Wintergatan is a Swedish musical group known for using a variety of unusual instruments including theremin and a homemade music box. They became a bit of a YouTube sensation when they developed a musical instrument called the Marble Machine. Constructed mostly out of plywood it dropped steel marbles onto a xylophone, drum instruments, and bass guitar strings. The contraption was a real life realization of the kinds of musical instruments seen in 1990s computer animation demos. This video of the completed device was released in March 2016.
However the device was made of hand cut parts that made the machine extremely unreliable. Their goal was to be able to use the machine in live concerts on the road. They recently said about constructing a new marble machine dubbed “Marble Machine X” using CNC router parts that are more precisely designed and built. Last Wednesday they released the first is a series of videos showing how the new machine will be created. The first video in series shows them assembling a CNC wood routing table from a kit and creating the first wooden gears for the new machine.
The builders promise a new video every Wednesday as well as other videos showing off other mechanical musicmaking machines.
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