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25-30mm seems like the sweet spot! It lets the kick drum's low end speak, while still having that nice thwack.
100% going 30 would allow for the elastic to have a good range
I’m thinking 60 on everything. Face the big balls or go home - I’m sure Richard Hammond would agree
@@christiankuziara8355 60 will destroy plastic too fast. It's all about transferring energy into the drum, you should do it fast enough to go boom, but slow enough to not stretch the plastic.
@@CHEpachiloyou're missing the joke.
@@CHEpachiloSo we need to propel the marble with more force than gravity can give for the best outcome? Doubt it but if so, that makes some new problems.
finally got the balls to try everything possible
You will have a special throne in heaven for that joke
be honest - did you wait your whole life for this one moment?
balls of steel
👏👏👏👌
mustured up the balls to say that joke did u ? well done
Martin: Wow I think this marble dented the drum head! Also Martin: Drops the same marble 10 more times just for fun
I expected the big one to punch right through. Damn good drum head!
Once the drum head was dented, he found a new test! Unlocked: "Going for broke!"
You don’t have to separate the marbles if they’re never mixed together The simplest part is no part. Each marble size should be in its own loop
I feel, that different size marbles, is already too much complexity. Seems like feature creep is showing up again.
@@xmtxx I see that more in the new feature of using rubber bands to adjust the volume which needs additional mechanic to have the volume programmable. Different marble sizes doesn't seem that much of a problem compared to that.
He already explained why he can't do that. It's on a video from 1 or 2 months ago
@@eduzappa18 He explained, why he can't separate all marble lanes, because some of them hit the same instrument and are too close together to be collected separately. That reason does not exist for the different marble size. Because the bigger marble hits the bass drum, he can collect the marbles from the base drum in a separate loop and doesn't have to mix them with different sized marbles.
If you’re trying to keep things simple using the same sized marbles is the way to go. Just alter the other variable in the force equation. Increase the drop height to increase v-squared. You are able to get an exponentially larger affect with the same magnitude of change. You already need to be able to finely adjust the feelers to play tightly, just expand the range of adjustment to allow for a large range of drop heights.
Adding the marble size sorter is adding complexity and multiple points of failure to the overall system. The system now has to handle all of those sizes for the entire return loop. Either segregate the sizes for the entire system, or pick a single size that works well enough for all the instruments to be happy.
He already mentioned each instrument has might get their own marble loops
Martin is 50% clickbait and 25% procrastination at this point
not really tho a filter for sizes does not seem so complex if you make the small ones drop and the big ones no from a guiderail for example
@@CornDogShaunhes weekly posting progress testing every aspect of the machine. What about that is procrastinating, or even at all clickbait
@@NimoClancyto go along with that, what bout the title too lol nothing is clickbait. He did exactly what he said he would do.
I am not convinced! Sorting marbles might be easy but making a marble path that can transport marbles that have a larger difference in size than a few mm, will be a challenge. I am sure the bigger marbles sound a lot better in person but on the recording, I feel like the difference is a lot less noticeable. Not trying to be negative. Just wanna cull the hype a bit :)
Yeah... I feel like this marble sorter is the new marble divider.. seems really simple and easy, but has a lot of potential moles. Or maybe it's as simple as it sounds and nothing will go wrong with it.
He should keep them in a small loop on one side of the machine. It would look really cool.
@@patrezze9370 Lets verify in a prototype!
I think, if he wants 2 marble sizes, that a separate loop is mandatory to avoid a nightmare of complexity.
One instrument, one marble set, one track, one enclosed loop. It is the simplest, most foolproof way. I think Martins freshly found engineer spirit might win on this solition, i think i remember him considering this as an option.
Around 20mm sounded best to me, also considering the fact that the sound improvement beyond that wasn’t much compared to the extra effort it would take to mechanically move and lift those bigger balls
thinking the same however, would be interesting to see smaller sizes with rubber band too
Same, thought the 25 was the best
I thought 20 untill I realised there was a 25. It was the 5th one from the right I liked. Optimal tightness, punch and low end. They get too flappy sounding after that.
