WEBVTT 00:00:03.600 --> 00:00:07.360 [♪ Unreleased/Tight ♪] 00:01:18.480 --> 00:01:21.640 How tight music can the Marble Machine X actually play? 00:01:21.660 --> 00:01:24.159 In this episode we're going to find out! 00:01:24.160 --> 00:01:26.180 To make the Marble Machine X play tight music, 00:01:26.180 --> 00:01:28.180 we can calibrate it in many ways. 00:01:28.180 --> 00:01:31.700 And my goal with this video is for you to understand exactly how. 00:01:32.800 --> 00:01:36.720 Before when I made timing tests, I always had to crank the machine manually, 00:01:36.720 --> 00:01:38.720 but now I've installed this electric motor 00:01:38.720 --> 00:01:41.900 which will turn the machine by itself at a constant torque. 00:01:42.080 --> 00:01:45.780 This will give us the conditions we need for accurate timing tests! 00:01:46.480 --> 00:01:50.820 [♪ Wintergatan: Proof of Concept ♪] 00:01:54.800 --> 00:01:59.140 First I want to check if the Marble Machine X is playing tight in relationship to time itself. 00:01:59.160 --> 00:02:03.800 To do that I'm setting the hi-hat machine to play one tick for every revolution of the crankshaft. 00:02:03.860 --> 00:02:06.160 [metronome/hi-hat machine playing] 00:02:06.240 --> 00:02:08.980 I'm recording the hi-hat into the computer for a couple of minutes, 00:02:08.980 --> 00:02:12.300 so we can check if the timing is drifting over longer periods. 00:02:12.300 --> 00:02:18.660 [Martin records the metronome/hi-hat] 00:02:18.720 --> 00:02:22.440 This is a click from Logic and here comes the hi-hat from the Marble Machine X. 00:02:23.100 --> 00:02:23.900 Here we go! 00:02:24.480 --> 00:02:26.480 [Recorded hi-hat sounds] 00:02:31.760 --> 00:02:32.840 What? 00:02:32.860 --> 00:02:35.940 It keeps the tempo exactly like one... 00:02:36.100 --> 00:02:38.280 This is one and a half minutes later... 00:02:39.640 --> 00:02:41.640 Whaaat?! 00:02:43.520 --> 00:02:46.240 Let's listen one minute in here... 00:02:47.940 --> 00:02:49.300 Still playing tight! 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:53.760 This is crazy good news, 00:02:53.920 --> 00:02:56.600 that it's so tight over such a long time period. 00:02:56.740 --> 00:03:03.680 This means, that the motor is keeping an even torque and strong enough to keep very very accurate tempo! 00:03:05.680 --> 00:03:10.800 Next I want to calibrate the timing between the hi-hat machine and the left channel of the kick drum. 00:03:10.880 --> 00:03:14.180 The kick drum is played by two independent marble releases 00:03:14.180 --> 00:03:17.660 and for this test we're only going to drop marbles from the left release. 00:03:17.920 --> 00:03:20.940 I'm programming a simple test pattern on channel 24, 00:03:21.000 --> 00:03:24.340 which corresponds to the left marble release of the kick drum. 00:03:25.440 --> 00:03:27.440 Pause... (Martin programming...) 00:03:27.600 --> 00:03:28.480 Hit... 00:03:29.320 --> 00:03:31.320 Pause... Pause... Pause.. 00:03:32.260 --> 00:03:32.860 Hit... 00:03:33.660 --> 00:03:35.700 So, now we should have: 00:03:39.740 --> 00:03:44.140 [Martin recording the kick drum] 00:03:47.580 --> 00:03:48.380 Oh, wow! 00:03:48.380 --> 00:03:51.440 I heard a programming error: The last kick-drum-beat was late! 00:03:51.440 --> 00:03:53.820 That was... My magnet was in the wrong hole. 00:03:53.820 --> 00:03:55.860 The marble machine does not play wrong! 00:03:55.860 --> 00:03:59.000 [Recorded kick drum] 00:04:03.200 --> 00:04:05.600 Here you can see, I programmed it too late. 00:04:05.840 --> 00:04:09.519 You can also see that the kick is a tiny bit after the hi-hat, 00:04:09.600 --> 00:04:14.780 but we can just check the consistency by aligning the first two strokes, 00:04:14.780 --> 00:04:17.320 and then... lets jump to the next hit! 00:04:17.540 --> 00:04:20.260 Not bad at all! 00:04:20.260 --> 00:04:21.540 Look at that! 00:04:21.760 --> 00:04:26.880 This little consistency test that I just did here is maybe the most important test for today. 00:04:27.120 --> 00:04:31.600 I'm very happy to see that the marble drops is tight with itself, 00:04:31.680 --> 00:04:36.220 so to speak: It uses the same amount of time to drop each marble. 