UKC

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=IvUU8joBb1Q

This is nuts. Inspired genius. I laughed at the genius of it, then I wondered at the sheer labour intensive effort. Then I was afraid.

Watch it, it's amazing. A one man band machine powered by marbles.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Shortly there will be a scientist or an economist to rubbish the whole idea

In reply to Cú Chullain:

That's a great tune and a beautiful machine but I found myself wondering if the music I was hearing was really produced by the machine.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

In true UKC form, I feel the need to point out that they are ball bearings!

Somehow I feel there should be a monkey involved in the process!

In reply to Cú Chullain:

That's terrifyingly brilliant. Whoever designed this needs to be kept suitably occupied at all costs, it is quite clearly dangerous to let their mind wander.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Thanks for sharing!

In reply to Lusk:


Now I don't feel so bad pointing out that it's powered by a person turning a handle and partially actuated by marbles, not "powered by marbles"...

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Absolutely wonderfully bonkers!
It's like seeing Mike Oldfield doing Tubular Bells on something built by Fred Dibnah!

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Wonderful.

Very similar idea here:

youtube.com/watch?v=m_Ajg1G3vik&

In reply to wintertree:

, missed that!

It's a good Heath Robinson like machine.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

It's great fun, but I find the soundtrack deeply suspect. The music seems to be played more or less entirely by preset pegs on rotating drums, and it is extremely unclear what exactly the ball bearings are doing, if anything. Also, how do those guitar chords carry on once he's taken his hand away from the guitar?

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

He frets the bass while the strings are hit by ball bearings. When he removes his hand the open strings sound as the balls hit them.

In reply to Jon Stewart:




MASSIVE missed opportunity.

I wanted it to pan back an show a hamster, running in a wheel, making it all happen.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

The timing of the notes is certainly *controlled* by those pegs but the actual striking of the notes on the xylophone (or glockenspiel, never could remember which was the metal one?) appears to be done by the ball bearings, which is pretty neat. They also seem to do the striking for the percussion elements. They aren't exactly hiding the fact that everything's mic-ed up and amplified, other than that it seems pretty direct and honest.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


The pegs/drums are releasing the ball bearings, which are then hitting the xylophone keys.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

That's what I was getting at above. I find it hard to believe that music was produced by that machine. I suspect it might turn out to be a video for a tune about to be released.

In reply to aln:

Yes, what's clear is that that track is not the live track produced by the machine. The question is how closely the dubbed track resembles the live 'record/guide track' produced by the machine. (Speaking as a music editor now.)

In reply to aln:

There are a lot of "making of" videos that give details of the construction and also how the audio from each element is captured, isolated and processed. Seems legit.

It's all over the internet at the moment, someone would have figured out the con by now if it was.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

See this video for how the audio is captured/processed, including a comparison of "live sound" to "captured sound".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S27Inwu-w6Q&t=1m14s

In reply to Luke90:

Thanks, very helpful and interesting ... though it stops just when you are expecting to see a lot more. But it confirms more or less what I thought.