@@DaftFader100% agree. And "flappy" is the perfect word to describe how they sound after ~25. 60mm was a "flappy thud". Didn't like it at all.
well, if you have the biggest balls, the effort is not a problem.. on another note (no pun note, btw) I agree, not only the mechanical effort of lifting the balls, also the gates, the space needed, and the strain on the kickdrum itself... a few may dent it, but a hundred WILL break it.
This feels like a massive amount of added complexity.
There are 2 types of complexity: 1. complexity purely for the sake of complexity because it looks really amazingly cool. 2. complexity because it needs to be complex to achieve a specific goal. Which do you suppose this is? People likely say that about the workings of a piano; "this seems like unnecessary complexity". Well, sorry, but the piano's workings need to be complex in order for the instrument to achieve its musical goals. So that's the second type of complexity. Do not confuse the 2. There is a difference.
@@justinnaramor6050 There are 2 dimensions to complexity: 1. justification for committing to it. 2. impact it has on the path to achieving your goal. Which do you suppose this is? People likely say that the added complexity is justified. Well, sorry, but that doesn't negate the impact it's going to have on the design and build process. So that's the second dimension of complexity. Do not confuse the 2. There is a difference. 😉
@@c0ldc0ne Yep, I do understand what you're saying. Seems to me that, after giving it some thought, at least some of the criticisms here are valid. Now please allow me to think out loud, in a somewhat long-winded comment :))))). We must first ask the question: what is the problem being solved here? And if I was Martin I would ask: what's the goal I'm actually trying to achieve? In this case, Martin wants to have a real bass drum, activated by a marble. In the video he chose to use really, really big (and heavy) marbles to get a nice big thumping sound out of the drum. That's a great idea... only in theory/imagination. But, as I'm sure you're aware, imagination and reality often completely fail to line up with each other :)). So while this sounds great in our imagination, in reality it's full of problems. For one thing, having such massive balls, and a large number of them, is almost certainly gonna mean a lot of unnecessary work getting them transported to the top of the machine. Moving them all around for a world tour? Hmmmmmmm... probably not. And, among other things, it's just a plain overcomplicated way to activate a big bass drum using steel marbles. 2 solutions I can think of, off the top of my head: 1. Change the velocity of the marbles, and not so much the weight/size. Whatever that means. If it means having to install a full-on marble "shooter" instead of relying entirely on the force of gravity, then we'll do it. Oh, but maybe that's still more complex than it needs to be. Here's another solution: 2. instead of having the marble directly hit the bass drum head, let's have the marble hit and bounce off of a spring-loaded lever that moves a beater/hammer/whatever which in turn hits the drum! Obviously, the size and weight of the marble should be just right, so that the strength of the strike is enough to press the lever down. I particularly like this solution because, well, it just makes sense. It's logical. And since we'd already be using technology very similar to that of an actual bass drum pedal and beater combo, we should be able to get a big bass drum sound with minimal marble-related effort! In fact, perhaps we could even take this philosophy and apply it to all the instruments in the machine, so that the marbles don't even need to directly hit the instruments! How cool is that! :))))). Of course, all of this is more of a theory. But it makes so much more logical sense than trying to use big-ass marbles to hit a big drum. So maybe it could work! I must also mention that I'm not an engineer by any means, so I don't know, maybe I've got this all completely wrong :)))))
@@justinnaramor6050Both a marble shooter and a beater would need additional energy to exert more force than the falling marble by itself, which could be achieved but at the cost of a different kind of complexity. Using gravity would require dropping the marble from higher up which potentially introduces timing issues. But then again, no one said it was going to be easy. 😊
@@c0ldc0ne Yes, what you say does make sense. Absolutely. Perhaps, maybe, a puff of compressed air could be used, in addition to some help from gravity, to assist the marble downward? Kind of like an experiment I saw at OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry): some kind of air machine forced air through a tube, and when a ball was put into the tube, the strength of the airflow forced the ball right through the tube. I'm sort of thinking of something along those lines. It means Gravity is not literally the only force acting on the marble. Not sure how that would be implemented though. But, I'm also visually impaired to the point of complete blindness, so I won't be able to see how awesome it looks if it does work :(. Which reminds me of something: I guess I don't quite understand this whole "marble gate" concept I keep hearing Martin talk about in this whole marble machine journey. I assume it's exactly what it sounds like, a "gate" of sorts that either allows or restricts the flow of marbles, depending on whether it's "open" or "closed"? Kind of like a valve that either allows or restricts the flow of water. I presume these "gates" are controlled by the pins on the programming wheel, most likely by a lever that's pressed on by the pin (so that's one lever for each note, therefore 1 "gate" for each note). And I'm imagining each gate is filled with a bunch of marbles (however many that might be). Seems that the difficulty in controlling these gates is to make sure that, when the gate is open, only one marble should be allowed to fall out of the gate and through its respective channel which leads to the specific musical note or drum sound or whatever, instead of having a whole bunch of marbles falling out at the same time. That's tricky. I imagine that's at least partly what's going on, though I apologize if it's too difficult to explain in words :)))
I think the 30-40mm is the best sound vs damage to the drum.