00:04:36.220 --> 00:04:38.340 Now when we got that very hopeful result, 00:04:38.340 --> 00:04:41.940 we can move on to try to align the kick drum with the hi-hat. 00:04:42.040 --> 00:04:44.100 So I'm gonna turn this... 00:04:44.260 --> 00:04:46.040 180 degrees... 00:04:46.240 --> 00:04:49.140 This one is pulled back and going to play later. 00:04:49.320 --> 00:04:52.380 [Martin recording the kick drum] 00:04:57.040 --> 00:04:59.760 The kick drum is still later than the hi-hat. 00:04:59.760 --> 00:05:01.240 Orange is the first take. 00:05:01.240 --> 00:05:03.540 The kickdrum has moved to the left 00:05:03.680 --> 00:05:06.600 Let's just keep on nudging the kick drum to the left. 00:05:06.740 --> 00:05:09.860 On these discs I can make a control-line 00:05:09.860 --> 00:05:15.380 Then I can open a bolt and I can shift the entire rhythm machine backwards. 00:05:15.480 --> 00:05:18.220 [Martin recording the kick drum] 00:05:18.800 --> 00:05:19.780 That was pretty tight! 00:05:19.780 --> 00:05:22.480 [Recorded kick drum] 00:05:22.480 --> 00:05:24.000 Hahahaha! 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:27.920 You can see that the kick drum is moving closer to the left for each test. 00:05:28.479 --> 00:05:32.879 What a difference this motor has made for the entire Marble Machine X project! 00:05:33.199 --> 00:05:37.839 Maybe the Marble Machine X can become the tightest mechanical music instrument like ever made! 00:05:38.800 --> 00:05:43.600 Probably not true: The electromagnetic drum beater from Polyend probably beating me... 00:05:44.380 --> 00:05:47.400 [Electomagnetic drum beater from polyend] 00:05:47.600 --> 00:05:53.120 I noticed a pattern in all the tests: The first one was always a little bit more late than the others. 00:05:53.280 --> 00:05:56.380 Well, I'm guessing that the first one is so close to this edge, 00:05:56.540 --> 00:05:59.360 and let's say that I didn't really 00:05:59.360 --> 00:06:01.280 get the edge down properly, 00:06:01.360 --> 00:06:03.820 this would lean back and play later. 00:06:03.920 --> 00:06:07.440 So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna shift the whole program over... here, 00:06:07.759 --> 00:06:09.759 so we get away from this edge. 00:06:09.840 --> 00:06:14.979 We can eliminate this issue when we're using the stud welding programming plates from HBS. 00:06:15.199 --> 00:06:17.999 That's for the world tour and for the producing of the record. 00:06:18.800 --> 00:06:20.880 I want this system to work when I'm composing. 00:06:21.240 --> 00:06:23.660 Shifting the program away from the edge did help: 00:06:23.660 --> 00:06:28.340 The four hits were now consistent and I nailed the timing for kick drum test E. 00:06:28.340 --> 00:06:32.200 [recorded the kick drum sound] 00:06:44.960 --> 00:06:48.340 Ah! The programming sections and their internal timing. 00:06:48.340 --> 00:06:52.560 I welcome you deeper down into this rabbit hole, let's go surgical! 00:06:52.720 --> 00:06:55.620 So, if you remember the dragon slayer video I did, 00:06:55.620 --> 00:06:59.080 I was fighting with not only advanced CNC machining tool-paths, 00:06:59.200 --> 00:07:03.280 but especially the internal timing between the four quarter sections. 00:07:03.599 --> 00:07:06.399 So I'm very happy to go back and revisit this topic, 00:07:06.720 --> 00:07:10.639 stab the corpse of the dragon a little bit with my new electric motor weapon. 00:07:12.000 --> 00:07:15.340 So far, we only tested the first quarter of the programming wheel. 00:07:15.340 --> 00:07:19.640 I'm gonna program the same kick drum pattern on all four quaters 00:07:19.760 --> 00:07:23.920 and I'm gonna put a snare drum so I know which beats comes from which quarter. 00:07:23.920 --> 00:07:26.340 I suspect, that the kick hits 00:07:26.340 --> 00:07:29.560 from the second quarter will be slightly shifted 00:07:29.560 --> 00:07:34.320 in some position and the computer will be able to tell us how we can adjust for that. 00:07:34.720 --> 00:07:37.300 Never mind the snare timing. That's for later! 