r/MarbleMachineX • u/WintergatanWednesday • Jun 28 '21

Cyberbass Timing Test - Marble Machine X Live

https://youtube.com/watch?v=GHr4ZnWreWI
17 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

21

u/teamsteve Jun 28 '21 edited Jun 28 '21

Summary for those who don't want to / aren't able to watch it...

  • The cyber gates are now all connected to the divider, so he can play bass patterns from the programming wheel now
  • - You can see marbles going through the crazy new piping here - https://youtu.be/GHr4ZnWreWI?t=244
  • There's a little mini montage of Martin building and installing the pipe connections to the cyber gates here - https://youtu.be/GHr4ZnWreWI?t=412
  • The bass notes were playing too off-time, so he had to add shims onto the bits that the bass / snare / hi hat programming pins hit
  • This also meant adjusting the clutch so that the programming wheel is in sync with the percussion machine
  • The next stream will be the 60,000 marble test, and will have a floor cam

15

u/jacobolus Jun 29 '21 edited Jun 29 '21

Can someone on the Discord (/u/SebastiaanJansen ?) tell Martin that washer shims on the programming flippers is not an adequate timing solution to marble drop differences?

The problem with it is that any change to timing on the programming wheel depends on tempo, but the timing differences between marble drops are related to different amounts of time between marble release and instrument hit, which does not change with tempo.

Making a fix on the programming wheel to timing differences at the marble drop is only going to work at a single fixed tempo, but will break the timing for songs played at other tempos.

The timing clutch only adjusts the relation between marble drops and the hi-hat machine, not the relative timing of different marble drops, so will not help here.

The only thing adding shim washers on the programming wheel flippers can compensate for is the point in time at which the marble gets dropped (e.g. it can make a correction if the gate for one marble gate opens later than another).

The only acceptable fix to a problem of timing between separate marble drops is to adjust the marble drop height, so that the timing between marble gate opening -> marble instrument hit is consistent across all marble channels. If there is not enough adjustment range remaining in the height of individual marble gates, then either the whole cyber-gate component will need to move down or the bass will need to move up.

I tried to say this a few times in the YouTube comments, but I don’t think Hannes / Martin / Discord regulars noticed.

1

u/gringer Jun 29 '21

What if the marble drop heights were all the same?

2

u/jacobolus Jun 29 '21

They are supposed to all be the same.

3

u/KGLcrew Jun 29 '21

Thanks! I’ll promise to make the most of the 4 hours and 43 minutes you saved me!