imo 25 and 40mm provided a better sound than the biggest ones
@@vincentdesjardins1354 i think 25mm was the best as well, but kickdrum sound is highly subjective so his preference to the 60mm one is valid in my opinion
I like the 30
I think we’d need to hear the slightly smaller ones with the rubber band. The rubber band is going to lessen the impact and offset the damage to the drum.
There is a non-zero factor of damaging the floor and other equipment with the largest marbles of their trajectories aren't controlled.
I'd also be worried about the power requirements using larger marbles. Dropping a 1kg 60mm marble 1m, every second (120 bpm half notes), consumes at least 10W of energy. If you want the machine to stay easily human powered, keeping power draw under 100W is a good target, and 10W is a lot of that target.
30 MM sounds like the most loudness and reverb out of all the sizes you tested to my ears. Great testing!!
im glad this was said, i was about to comment it myself, the 30 has a better snap to it compared tot he larger ones
When you add the rubber band in, it’s going to sound closer to the slightly smaller sizes.
Yes, 30 was the best.
true
I understand the desire for different sized marbles to optimize for the sound you want, and the sorting mechanism seems okay. But this will add a lot of complexity to the machine as a whole. It's not just sorting the marbles but every place marbles get moved around has to accommodate several different sizes of marbles. Even if you build dedicated routes and lifts and dividers for the different sizes that means you need to manufacture order of magnitude more variations of things. At the very least you should weigh the tradeoffs on the design here of being able to use multiple marble sizes versus the increased variety and complexity of the machine's systems to accommodate them.
Not to mention the absolute scale of a machine that works with 60mm balls. How many 60mm balls would he need to keep a four on the floor pattern at 120bpm going? This is just classic Martin moving the goalposts. He's finally got the engineering principles down, but if he keeps moving the goalposts he'll just fail again.
Yeah, if I was a designer on a project like this and someone said "oh, by the way, we're going to add a requirement that changes nearly the entire design and makes it many times more complex" I would be both upset and worried for the success of the project.
There are so many issues with multiple marble sizes. The increase in mass is massive (pun intended) with just twice the size. The stresses the machine needs, all the new parts that need to be designed, made and needed at hand for repairs is also multiplicative with each new size of marble. The cost of more durable parts for larger marbles will be much higher. I could go on, but I think Martin needs to remember what he has kept saying for a long time now: Make the requirements less dumb. The idea of the marble machine is already there, Martin needs to make sure that new additions and changes don't come at the cost of added complexity. A great example of a good idea is the air break for tighter music. Brilliant, a localized mechanism that improves the entire machine without adding complexity outside of itself. Using multiple marble sizes is the exact opposite of that. Something which requires whole machine wide complexity for a localized improvement of one instrument is a dumb requirement.
Realistically it's just another stupid idea that will be tunnel visioned on for weeks, only for him to then realize how stupid it is, after which he'll make a video about keeping things simple for the 20th time. Maybe this time he won't though. Just maybe.
Given that the instrument is designed to be amplified for live performance, it's important to loudness compensate the test at 5:38. Once you do this, the beefiest bottom end thump does not correlate to the largest marble (perhaps the 16mm or 25mm win). I will admit the massive marbles would look cool though!
Maybe semi-hollow marbles could give the appearance of big balls without so much weight?