00:07:37.300 --> 00:07:40.300 [Rythm/hi-hat machine playing] 00:07:40.440 --> 00:07:43.440 [Kick drum and Snare playing as well] 00:08:05.060 --> 00:08:09.640 [♪ Unreleased: My Dream Snare Sound ♪] 00:08:14.160 --> 00:08:15.940 The different number of snare drum hits 00:08:15.940 --> 00:08:18.020 makes it very obvious in the waveform 00:08:18.020 --> 00:08:20.000 which programming section is which. 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:25.160 So I could divide the sections up, color code them and then measure all the latencies, 00:08:25.200 --> 00:08:29.300 and enter the values into my Dragonslayer chapter 2 spreadsheet. 00:08:29.840 --> 00:08:34.799 I tried to measure a lot of different hits and then I calculated the average of all hits 00:08:34.960 --> 00:08:39.040 to know exactly how much I should shift a programming section back and forth. 00:08:39.040 --> 00:08:41.520 To adjust the position of a programming section 00:08:41.580 --> 00:08:45.040 I can change the number of shim washers under this touching bolt. 00:08:45.360 --> 00:08:49.919 The touching bolt is resting against a touching plate on the neighboring programming section. 00:08:50.000 --> 00:08:52.680 The shim washers are 0.1 millimeter thin 00:08:52.680 --> 00:08:56.200 so in theory I should be able to slide the programming sections 00:08:56.200 --> 00:08:58.900 in 0.1 millimeter increments. 00:08:58.900 --> 00:09:04.080 I ended up doing five tests taking all the programming sections off and altering the shim washers, 00:09:04.100 --> 00:09:07.320 before I got the averages to very close to zero. 00:09:07.780 --> 00:09:10.000 From here the only improvement possible 00:09:10.000 --> 00:09:12.920 is to move to the stud welded programming plates from HBS, 00:09:12.920 --> 00:09:15.120 as they won't have this issue at all. 00:09:15.460 --> 00:09:21.840 HBS has a very nice video on their youtube channel showing them making stud welding tests for the Marble Machine X. 00:09:22.160 --> 00:09:25.960 This is going to be really really cool to see full size. 00:09:25.960 --> 00:09:27.360 So I've been sitting here, 00:09:27.360 --> 00:09:31.180 recording and entering the measurements in the spreadsheet 00:09:31.180 --> 00:09:33.800 almost the whole day. Sun is gone... 00:09:33.840 --> 00:09:38.600 I talked a lot about delayed gratification in this project and... 00:09:38.720 --> 00:09:43.380 To me it's becoming more and more the theme of this whole project. 00:09:43.500 --> 00:09:45.500 I think I'm making a masterpiece. 00:09:45.680 --> 00:09:49.500 Actually... Right now when I'm seeing the numbers in the spreadsheet, 00:09:49.600 --> 00:09:52.800 I think I am making a masterpiece. 00:09:53.320 --> 00:09:54.540 Actually... 00:09:55.280 --> 00:09:59.680 What's that? 13... 13 is a good number! Love it! 00:09:59.760 --> 00:10:02.280 Like in 2019, 00:10:02.400 --> 00:10:05.820 I wasn't able to focus like this on the grind. 00:10:06.080 --> 00:10:10.240 I was somewhere else, probably the project was too painful at the time. 00:10:10.880 --> 00:10:12.880 I couldn't really go deep, 00:10:13.280 --> 00:10:17.420 and now I'm just back in the midst of it, 00:10:17.480 --> 00:10:19.480 and it's absolutely wonderful! 00:10:19.600 --> 00:10:24.920 This will result in a tight drum beat by the end of this video, 00:10:24.920 --> 00:10:28.080 if you're having problem with the delayed gratification, 00:10:28.160 --> 00:10:30.000 at this very moment. 00:10:30.100 --> 00:10:32.100 Basically what I've achieved is that 00:10:32.100 --> 00:10:37.560 the blue and the yellow, brown and red have the same timing of the kick drum towards the hi-hat. 00:10:37.760 --> 00:10:39.660 Here's blue! [Recorded mix] 00:10:41.540 --> 00:10:42.600 Ignore the snare! 00:11:13.120 --> 00:11:18.080 For all the tests so far I had to manually set the tempo of the motor with the crank, 00:11:18.160 --> 00:11:22.320 but I got curious to see if we could actually program a defined bpm. 00:11:22.480 --> 00:11:24.780 For example 120 bpm. 00:11:24.780 --> 00:11:27.880 I called Alex and voila we can! 00:11:27.880 --> 00:11:29.600 He taught me how. 00:11:29.600 --> 00:11:32.840 We can now control the motor with the computer: 00:11:32.840 --> 00:11:36.400 The usb cable (is) going from the computer into this controller. 