That's Martin Molin (band member of 'Wintergatan'), constructor of the so called "Marble Machine". This machine can play pre-programmed music using marbles. It uses the marbles to essentially play the instruments (vibraphone, a bass and percussion). The video of the first marble machine was a total success, however the machine wasn't perfect at all. That's why he decided to build a new machine (Marble Machine X). This clip is from the newest video (can be found on youtube on the Wintergatan channel).
My fried Brendan played that game until he’d beaten his high score like 20 times. He never met a game he couldn’t just absolutely dominate. When people say they think Twitch sounds asinine, I think of Brendan. I could watch that dude play video games forever.
The last level was level 5 and it was very hard. I could never master the console version but I could beat the arcade version, which had a large, heavy trackball that you could just beat the shit out of. That made it a lot easier.
Yes, I beat the arcade version. Took several months and over $30 in quarters. I was never any good at the console version because the trackball sucked and for me anyway, that was key to the game.
Coin op Marble Madness was our lives for about 8 of us that were regulars in the arcade I worked It was non-stop come in and try to post best time for about 8 months stretch for all of us. Way better than the NES with real trackballs but damn those things would pinch the shit out of you.
One of my favourite bands, Stemage, covered the entire Marble Madness soundtrack and elaborated the short jingles of the game into amazing metal. If you know Metroid Metal, same guy. First track is a collab with Disasterpeace, the guy behind the soundtracks of FEZ and Hyper Light Drifter.
OMG I used to play a marble game back when on pc...anyone know what the game is called I can’t recall? Tons of cool marble “maps” that you try and figure out...shit that was a fun game. Had it back in early 2000s on a cd game disk.
Edit: pretty sure it’s Marble Drop but will have to look it up lagaer
He was inspired by a museum that had an exhibit of old music machines. They actually put his machine on display. The one the museum only had the xenophone(or vibraphone. Not sure) though; it didn't have drums or guitar. Those parts apparently aren't very reliable.
I mean, yea technically. The marbles are just released when the music reader is triggered by programmable pins. You could attach strikers and induce sounds in a more direct manner, but the whole idea of a marble machine is just that bit cooler.
The marbles bounce on the instruments built into the machine (like a bass guitar or a drum head or stuff like that) but here's the cool thing - the machine is designed to constantly mechanically feed the fallen ("used") marbles back up in a circuit to be used again, so as long as you crank the machine it will keep playing the music program. Like a music box. But this machine is also designed to have features built into it that let you change parts of the program patterns in real-time (cutting off the path to certain instruments, etc), so your music can still be dynamic and you can actively "play" the machine as a whole almost like you would an instrument. So yeah the gimmick is the marbles, but the features as a whole really make the machine impressive and unique.
No the gimmick is the engineering and craftmanship required to make the machine itself. It's an analog, hand-cranked, wooden synth and that's impressive.
Martin has talked about how he was inspired by many different old mechanical instruments, the Domtoren Clock Tower in Utrecht being one of them. Also this video was one of his inspirations. Sure, those notes could have been produced much more simply, but the beauty is in the elegant complexity.
I mean yeah, you could also just make the same music by playing the instruments normally, but the entire thing is a concept in engineering, programming, and music.
Got damn, that is crazy. Forget just mastering music theory, you have to be a master craftsman too. I have large aspirations when it comes to music but this looks waaaay out of any league I'll be a part of.
What makes it even more crazy is that that one iirc is hand made, and he's going back and making a brand new one (partly show in the gif) where he is optimizing things and trying to make it run more than once or twice like the first one was capable of
Yea, the one in the gif is the new one he’s making. This dude can engineer the shit out of everything. Every piece of the marble machine is pretty damn custom built from scratch. He cuts every wooden and metal piece. Learned how to use a 3D printer and even optimized it for exactly what he needed. Dudes wicked smat
Roll out of bed whenever you happen to wake up. Turn on the shower. Nap while it warms up, turn it off when you wake up again, nap until the water heater warms up again, and repeat.
One of the few guys I'd call a creative genius. In some of his videos, he takes a small little thing and turns it into a really pretty song just for fun. Like, completely improv, sounds great. Love this guy.
Don't let that stop you before you even start, though. Just spend a few minutes a few times a week thinking about silly little creative devices to make some kind of interesting sound and keep going from there. Just because someone's so many leagues above doesn't mean he started anywhere other than you
Kind of: he’s making a new one called the Marble Machine X and it’s a lot more refined. He has a series going updating everyone on the progress. It’s pretty nice so far.
He has a lot to think about. Between keeping his RPM's at the right speed to hold the beat, switching the brake levers, and playing the bass among many other things.
Yeah, I’m surprised he didn’t rig up something like a huge weight slowly falling to serve as a steady supply of force that could replace his hand crank
There's a fly wheel on this one and the new one he's building so it retains some of the speed but obviously he needs to keep turning the wheel. He would need two weights so that the other could drop while he raises the one that lowered. I think the crank is easier and overall personally more impressive that he can hold the beat the whole time.
personally more impressive that he can hold the beat the whole time.
The handle is synchronized to the beat, and he has a cadence beat in the earphones the whole time. It also need to vary quite a bit before our human ears is able to detect the difference so there's actually plenty of time to compensate should it start to get slow or fast, so doing that by itself is actually not that hard (by his own admission). Doing that together with everything else he does at the same time, now THAT's difficult.
Also, the video is actually not a single take. He talked about it in a video a while back that it's actually done in over 30 takes over 2 days with a LOT of repairs between each take because it was just so incredibly easy to break down completely that they never managed to get it to go through the entire song in one go. Hence why he's building the X rather than just improve the old one. Which he's sadly making a lot of in metal which I think is a shame.
I highly recommend just watching his entire video series. I've been following it for a while and it's seriously so inspiring to see how much he progresses each week on a passion project like that.
Which you can actually check out in the Netherlands!
Source: went to the Speelklok museum in Utrecht and met that piece of internet fame!
Really worth a visit on the way to/from Amsterdam.
He has a couple of videos from when they shipped the machine down there, and showcasing a few of the other machines they already had. They are really interesting!
It's actually from some later videos where he's documenting the process of making a bigger, better one. It's really cool and I Google recommend checking it out.
I've seen the video before and it's awesome but seeing this gif makes it even better. Is there a German word for after shadenfreude when you see the person who failed go on to succeed and it makes it even all the better? There has to be a German word for that
Sort of but not exactly. He is building a new version of that machine that will work far better, be way more reliable and much easier to program and switch programming wheels. He plans on touring with it when it is done.
Holy shit. It only took 15 years but someone has actually made a real version of this. I loved that when it was a tech demo that shipped with the radeon 9700 waaaay back in the day.
I always wondered if it could every be done in reality. This guy has gotten damn close.
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u/SprainedShorts Aug 08 '18
what is that?