I don't think anyone makes hallow marbles for a reasonable price? Martin uses bearing balls basically, which are produced in the millions. @@InventorZahran
I hope you don't end up having to sort the marbles. Keeping them in separate channels at all times should make it a lot easier and might be more reliable.
Also, one size to rule them all is a less dumb design.
@@STRA1GHTAHEAD If the marbles are all in their own channels, does their size really matter at that point?
Didn’t he show the simple sorting solution? All you would have to do to accommodate the bigger marbles in that system is bending the rods a little more so the wells aren’t too far away or too close
You'd be missing out on the content of a new video about how the chungus marble ran all the others off of the track though. /s
20-30 sounds the best in my opinion. The sound it makes will also really depend on how high you release the marbles from.
Good point about the height. What if a 20mm marble is just dropped from really high up?
Imagine the muscle power needed for lifting dozens of those 60mm steel balls.
it might be difficult scaling up the mechanical parts to fit the big marble (Marble dropper, marble lift) without issues rising but if it works this is going to be really cool
Exactly my worries
not to mention the amount of inertia a ball of that size would give out on the machine in operation
I think its fine if he seperates out special function marbles to their own loop
that was the first thing i thought about. how the hell is a machine gonna work that hosts 3 or even 4 different sizes of marbles. i hope martin doesnt get lost in feature creep again before even having a full prototype that just works.
@@AdroSlice, yes! Put those monsters in a different loop. You don’t want them banging around in the middle of the your machine. A small loop of giant balls on one end would look awesome.
Martin's genuine pain when marbles fall to the floor is great to watch Wishing Optimus Prime a swift and full recovery
I think a higher marble velocity will give a better impact sound. The weight mostly just puts more strain on the drum and actually prevents the drum from bouncing back quickly, which would give the drum sound its punch. I also think it's mechanically much easier to build a higher marble drop vs a sorting mechanism and separate marble lanes.
Physics 101: the speed in free fall doesn’t change
@@Robert-nz2qw It still takes time to reach terminal velocity
@@Robert-nz2qw Physics 101: the speed in free fall doesn’t change *in a vacuum* There fixed it for you. Also Physics 101: F=ma
@@Alquanoleyou all fail, Acceleration is constant up to terminal velocity..... (vaccum removes terminal velocity) at 3ft I doubt any of these marbles are coming close to terminal velocity. Thus @sjwimmel 's point still stands.
Came here to suggest velocity! Height quick becomes a problem though… ignoring air resistance you need to fall from 8m to double the speed you get from falling 2m. That would look super cool though!
Part of me was expecting the 60mm marble to just drop straight through the Kick Drum
Maybe use the standard marble to activate a series of spring loaded kick drum pedals that automatically reset mechanically by a gear or through spring tension
Yeah. I think dropping a bunch of heavy steel balls is going to tear apart the drum.
The thing is that Martin wants the marbles themselves to create the sound and play the instrument. Plenty of music machines already do stuff like what you said, so he's trying to be unique and create something different.
I thought about this too, but it would add wayyy to much delay in the system. I can't see martin going for that as he would have to delay the rest of the machine by how long the pedal took to activate and strike, which would be quite a long time when talking about musical tightness in ms. Human players adjust for this automatically, and we can push a pedal with way way more force and speed than even the largest marble martin has there, so making it any faster on the machine it's self would just be impractical.
@@DaftFader The solution for that is very easy: simply program it slightly ahead. With a mechanical delay, it should be pretty consistent, so all you need to do is account for that delay by moving the programming note pieces on the wheel back or forward until it's in time. I'm guessing in the future there will be a video about this exact thing and him going through each instrument to figure out the delay and adjusting as necessary.
@@davidchidester5463 The rubber band is going to extend the time of impact and therefore lower the force. And the metal ball has to be big to have the energy as when it’s struck by a person. The ball is only accelerated by gravity whereas a mallet with is moving much faster.
The biggest problem I see with this is those larger balls as soon as they hit the drum skin surface will be mashed down and staying on the skin longer than a light mallet hit with a lot of force that bounces off quickly. These steel balls will just mute and reabsorb the sound back into the ball because they are on the skin for so long I personally believe.
I think you’re right, the larger force required to change the direction of a more massive object implies a longer contact time under constant acceleration from an impulse perspective.