00:11:36.480 --> 00:11:41.600 So the motor is built in seven steps and the gear ratio from the motor to the pull is seven. 00:11:41.600 --> 00:11:43.920 So we have to take 120, 00:11:43.920 --> 00:11:49.040 which is my targeted bpm for the music, times 49, seven times seven, 00:11:49.519 --> 00:11:54.979 equals 5880... 5880... And hitting play... 00:11:57.280 --> 00:11:59.280 And off it goes! 00:12:04.920 --> 00:12:08.740 120 bpm lining up the first beat. 00:12:08.740 --> 00:12:10.740 Computer click on... 00:12:10.740 --> 00:12:12.740 [Metronome from the computer] 00:12:14.300 --> 00:12:16.300 [Rythm/hi-hat machine playing] 00:12:20.240 --> 00:12:22.240 Wooooow! 00:12:24.800 --> 00:12:26.340 Okay, that is very impressive, 00:12:26.340 --> 00:12:30.520 but if I now go to one minute later in the recording, over here... 00:12:38.480 --> 00:12:40.480 This is crazy! 00:12:40.480 --> 00:12:43.840 The Marble Machine X is tied with the computer over 00:12:43.920 --> 00:12:45.839 like two minutes recording here. 00:12:45.840 --> 00:12:48.840 There are 38 marble drop channels on the Marble Machine X 00:12:48.840 --> 00:12:52.560 and now we can start to calibrate the timing in between them. 00:12:52.560 --> 00:12:57.320 I'm going to start by comparing the second kick drum channel with the one that we already fixed, 00:12:57.320 --> 00:13:00.160 so I'm adding some extra strokes on the programming wheel. 00:13:00.500 --> 00:13:03.180 [Martin programming] 00:13:07.560 --> 00:13:11.360 [Rythm/hi-hat machine, snare and kick drum playing]] 00:13:14.080 --> 00:13:15.520 The new kick drum is early, 00:13:15.520 --> 00:13:17.100 we can see it in the test results 00:13:17.100 --> 00:13:19.420 and we can see it in the waveforms and we can hear it. 00:13:19.660 --> 00:13:22.400 [Recorded mix] 00:13:23.600 --> 00:13:26.220 Here you can see the the discrepancy! 00:13:26.220 --> 00:13:27.080 Let's fix that! 00:13:27.080 --> 00:13:31.240 One way to adjust the timing is to move this up and down. 00:13:31.240 --> 00:13:33.100 I can shift it up like that... 00:13:37.200 --> 00:13:40.600 Moving the marble up had a bigger difference than I thought! 00:13:40.600 --> 00:13:43.240 Average is 7 compared to average 29. 00:13:43.240 --> 00:13:46.900 We can also see here, that the kick drum is closer to the hia-hats. 00:13:46.900 --> 00:13:49.360 [Recorded mix] 00:13:50.960 --> 00:13:52.960 But it's still early! 00:13:52.960 --> 00:13:55.400 With this measuring stick I can now see, 00:13:55.400 --> 00:13:58.820 that the marbles have exactly the same dropping height. 00:13:58.960 --> 00:14:01.100 So I don't want to put this marble higher, 00:14:01.100 --> 00:14:03.980 because it's good that they have the same dropping height. 00:14:04.160 --> 00:14:08.820 Another way to calibrate the marble timing is to shim these black and white registrators 00:14:08.820 --> 00:14:12.200 with 0.1 millimeter custom laser cut shims. 00:14:12.320 --> 00:14:15.100 We can just add some more shims underneath, 00:14:15.280 --> 00:14:18.680 move the registrator backwards and the kick drum will play later. 00:14:27.680 --> 00:14:32.740 Here's the results after the shims were closer to zero, but it's now too late... 00:14:34.480 --> 00:14:38.980 An educated guess will be to remove one of the shims we put in 00:14:38.980 --> 00:14:42.880 and this value should reach closer to zero. Let's try that! 00:14:43.640 --> 00:14:45.560 I'm pretty proud of this result. 00:14:45.560 --> 00:14:49.920 I expected to come close to zero by removing one shim, and we did. 00:14:50.160 --> 00:14:54.160 Here is the first channel that we had always... 00:14:54.560 --> 00:14:58.200 You can see they're aligned and I'm moving forward... 