wrote:
| also, a marble clock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IF4esSNA3k
| nextaccountic wrote:
| I love love love love love his other instrument, the modulin
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFfe4ZRQOH8 (just the original
| music it played)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUdWeBYe3GY (explains how it
| works)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaW5K85UDR0 (playing music from
| mega man)
|
| Selected comment from the last video
|
| > I love how it's an instrument with the aesthetic style of
| "functionally a mess"
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| The marble machine song and video of the Rubik's cube contraption
| was whimsical and so good but he released no music since the 2013
| album and that song in 2016.
|
| He is seemingly obsessed with building something for a couple of
| years right now - would prefer he just stick to using
| synthesizers and make music.
|
| It is reminds me a chap I met at uni - he sat in the Applied
| Maths computer lab every time when I was there and one day I
| asked him what he was doing as he was not goofing around like the
| first years playing games or destroying dot matrix printer
| ribbons making greeting cards but writing some serious code in
| TrueBasic.
|
| He was writing his own programming language called "Tree" and he
| even showed me a programming manual he had written for it - it
| had a Tree on the cover - serious mad scientist vibes.
| LegitShady wrote:
| he's had a handful of singles out in 2018 and 2019. He's also
| released a VST too I think, although I didn't get it.
|
| His passion is his passion. He's a talented and inquisitive and
| seriously interested in this project. If he can afford to
| devote his life to his passion and not be broke he's winning
| life, in my eyes.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| How much is hacker news discussion topic focus second order
| steered by recommendations algorithms? I just had this one
| recommended and now it's here, seems to happen a lot lately!
| pvg wrote:
| It goes both ways all the time, things from the Greater
| Internet Hive Mind get posted on HN or HN posts get
| regurgitated by the Greater Internet Hive Mind. Occasionally,
| the cud goes back and forth multiple times (as cuds do), for
| instance there've been cases of HN->social media->media
| coverage->HN posts about the media coverage. The order and the
| participants can also vary, of course.
| rzzzt wrote:
| I had this in my Facebook memories, it is the anniversary of
| when the original video started to make its rounds.
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