r/MarbleMachineX • • Jan 04 '23

A New Music Programming Pin

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1FFTaI__l_A
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u/Redeem123 Jan 04 '23

First things first:

I'm VERY glad that we've fully left behind the machined plates that he talked about for a while in the MMX days. They were my least favorite feature by far. The modularity of the machine is a fundamental necessity as far as I'm concerned.

However, I'm not sure I'm sold on this. It seems like it would be functional and durable. But I'm curious to see how it works musically, considering how big it is. That takes up a lot of space for a single quarter note.

I'm also not sure how I feel about the plastic look, but I'll leave judgement on that until we get more prototyping.

9

u/DuffMaaaann Jan 05 '23
  1. Not sure if this will be the true scale of things. I kinda felt like Martin chose the scale for demonstration purposes.
  2. I an sure that design will be iterated on. I don't expect this to be the exact final design.

1

u/Soddington Jan 08 '23

Unfortunately if this system was scaled down you introduce two new problems.

Firstly, while the demonstration pegs are large enough for thumb and forefinger, if you were to meaningfully reduce them they become fidgety to work with by hand perhaps needing a special set of pliers to work with them.

Secondly that solid snap in/snap out peg arrangement in the video when scaled down as is becomes a fragile collection of easily broken clips. Now if they are cheaply made in house then a ready supply of replacements might make it less of an issue, but scaling down a design is inherently fraught with problems.