00:14:58.640 --> 00:15:01.980 to the second, and you can see how well aligned these are. 00:15:02.300 --> 00:15:04.560 Calibration of the second kick drum is done. 00:15:04.960 --> 00:15:09.260 So let's make a beat on the Marble Machine X, I programmed just a simple beat: 00:15:09.260 --> 00:15:11.040 [Beat from the computer] 00:15:11.040 --> 00:15:14.760 I programmed the kick drum pattern. Let's see if we got it right! 00:15:14.760 --> 00:15:17.900 [Marble machine playing the beat from the computer] 00:15:25.380 --> 00:15:27.380 It's tight! 00:15:29.120 --> 00:15:31.120 It's not doing too bad! 00:15:35.279 --> 00:15:38.979 So the marbles are running out. I don't have the funnels capturing the marbles, 00:15:40.160 --> 00:15:43.220 so I have to manually put the marbles up here every time. 00:15:44.640 --> 00:15:47.780 So remember to ignore the snare, we didn't calibrate that! 00:15:48.160 --> 00:15:51.900 [Recording of the marble machine playing the beat from the computer] 00:16:02.320 --> 00:16:04.880 It's so good! It's so good. 00:16:08.300 --> 00:16:10.300 This is crazy! 00:16:14.640 --> 00:16:17.300 Oh, nooo! I pulled my... oh no!!! 00:16:18.720 --> 00:16:23.020 I pulled the main.. electricity out for the computer. 00:16:23.020 --> 00:16:27.800 Ahhh! Perhaps I should do something about this electric installation :)... 00:16:31.880 --> 00:16:34.160 Oh, I'm hearing it sparkling... 00:16:35.300 --> 00:16:37.300 This is bad... okay... 00:16:39.360 --> 00:16:41.360 It's perfect! 00:16:42.160 --> 00:16:47.040 Hearing the kick being this tight is one of my happier moments in the MMX process. 00:16:47.759 --> 00:16:49.600 Because this means, 00:16:49.600 --> 00:16:54.200 we can achieve this tightness for all the channels of the Marble Machine X. 00:16:54.200 --> 00:16:56.920 This is fantastic news! 00:17:03.680 --> 00:17:05.680 It's computer tight, almost. 00:17:06.959 --> 00:17:08.880 It's very very very good... 00:17:08.880 --> 00:17:12.800 I did the same calibrations for the snare drum and a little bit for the marble hi-hat, 00:17:12.800 --> 00:17:15.560 I burned most of my energy on the programming sections, 00:17:15.560 --> 00:17:17.440 so it's a little bit rough at this stage, 00:17:17.440 --> 00:17:19.440 but this is where we are at the moment. 00:19:06.000 --> 00:19:10.200 Hidden in the midst of the Marble Machine X we have the beautiful time keeping device, 00:19:10.220 --> 00:19:12.980 the indexable clutch built by machine thinking. 00:19:13.360 --> 00:19:17.440 This device will also shift the timing between the kick drum and the hi-hat, 00:19:17.760 --> 00:19:20.739 but this is meant to be used for when changing tempos. 00:19:21.200 --> 00:19:25.280 So if we play a song in 120 bpm and then go to 80 bpm, 00:19:25.440 --> 00:19:28.799 we're going to use the indexable clutch to compensate for the latency issues. 00:19:28.799 --> 00:19:33.279 But to keep things a little bit simpler in this video, I will revisit the indexable clutch later. 00:19:33.600 --> 00:19:35.980 If you want to know how the indexable clutch is working, 00:19:36.020 --> 00:19:39.780 you can check out episode 77 where that is explained in detail. 00:19:43.860 --> 00:19:48.900 The motor for calibration is amazing, the Marble Machine is another beast now! 00:19:49.200 --> 00:19:53.920 I'm still maybe only halfway there or not even, I can still improve on this, 00:19:54.559 --> 00:19:56.559 but you can hear that it's coming to life. 00:19:57.120 --> 00:19:59.920 And when using my programming pins I've seen the measurements, 00:19:59.920 --> 00:20:04.880 that the same pin have the same... errors. 00:20:04.880 --> 00:20:09.780 So, now I believe even more in the stud welding system from HBS 00:20:09.780 --> 00:20:12.640 that Sebastiaan and Marius are working on. 00:20:12.640 --> 00:20:17.280 So for now I'm going to leave it like this, I'm going to move over to the picard of the bass, 00:20:17.360 --> 00:20:21.160 and the drum drops and the bass drops and the funnels 00:20:21.160 --> 00:20:25.380 so I don't have to manually put the marbles in, but that's for coming episodes. 00:20:25.380 --> 00:20:29.540 Thank you so much for following the build! This is really really promising!