[HN Gopher] Wintergatan Marble Machine (2016) [video]
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Wintergatan Marble Machine (2016) [video]
Author : kaycebasques
Score : 349 points
Date : 2024-03-02 15:20 UTC (1 days 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
| arrakeen wrote:
| ei wada is immensely talented, see also his open reel
| ensemble[1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-6WfT8RAh4
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| The sound of that piece reminds me a lot of Emerson, Lake and
| Palmer's rendition of 'Fanfare for the Common Man'[1].
| Progressive as Progressive Rock is though, I'm not sure ELP
| would have been let into the Toronto Olympics stadium with an
| assortment of electric fans and televisions!
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2zurZig4L8
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| That'll be Lindt's most cost-effective product placement yet!
| 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.
| themoonisachees wrote:
| He has had this realization several times over the years.
| Good luck to him, but at this rate I don't believe he'll
| ever manage to finish it, and if he ever does he still
| won't be happy with it.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Yeah, I'm not confident it'll hold. I figure someone will
| eventually make a marble music machine that's robust
| enough to tour, but I have doubts it'll be him.
| 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 :-) ).
| whstl wrote:
| Same experience.
|
| Super-tight MIDI music sticks out like a sore thumb when
| you mix it with things performed by humans.
| andersa wrote:
| I remember watching his videos on this topic and never
| being able to hear _any_ difference between the supposed
| "good" and "bad" examples.
| pbronez wrote:
| He actually partnered with an agency and released a
| virtual marble machine as an app and VST
| cpach wrote:
| I think it was more like a music box
| 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
| whstl wrote:
| I'm not personally an Elon Musk fan, but the video with a
| clip of him is actually pretty good IMO:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN90HYiFpAw
|
| Some people will say it's common-sense stuff but it is
| stuff I see everyday writing software and it's so hard to
| change. It's refreshing to see a spaceship company having
| the same issues haha.
| 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!
| iamtedd wrote:
| In fact, his comment is at the top of the list on the Pipe
| Dream video.
| 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.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Do you have a link? I've been watching the channel on and
| off but never seen that. Sounds heartbreaking.
| drsopp wrote:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YqWApMqD4h4
|
| 1:40
| 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.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Yeah this was good, which then made it even more sad when
| each part got cast aside as having been the wrong
| solution in some way. I'm sad to think of all the effort
| that went into the project from others. It seemed like a
| team came in to support him at one point, but then he
| dropped off YouTube in favour of live streaming (at
| inappropriate times for many), only to return later,
| without the team.
| nagonago wrote:
| I've lost count of the number of "epiphanies" he's had.
| bspammer wrote:
| Funny that he's only realising this now when he's had
| comments telling him for years pretty much exactly this.
| starky wrote:
| I'm happy to hear he is finally realizing the error of his
| previous decision, but this should not be an epiphany. So
| many of us that followed the project told him exactly that
| when he decided to throw out the MMX and start over. I
| still worry that he hasn't learned the lesson that
| "perfection is the enemy of good" and will use yet another
| change of direction/method to avoid actually finishing
| something.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| I remember him saying something similar like a year ago or
| more.
|
| I like his pursuits. I would personally rather he make more
| music though
| 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.
| Rapzid wrote:
| That's most people's web 3.0 experience lol.
| 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.
| bborud wrote:
| This is why I can't watch him anymore. He has really painted
| himself into a corner and allowed this to become an
| obsession. He would have been happier if he had just given it
| the three months he initially thought the MMX project would
| take, and when that got out of hand cut his losses and dumped
| the project. He's a good composer and musician. He has hardly
| made any music for years and his band members are probably
| not going to wait around.
|
| Sure, he might actually get there in the end, but at what
| cost? Both monetary and in terms of mental health.
|
| Yeah, it has been fascinating, I've learned a lot from
| watching him, and I really want him to succeed, but this is
| painful to watch.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Is there something inherently more meaningful about
| composing music? It's all futile and pointless, so if the
| dude likes making little Dr Suess machines and then
| destroying them to make new ones, who's to say it's not
| worthwhile? He's just raking patterns in his own personal
| sand garden.
| whstl wrote:
| IMO over-engineering is the actual goal here.
|
| The goal is not to make music, or even to have a musical
| instrument. The goal is to have a music machine that is
| visually impressive *because* of its complexity.
