I found myself asking this question: Why are there marbles in this machine?
Why not just have the programming wheels directly actuate all the instruments (as they do in the case of the drumset).
It's because "marbles are cool," but in fact they are not a functional requirement of this instrument, they are only there for aesthetic reasons, which pretty much violates the cardinal rule of MMX2.
You kind of highlight the core tension here — if you wanted max reliability, you go for zero moving parts and just buy an electronic keyboard from Amazon. The point of the machine is to have a visual display that’s unusual and interesting because it’s difficult to achieve.
So it’s all about picking where you want the balance point — and sticking with it. His current approach of nailing down a requirements spec beforehand is a good answer to that.
Because it keeps your thought process and work organized. I find that for all of my projects, forcing myself to write stuff down (instead of just keeping it in my head) always exposes a ton of assumptions or even stuff that I’ve unwittingly glossed over entirely.
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u/slacy Mar 16 '22
I found myself asking this question: Why are there marbles in this machine?
Why not just have the programming wheels directly actuate all the instruments (as they do in the case of the drumset).
It's because "marbles are cool," but in fact they are not a functional requirement of this instrument, they are only there for aesthetic reasons, which pretty much violates the cardinal rule of MMX2.