Marble Machine

[Joel's Hear]

I stumbled across this the other day and really like it.

 

[Major Tom]

That has to be the most creative instrument I've ever seen! I love it This popped up off the same feed. Doesn't even seem real.. Haha

 

[LucyPurrs]

I stumbled across this the other day and really like it.

This must be a precursor to animusic!!! Love animusic! Or maybe this is an effort to make animusic in the flesh so to speak.

 

[LucyPurrs]

That has to be the most creative instrument I've ever seen! I love it This popped up off the same feed. Doesn't even seem real.. Haha

This is animusic, ain't it great???

 

[pjcnet]

Old mechanical music machines had one of the earliest forms of a computer programme that run from binary punched sheets, this appears to use nails in a similar way instead of the punched holes which can be added or removed depending on what you want the machine to do on large wheels. I will say however that I'm sceptical it sounds quite as good as what we are hearing on the video which appears to have a dubbed studio soundtrack, but the machine itself does appear to be genuine.

Here is an article that explains a lot more about this machine and how it works, it also talks about other marble machines and it includes some interesting videos:

Martin Molin tells all on his Marble Machine

I wonder how reliable it is, with flying marbles and so many carefully balanced mechanical parts there's obviously a chance things could occasionally go wrong, but the machine in the 2nd video added by @Major Tom looks much more likely to be something that could go terribly wrong even if there was just the slightest wear on any of the parts or change of alignment, in fact it's possible that even a draft or change in temperature could cause a catastrophic failure on a machine like this and many failures must have happened throughout testing, imagine the determination and work involved to get a machine like that working perfectly on such a delicate balance. Both machines are certainly very impressive however, I used to build much simpler marble machines when I was a very young child, sometimes I'd even use Lego.

 

[Joel's Hear]

That has to be the most creative instrument I've ever seen! I love it This popped up off the same feed. Doesn't even seem real.. Haha

My kids like that one better than marble machine.