|
| Some people already mentioned he could use computers for
| this. Well, sure! He could even use off-the-shelf mechanical
| triggers if he wanted to keep it using 100% acoustic
| instruments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvQ0UXOyh7A
|
| But even if he wanted to stay in the mechanical realm and
| have reliability for touring, he could just build something
| centered on music boxes or piano players, which people have
| been doing for hundreds of years. Bjork toured with music
| boxes in the past! Those things could just trigger the
| vibraphone, bass and drums directly via hammers, instead of
| needing marbles to do the job... Heck, even if he still wants
| marbles, he could just have a music machine trigger marbles,
| and buy LOTS of marbles at the top just to avoid that "marble
| recycling" mechanism.
|
| But a traditional music box is established technology, so it
| wouldn't be as impressive. And the marbles need to go up and
| down for drama, if you just have a giant bucket full of them,
| it's not that impressive anymore... the marbles must be
| integrated into the "memory" mechanism, etc etc...
|
| So his goal is to have something that is impossibly
| complicated like a Rube Goldberg Machine. It has to be large
| and impressive, and each part has to be bespoke and
| interesting by itself.
|
| Sure it's not the best engineering, but this is what made the
| first video viral after all :/
| 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
| zerr wrote:
| Cool! Another question: how are those actual song
| drums/cylinders made? i.e. how are songs programmed?
| Especially interested in those old machine drums.
| whstl wrote:
| You mean in the old music boxes?
|
| It was done by hand. The first ones used wood and nails.
| This one here was supposedly made by school kids:
| https://youtu.be/i63t7ekNFoY?feature=shared&t=547
|
| Later there are metal cylinders which little teeth that
| are placed in holes that are drilled by hand. Here's a
| CNC doing the work, can't find a video of someone doing
| it, though:
| https://youtu.be/RXf924CGLbs?feature=shared&t=147
|
| And also of course player pianos and punched-card music
| boxes, which are a different thing and much cheaper to
| mass produce:
| https://youtu.be/XGo0seI6sYs?feature=shared&t=167
|
| There were also some "hammered" cylinders in-between,
| which are a bit closer to player pianos, and much faster
| to produce, since one could just use some template:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeApD2-y4i4
|
| The last one shows the foundation for those cheap music
| boxes you can get as souvenirs. They are often just a
| pressed sheet of metal rolled into a cylinder. In this
| video here you can see the "seam":
| https://youtu.be/IYpnzSJGE-c?feature=shared&t=12
|
| I'm sure there were other techniques along the way too.
| zerr wrote:
| I mean, school kids might have been used for menial work,
| but how was a composed music transformed into such rolls?
| Timing, aligning multiple pitches and instruments, etc...
| whstl wrote:
| I'm gonna give a general answer since I don't know your
| level of music knowledge.
|
| The cylinder has a certain speed and length, so music
| must be written in a certain way that it fits there in a
| pleasant way if looped. This means ending in a fermata,
| sort of fading (and not truly looping) or having the
| number of bars be somewhat musical (often powers of 2).
|
| From knowing the tempo of the song and the speed of the
| cylinder you know how many notes of a certain length you
| can fill in one rotation: 8 full notes, 16 half notes, 32
| quarter notes, and so on. [1] Just divide the
| circumference by the numbers and you get the physical
| length of each note. Keep in mind that if you're not
| truly looping and is ending the song with each
| revolution, you can be very fast and loose here.
|
| So the written music itself, plus the physical lengths of
| notes, will inform you on where you should place each
| note.
|
| For multiple pitches: pitches are just in a different
| axis. One axis is timing, the other is pitch. This is
| visible when you look at the "comb" of music boxes, they
| have pitches arranged from low to high, side by side,
| like harp strings or piano keys.
|
| About syncing: it is all written in sheet music, so you
| just follow it. Two notes that must be played together
| are just on the same axis. For a more tight timing just
| align it... It won't be perfect if you're a kid doing it
| by hand, which is why music boxes traditionally often use
| arpeggios in detriment of more blocky chords.
|
| Multiple instruments: if a music box can play different
| timbres, it's triggered by having duplication, meaning
| two or more sound producers (combs, hammers + strings,
| etc). So you have, for example, 20 notes available for
| one instrument and 10 for another. But it is all on the
| same cylinder, so it is in sync. There will be repeating
| pitches here and there, but it depends on how the music
| itself was written.
|
| The first pass of converting sheet music to "holes" must
| be done by someone able to read sheet music at an amateur
| level, and do the basic calculations (but of course some
| people with more experience and musical knowledge will do
| it better). Then they make a pattern that is reused by
| whoever is manually assembling.
