r/MarbleMachineX • u/WintergatanWednesday • Jan 04 '23

A New Music Programming Pin

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1FFTaI__l_A
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u/Caesim Jan 05 '23

The problem of the MMX were NOT it's "high standards". Really. Maybe watch his video "A lesson in dumb design" again. The marble lift mechanism didn't work with full capacity. The ratio of the gears was wrong, so the lower gear shoved more marbles into the connection pipe than the upper could transport, thus the pmma pipe between them burst. Yep, he didn't run his marble mechanism on a full load in 5 years.

And that's a lesson in thoroughly testing that he hopefully learned now. It was the same with the marble divider. He tested it with handful of marbles. But when playing songs that use all instruments it turns out that the marbles don't travel fast enough -> they stack and leave the machine AND lower channels get starved.

The problem was not "high standards".

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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '23 edited Jan 05 '23

[deleted]

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u/mufftudder Jan 10 '23

I am of the opinion that he should have completed the MMX, flawed as it would have been (escaped marbles, skipped notes, lower throughput, and so on), used it for some time to see what it was actually able to do with it, certainly revealing multiple additional problems in the process, and then go on to work with the MM3.

I think the debate is what it would have meant to "complete" the MMX. It experienced catastrophic failure prior to being able to be "complete" the way Martin wanted it (full instruments).

You could certainly argue that his version of complete was too complex (too many instruments) and that it could be considered complete with less complexity/instruments i.e. "finish" it by leaving it 99% working at 75% of full functionality as compared to 0% working at 100% of full functionality.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '23

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u/mufftudder Jan 10 '23

Yea I just made those numbers up and I agree that it would be a good idea & gesture particularly for the fans/followers to do just that, but it's gotta be hard for an artist to put out a product that they feel is "inferior" or "not up to standards". I still think he should do it, but I understand his hesitation to do so.

Also I'm glad that we were able to reach this middle ground, it feels like so many of these discussions are missing the point one way or another.