Martin Molin’s contraption brought a ridiculous grin to my face:
NPR writes,
The “Marble Machine” is a musical instrument by way of a Rube Goldberg contraption, the love child of a barrel organ, a kick drum, a vibraphone and a bass — all powered by hand-cranked gears and 2,000 steel marbles. […]
The video, beautifully filmed and edited by Hannes Knutsson, gives you a real sense of the instrument’s size and engineering complexity in all of its carved wooden parts, which Molin built after drawing his design in 3-D software — the various elements are programmable, and Molin can change keys midsong. You can see videos about the process of creating the machine on Molin’s own website.
[YouTube] [Via Reza Aslan]
His videos on how it works (part 1, part 2) are also fascinating.
He planned on two months to build it. It took over a year before it worked well enough to film the video. They had to turn his shop into a film studio, because the machine had grown too large to move.
Cool, thanks!