|
| Tolerances are larger than non-musicians expect. There is
| a charm to the sound of a music box, and part of that is
| due to minor timing issues. And that's true for any music
| not performed by a computer, really. Humans are not
| perfect anyway, and a lot of techniques and styles rely
| on this (from drum flams to Dilla beats)
|
| Not to mention that music boxes are mechanical, so it
| won't be perfect during playback anyway.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Note_value
| donor20 wrote:
| My understanding was more that the machine was not reliable and
| he basically had to piece the piece together / so each shot was
| the perfect run of potentially a number of attempts
| calibas wrote:
| He mentioned two main problems, the marbles would get jammed
| and the timing was off so the beat wasn't very tight. Both of
| those things should be fixed, or at least greatly improved,
| in the next version.
| beAbU wrote:
| This has been his "problem" for almost a decade. He's
| trying to build something that's midi-tight. As a musician,
| somehow he forgets that real musicians also lost the beat
| now and then, and it makes the music more interesting.
|
| The number of times he's postulated that some design would
| fix these problems is too damn high.
| calibas wrote:
| Professional musicians don't really "lose" the beat. A
| pro drummer stays on beat, while making small,
| predictable variations to the timing and the sound that
| make the music more interesting. That's not the original
| marble machine though, which played like a sloppy
| beginner.
|
| I'm pretty sure he understand how all this works because
| I've heard him explain it before. If at some point he
| thought he could achieve precise timing down to the
| millisecond, I must have missed those videos, cause he
| seems to understand now that's not realistic.
| 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
| shooshx wrote:
| Though these two guys could not be more different from each
| other. Ivan actually has a toy marble machine video which he
| seemingly build over the course of a few weeks. I feel like he
| could design and build from scratch a fully featured MMX in not
| much more than that.
| cpach wrote:
| It would be cool with a "space race" for marble machines (:
| 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.
| ani-ani wrote:
| This particular machine has been on HN a few times before (and
| with good reason!)
| HNArg024 wrote:
| I was so hooked to his videos a couple years ago... he was making
| real progress to what was his 2nd iteration of the marble
| machine, then he suddenly decided he had to start from scratch
| and got into some crypto/web3.0 thing.
|
| That was the last video I watched.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I have watched many of his videos, including recent ones and I
| don't remember anything about crypto/web3.0. He kind of an Elon
| Musk fan, but far from the most obnoxious one.
|
| The "start from scratch" part is annoying to many, including
| myself, but he explained his reasons. And a group took back the
| 2nd iteration (MMX), trying to fix it, and mostly agreed. The
| goal was to have a machine playable on stage, and there was too
| many problems with that.
| moogly wrote:
| > I don't remember anything about crypto/web3.0
|
| He had a phase for a while where he tried to run the project
| as a DAO. Didn't make any sense to me, but that's web3 for
| you.
| dzink wrote:
| The music is beautiful and the machine looks like a true labor of
| love. Looking up the machine, it looks like they sell apps that
| mimic the machine sounds and sound packs worth hundreds of
| dollars per license, so the video is a great viral sales tactic
| for their real products. The closest thing to the sound of the
| machine I found is a Kalimba instrument. The more notes the
| better. I was able to replicate the song from the machine on a
| kalimba at home.
| hettygreen wrote:
| I started following this guy making the MMX (second verison of
| this machine) around the same time I was designing and
| prototyping the most complicated project I've ever worked on.
|
| Tuning in every week and seeing him make progress, or run into a
| failure and then eventually overcome it kept me motivated with my
| own personal project. In fact I was even racing him, trying to
| finish mine before the MMX was completed. The internet is full of
| b.s. influencers telling you to be motivated, but Martin and the
| Marble Machine definitely kept me going and kept it fun.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| Everyone is chatting about the engineering aspects of this
| project which is to be expected, but putting aside that for a
| second since it's been discussed to hell:
|
| I really enjoy Molin's music, when he does release some. He is
| well known for the marble machine but before that he had a band
| called Detektivbyran - minimalist electronica that got famous
| performing on the streets of Goteborg. IMO his work around that
| is just as interesting as the marble machine - it really brought
| a breath of fresh innovation to street performing when
| Detektivbyran's album's were released nearly two decades ago.