Square cube law, if you double the diameter of the ball you are squaring its surface area and cubing its volume. So if you take a 10mm ball and double to 20mm, the volume of steel is increased by a factor of 8 (2 cubed). Since the marbles are made from a consistent alloy of steel, this means their weight also goes up by the same factor as their volume. A ball with a diameter of 10mm will have 52.36 cm^3 volume. Stainless steel has an average mass of 8g per cm^3, so that's 418.8 grams of steel in a 10mm ball (assuming stainless steel because i know that off hand.) A 20mm ball will have a volume of 418.88 cm^3, which increases the mass to 3351g. Thats going from slightly less than half a kilogram to more than three kilograms. I feel like the idea of multiple marble sizes to vary the force per instrument is valid, but Martin should consider using drop height to variate the force as well for more precise control. I think measuring the impact force of a drum mallet might be necessary to determine the ideal marble size.
@@Taolan8472 I think you need to check your math. The volume of a 10mm ball would be way less than 52.36cm^3, because a square with length 1cm has a volume of 1cm^3. A ball that can fit inside 1cm^3 cannot be 52.36cm^3. You probably made a mistake in converting mm to cm, as the ratio changes with the dimension. 10mm to cm, 100mm^2 to cm^2, 1000mm^3 to cm^3. Also the volume of a sphere is 4/3 pi r^3. The point about what you said still stands, but I think that the differences in the ratio between surface area and mass isn't going to be as big.
Bear in mind that often that's not an undesirable effect though. We're trying to replicate a real kick drum beater, and most drummers don't just 'tap' the kick drum with the beater, propelling it at the drum and letting it bounce off freely. They often will 'press' into the kick drum instead, which can yield a more powerful and tighter sound. That's at least what I end up doing a lot of the time.
@GameBoy-ep7de hahaha it became obvious when the 20mm ball came out to over 3kg, that's obviously absurd, it'd need to be made out of thor's hammer lol
The original 16 actually sounded pretty good, I think I liked 25 the most just ahead of 30. Larger ones had some oomph but was a bit muddy.
And actualy, the only truth of all your projects is that marbles, no matter their size, always find a way… to the floor ! 😁 Keep going Martin, It’s really cool seeing your progress ! 🤟 Greatings from Belgium 😊
Ooooooh boy. The more time passes since the MMX the more Martin becomes blind to rabbit holes.
Nah, he's learned from the mistakes of the past and is now ready to make a whole set of new ones.
stawp it
Ah, but the new marble bearings are too big to fall down rabbit holes, so that's alright then...!
A few rabbit holes are good for viewer engagement!
@@NiallBeag I found a Doctor who fan :)
i feel a lot more complexity entering this project again. i know you've said that you're doing a lot of prototyping, but testing things in isolation won't be the same as when they are finally put together
He's actively procrastinating. It would appear that he's just generating content for views instead of working on a project.
@thomasbecker9676 has definitely not doing that.
Yeah this is the first time on the new machine I've felt like we've entered a dead end. Sorting might be simple, but literally everything is going to be so much harder.
@@connorcampbell5274 What's that in English?
@@thomasbecker9676 no.
Absolutely love the raw reaction when you dump a whole handful of marbles. Pure comedy. Thank you haha.
My favorite was 25 and 40, 25 has the capability of playing faster due to it's smaller diameter and less damage on the drum head. Not only that, I think it's got a very decent amount of oomf. However if we talk about adding rubber bands I think 35-40 would be the best for this application
My one concern with the marble size sorting is that it seems like it can be dependent on the speed of the marbles going through the sorter, if they move slowly, they can drop early, and if they move fast they can fall late. Might be better to just have 3 different "systems/tracks" for the different sizes
You can also see the two rods deforming with the weight of the bigger marble, which will move the drop point.
And the larger ones will travel faster down hill and possibly ride on smaller ones infront, possibly causing derailments. As well as a track that can carry really small marbles possibly being to close together to hold huge marbles around bends, again possibly causing derailments.
@@bewilderbeestie There is no requirement for those rods to be floating out in space like that, so flexure is not an issue worth worrying about. Ball speed though is a fair consideration.
