I saw the marble machine video when it came out in 2016. Like a lot of people, I was blown away. It now has over 70 million views on YouTube. I’ll embed it below in case you are the person who hasn’t seen it.
A few weeks ago I stumbled across the video again, remembering how much I liked it. Not just the novelty, but the song itself, the execution, the inventiveness of the machine, everything about it. This time I followed up and checked out some other videos from Wintergatan’s channel. It turns out the marble machine isn’t the only crazy musical contraption Wintergatan has made. There are lots of videos about the design and construction of these wild machines. Wintergatan has a lot of followers and sometimes asks for concept and engineering advice – I particularly enjoyed the crowdsourced solution for the 90-degree kick-drum. It is so great to see people work together to solve complex problems like that. I can’t wait to see the new Marble Machine X when it is completed, but I am enjoying seeing the incremental progress and the decision-making process as this vision comes closer to reality. I have to applaud Wintergatan’s willingness to be so open and share so much about the process. If you are into unusual musical instruments and want to see how one unique artist approaches it, I can’t recommend this YouTube channel highly enough.
TDNTav 