| paradox460 wrote:
| It's been rather sad watching him fail and fail again, often due
| to a misplaced sense of perfectionism. I can't really stand to
| watch his videos anymore, as they're like watching a mad artist
| defeat themselves
|
| For similar, yet grounded and successful projects in this vein,
| I've been watching Ivan Miranda's videos. He recently built a
| massive marble clock, and it's really fun watching him realize
| when it's good enough, and declare it finished
| Exoristos wrote:
| To those lamenting Martin's "descent into madness," I'm not sure
| I'd agree. In fact, I assumed, starting a couple of years ago,
| that he's drawing out the process deliberately as a steady source
| of income. As long as people remain fascinated, then, well, why
| not? We still watch a video of his from time to time, but I'm not
| expecting a finished machine and world tour soon, or ever.
| beAbU wrote:
| This video was incredible when it came out. The song itself, and
| the intersection between art and engineering was mind blowing for
| me back then. The creator released some videos later about making
| that machine that was also great.
|
| Then he started building the second version of the machine. It
| was supposed to fix all the "issues" he had with the first, and
| be something that can tour the world with. Super exciting!
|
| About 90% done, he abandoned the project to start with a /third/
| version for reasons I _still_ don't understand. I think he
| allowed "perfect" to be the enemy of "done" and he frequently
| went down rabbit holes of design and "innovation" that left me
| frustrated because it was clear to me his original concept was
| "good enough"
|
| Sadly I stopped watching around this time. I'm sure his content
| is still interesting, and he definitely innovates in the marble
| machine space. But he stopped making music, and now only focuses
| on 3D printed marble gate designsto my eyes.
| luplex wrote:
| So he said that he misrepresented how good the MMX was in order
| to make good content. Apparently, it was still too unreliable
| to actually be usable.
|
| So for the MM3, he decided to do more engineering and less good
| content. His videos are less interesting since, and contain
| less music.
| whstl wrote:
| At one time the problem was that he wanted to tour with the
| machine, so it had to withstand transportation.
|
| But in some recent videos he mentions how the form factor and
| the goal of "looking cool" was more important than
| reliability.
|
| IMO the problem he is not really picking a consistent
| direction. Either make it road-worthy or make it look like a
| steampunk Rube Goldberg contraption. Or better: make two
| machines. But making a single machine that is both reliable
| and Rube-Goldberg-esque is be 10x more difficult than making
| two machines.
| boxed wrote:
| There's always the third option: first make a simple
| machine that works but looks crap, and then gradually
| upgrade the aesthetics of the worst looking part until it's
| "cool enough".
|
| Or, in Software development terms:
|
| Make it work, make it right, make it [cool]
| whstl wrote:
| I explained it elsewhere, but the "looking cool" part is
| not just about aesthetics in the superficial sense. It's
| about the fact he wants to use marbles to trigger
| electro-acoustic instruments, and he wants to have some
| features that kinda suck, such as the "marble elevator".
|
| He could keep the mechanical sequencer and trigger
| instruments using hammers. That would make this project
| more feasible. But then he wouldn't have the marbles...
|
| Honestly all the problems here are centred around the
| "marbles" constraint :/
|
| But your point stands: he could lower the scope and
| actually finish something.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Well, it has to be reliant enough to be able to take on
| tour, but cool enough to be worthy of taking on tour.
|
| That's a hard balance.
| phiresky wrote:
| You can look at some of the videos from the music machine
| museum that now has the second marble machine and has been
| working on making it actually work. Basically it was 90% done
| but missing the other 90%. It was far too unreliable to get
| through one song still let alone a whole show:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr6NCtYQ9lQ
|
| I was at the meetup and they let us play it ourselves. It was
| great, but you could see all the issues it still had even after
| them spending months with a team of multiple people.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| He didn't abandon it to start on a new project. He abandoned it
| because it was too loud and too unstable to go on tour.
|
| _after_ he abandoned it, he decided to try again "from first
| principles". He gave the machine to a museum in Germany, where
| a bunch of volunteers spend months getting it to play a simple
| song and they all agreed it was a nightmare to work with.
| ruk_booze wrote:
| I have been hoping for long that he would finalize this machine
| of his and start working on a new album.
|
| Please get me right, the machine is marvellous but I love their
| music even more.
| Intermernet wrote:
| If you like Wintergarten, and you like LineRider, there is a
| video for you. It's amazing.
|
| https://youtu.be/c4IIn6ZscPo?si=GOx61Umn-mDUQZ2-
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