I'm not convinced of the big marbles. There are two variables: speed and weight. The bigger balls are loud because of the weight, while normally you play louder by increasing the speed of the stick. The big balls literally make a "slow" sound, you hear them first coming down on the drum and later bouncing back. It's not as sharp as you want. The smaller marbles are sharper because they dont deform the screen of the drum as much. They only play a little soft maybe but i think that's easier to solve.
5:50 22 or 25 for my preference. It sounds like you can make some unique sounds with them
You are a joy to watch. I’m enjoying this journey so much! Thank you for sharing!
If you drop the ball from a bigger height to get more velocity it may sound more like the normal kick drum.
And technically speaking there wouldn't be any problems with reading the programming wheel, since you can just move the reader earlier to adjust for longer fall time
Yes! Higher fall will have greater force.
It would be interesting to have a comparison of the sound at different drop heights, using the "standard" marble. It would probably be closer to the action of the actual kick drum pedal. A short and fast hit rather than a slow heavy push.
I understand that energy increase exponetially with height, but I think that if the energy doesn't transfer over a long enough period of time, a big proportion of that energy will just bounce back. If you hit a drum with a stick at full speed holding it only with the tip of your fingers, it will just make a light sound and fly off in the air.
I actually thought the 16mm marble sounded the best, lots of attack and enough low end. The larger marble hits have a tail that I would gate if I was the mixing engineer. I am listening on studio monitors with a sub.
Same here. Listening without a sub but on some big, nice speakers. To me the 18mm sounded best. Larger sounded more muffled.
yeah, i think 20mm or less.
@@AdelaeR I think you guys might be getting the sound of the catching of the marble. It's overlaying the decay and changing the sound of the smaller marbles.
I listened to this in my car, the vibration of the subwoofer made the 30mm sound the best. It had that slight thump, from 40 up it looses that. It has more oomph, but less thump and it really seems like 30 has the best range. The mass of 30mm marbles is also more manageable to get them transported in the machine, don't underestimate how BIG everything needs to be to accommodate for those big marbles. Also, inertia becomes a bigger issue throughout
~22 sounded best to me (got no idea what to listen to though) Bigger ones seem to get some kind of echo
I liked 25 best, I am hearing a deep resonance that shows up around 18 and goes away at 30. To my ear anything bigger sounds a little flat in comparison .
You can hear the drum skin kicking back into place with the heavier ones.
Yes, I agree. 20 or 22mm were my favorite.
Wow, the balls on that guy!
i liked 22 25 and 30 the best. In alternative 60mm with medium high band sounded super clean
"Oh, look, that dented the drum head. Let's do it again. Multiple times."
The smaller marbles actually sound crisper on the kick to me. I prefer it over the softened sound of the large marbles. 14 and 18 sound like the best ones, but I'm limited by whatever KZhead is doing to the audio.
The smaller ones sound a lot more open and boomy, but that's often not what you want from a kick. Short and sharp is the goal.
Feel like the sweet spot for the sound was at 30mm, 40 was nice too, but I found 60 to seem a bit too volatile physically and just it lost some of the high end of the kick that makes it a fuller sound.
20 sounded best to me (all be it on my phone), the beefier ones sounded really flappy, but it could very well be that the bass is below the cut off point of the speakers, so we really need to be listening on full range speakers to be sure.
@@DaftFader Never judge music based on phone speaker. Especially any kind of unmixed music that lacks all the psychoacoustic trickery that makes the bass and kick slap even on small speakers.
Guy 1: I should try better speakers. Guy 2: Never ever use bad speakers. Me: So you’re saying I should keep using my phone then?
The speed of the impact might affect how it sounds, so you might want to test this at higher and lower heights
I really feel like individual channel marble loops and foregoing the divider/sorting is the safest/simplest (conceptually) plan. Should look cool too, with the different sized marbles flowing and moving around the machine!
I like the sound produced by the 20mm one, not too squishy, not too loud. Perfect !
I feel like it would be simpler to have the programming wheel trigger a standard pedal in some way. Like some spring powered mechanism only stable in the waiting position. The spring of hitting the drum might be able to reset the device after a strike.
The same could be said for most of the parts. He's got to defeat the marble demons though!
Machines that play music that way have been made before. The point is to have the marbles directly play the instrument.
@@celeratis1 A machine playing music by means of a marble falling onto a bass drum pedal? No, I'm not sure that's been made before. Yes, there have been machines where the programming pins directly activated a bass drum pedal-like lever, but I've not seen one where that lever was activated by a falling marble. If I were to make a marble machine that's probably how I'd do it, instead of the marbles 'directly' hitting the instrument. A programming pin would activate the marble dropper like normal. The dropper releases a marble onto a lever that moves a hammer (or drumstick, or mallet or some other kind of striker) into contact with the instrument. Plus you could have your choice of how you want the instruments to sound based on the material of the hammers like how you can change how a bass drum sounds by changing the type of beater head. The fascination of marbles falling would still exist; it is still the falling marbles that let the music happen. The programming pins, triggering the marble droppers, still set the marbles in motion. It is for this reason that I'm not sure the marbles really 'need' to hit the instruments 'directly'. Plus, the marbles instead falling onto levers operating strikers to hit the instruments may avoid the need for larger marbles (to an extent) because the weight/size/ETC of the strikers would contribute to the volume. Think about it, a lever essentially turns a fairly small motion into a larger one; that's basically what's going on inside a piano. Imagine if you had a marble falling onto a piano key; that's basically what I'm getting at here.
I would expect it to be much more simple to scale the drop distance (velocity) than the mass. It seems all the machines components must scale to accommodate a change in mass (or at least volume), but only distance for velocity. You get an exponential energy increase by scaling velocity rather than linear with mass.
sure but if your speed is too high, the trajectory of the marbles might be hard to control and you will have many marbles on the floor
@@nako9790 sure, but it may be easier to solve that though than the trade offs from using larger balls; there'll be a practical limit to how high the drop can be anyway.
Great progress! Love the innovation.
I love to see this energy regain. Thank you Martin for the updates! We all love your balls!
You've got big balls.
The marble sorting works. However, I believe it is worth testing keeping rhe larger marble loop separate to the standard size. Therefore, no need to sort.
The best part is no part, so eliminating the need to sort would remove a lot of avoidable complexity.
Martin is clearly in love with the 60mm marble 🤣
"A new meme appeared!" Maybe the funniest thing I've seen all year! I'm so glad you have each other to get you through those difficult ball-drop moments :)
Martin Balls need to sponsor you, they might even be able to give you bearings that fail quality control.
Christmas Balls! Also best ending ever!
Always a joy to watch!
9:49 Finally, the first marble fall accident on MM3😅. Stay strong Matin💪💪
Ballin
If you're going to have different marble sizes for different instruments, would it not make sense to have separate marble paths for each instrument so there is no mixing
That's the idea.
He's already mentioned having different loops for each instrument or even each channel
I broke out laughing when all the marbles went haywire, after seeing it happen so many times now it in different sizes! Thank you so much for the content and entertainment
Hannes saying "a new meme appeared!" was the best part of this video - and the video was already pretty good.
You got the balls, bro!
I'm loving seening you take this more methodical aproach, its very inspiring me to do things the right way with my own designs.
Methodical? It's procrastination.
Procrastination means he would be putting it off. This is definitely more methodical. @@thomasbecker9676
It would be really relaxing to listen to a compilation of you simply testing sounds and machines.
I enjoy the journey more than the destination. Keep going!
Martin, this seems to be more of a “nice to have” feature than an actual necessity. Cool to see such an idea played around with, but make sure it does not consume you.
I worry about the marble sorting. If you look closely the larger marbles cause the two rods to shift a bit. I think If you send marbles down from largest to smallest it might cause sorting errors. You might be able to fix this with really stiff rods or frequent bracing along the rods.
In practice, these rods wouldn't float out in open air and would not even necessarily be rods. Fair concern but not one that is a real problem.
I think it would be simpler and safer to keep each size of marbles in a closed loop. Not the sorting itself is the problem but the sorter slows down the marble flow and creates an unnecessary bottleneck.
I love the "A new meme appeared" when you drop all the marbles everywhere.
this whole video is commically over the top thank you for makng my day
Man measures balls for 10 minutes
I am no expert, but I suspect that unless it isn't being picked up by your microphones or through this video, there might be an optimum marble size and weight that balances force and the ability for the marble to bounce off and let the drum resonate. For example, I suspect that too heavy of a marble may have too much inertia such that it partly damps the membrane's vibration.
I agree - I think higher ball velocity (from e.g. greater drop height) should be better than using greater mass, but there's a practical limit to drop height, and I have no empirical data to back up how it sounds in practice.
"We ball"
I really enjoy Martin's enthusiasm!
Very amazing if you can achieve a good acoustic sound with this!
My biggest concern is if you want to play fast, the larger marbles have more travel distance between them, which could mean needing multiple marble gates all feeding to the same instrument, and needing them all to hit in the same place, which started to become an issue on the mmx. This seems like it would just make that issue worse, along with needing to lift and manage such heavy balls.
Honestly I like the sound of the "fake" kick drums better than the sound of the real kick drum
Your sorter for the marble sizes is also a propulsion system. I have a STEM toy that uses the principle for your sorter. Pretty cool stuff!
Brilliant, thanks for the laughs too. That rubber band idea is genius. Looking forward to seeing how you devise a strong enough head, and power the lifter ;)
"60mm marble" **punch a hole inside**
The sorting mechanism: I am not an engineer, but wouldn't there be a problem with the bigger marbles stretching the path? The rods would have to be rock solid not to bend.
The rods don't even need to be rods. They can be the edges of square tubing for example. Of all the things related to this concept, flexure in the rods is the least of my concerns.
30mm is definitely the perfect size, great clear sound with a nice punch to it that won't risk damaging the kick drum. Love it, although there are concerns about multi-size marble tracks, I'd rather different size had different tracks.
Love the reflections! I like the quiet deep tone of the 10mm ball. Maybe you could edit the various sizes into a continuous roll.
Ooh, big morble
I prefer the 20-25mm sound, feels more "defined". Also, this feels a bit like feature creep kicking in : )
Agreed. I was in favor of either 20 or 22mm (probably 22)
Dude keep up the great work
Martin: "we go practicality first!" Also Martin: "I want huge marbles!!!"
The best one was either 20mm or 22mm. Much better than 60mm. Listening on very good audio setup (of course, limited by what KZhead can produce)
I agree. There's a lot of weird wobble in the lower end, probably due to KZhead compression or microphone clipping, but 18mm sounded the best to me, also on a very good setup.
You just keep piling up more and more on your plate before any of it has finished cooking.
"Martin balls it" is a pretty good summary of his previous attempts at making marble machines.
Really looking forward to seeing more of Martin's big balls!
martin's balls are so shiny
I think the absolute biggest one is a LITTLE overkill, but making them bigger does make sense. You might want to put marbles with such large size discrepancies in their own collection and transfer loops.
>but making them bigger does make sense. No. Using the smaller balls and turning the volume up makes sense. All the bigger balls are doing is making the sound louder. It's why some drummers use heavier sticks... they don't have to hit as hard. The sound is in the drum, not the size of the sticks.
You had me when Wilson fell over, and KILLED me when the marbles went everywhere. LOL
Wow, that's a great way to make a sample library with numerous (consistent) velocities.
Bigger marbles also need more lift. Please make 2 systems, one for timing and one for lift, so that the weight of the marbles doesn't affect the timing.
You could always try to increasing the density of the material of the marble vs its size. You wouldn't need a very large solid lead marble to get the effect of a very large light marble currently using.
This is going to be one incredible machine when it's done.
"The Rubberband Man" from the Spinners would be fantastic background music while setting up all that rubber ypu're gonna use 😂
I was literally in the middle of commenting how I was disappointed he didn't knock the marbles off in the middle of him knocking the marbles off. Perfect timing.
I think the easiest and most reliable way would be to have a loop for each size, remember simplicity? However if you want to have different gates with different sizes rather than the adjustable rubber band id suggest going for a "railing" thats just slightly taller than the next smallest size and angleing it downwards slightly. Thatd have a really high throughput and is very reliable. The issue with the cone you showed is precision for once and also that the marbles slow down the further they go
"Wilson, get a grip." As we watch poor Martin slowly losing his mind... Hang in there, Martin!
I dont think ive ever seen Martin be this happy about big balls before