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Wilson and myself says "Hi and welcome" to everyone for this channel update,
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for the Wintergatan youtube channel.
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I have some upcoming changes, that I'm really excited about, that I want to
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communicate very carefully with you about in this video.
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So that's why we're here today, sitting on this beautiful desk, but first:
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Have you seen the MMXS by Love Hultén?
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This is an amazing miniature Marble Machine X and Love Hultén is an amazing Swedish artist
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who built these different arcade machines and a lot of amazing amazing art.
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If you haven't seen the video, I just encourage you to go watch it because it's really, really, really cool!
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I just want to give a huge shout-out to Love Hultén.
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I get very inspired from seeing something designed so cleanly and so pragmatic.
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Since I came back to France from Sweden in the end of January
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I've been working six days out of seven without break on the Marble Machine X.
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I've been really upping my efficiency. I've been...
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searching and trying in every little corner of my...
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of myself and of my life, for how to become an efficient worker and stop procrastination.
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And I... I've kind of nailed it.
[laughs]
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I've been...
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really really doing great work for, like, seven months
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and if you look at the Marble Machine X,
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from January to today,
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it's not a huge difference.
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And I'm really working efficiently, so
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I feel that I have to lift on some other stones to see
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If I can unleash another set of resources to finish this project.
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And when I look back at this six months, I'm thinking about what I've done,
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the glaring elephant in the room is that I spend all my best energy
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and my highest attention and focus onto making these videos. [laughs]
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The chunk of my time is invested in making the documentation about the art piece.
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That is problematic and since the release of the first Marble Machine video
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the amount of attention and appreciation and understanding my creations have received on youtube
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has been so rewarding and just an amazing journey for me personally, but...
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But, but, but, but, but... as I said, the chunk of my time and attention,
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maybe 70 percent
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of my thought process goes into the youtube videos.
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And it's too much.
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We tried to...
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lower my involvement in the video making and I tried to step away...
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And the thing is that I feel so personally
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for whatever I put out on the internet with my name on it,
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so I don't really have that... option. [laughs]
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So let's go back to the master plan map with Sisyphus going up the mountain.
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I am still on the same mountain and...
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I have to take the responsibility
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to not stay on this mountain...
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eh... forever.
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The ultimate goal with this machine is to make music.
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If I just have a functioning machine, it's like a shell without a soul.
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It's like an AI life-size robot that can't have a conversation with you. [laughs]
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As it works today, I'm sculpting my artistic process to fit in to the weekly upload schedule.
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I chapter everything I do on the machine
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into some kind of thematic lumps
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that we can turn into videos.
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The process is built from the ground up
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by the intention of making a video.
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This means that my processes are not designed to be as efficient as possible for the completion of the machine.
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If you remember a couple of weeks ago when I was thinking about the marble divider redesign,
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when I took the decision to not release a video;
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that Wednesday when I dropped the thought of video and started to think about mechanical designs instead,
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like, 100 percent for that day, was one of the best days
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I've had for a long time in my studio...
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Because I felt I had like these oceans of time
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and my creativity has always been like highly dependent on this free amount of time,
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where I'm just, like, in a... in an ocean of time, and there's nothing else;
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and I know that if I can just find a seed of a good idea,
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I can craft it into something beautiful.
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I don't find the place for this kind of creative process within the weekly upload schedule.
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My therapist said something great about formal and informal contracts,
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and this might sound very dull, but I love the concept:
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I feel I have built up an informal contract with everyone who are watching this series;
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that I'm gonna bring you in to see me finish this process, and I will!
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So the word "contract" makes this feel, like, super binding and negative.
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That's absolutely not at all what I mean here.
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What I mean here is that this is actually really inspiring for me.
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I feel a responsibility to show you what this machine can do,
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and I need to do whatever I need to do to make that happen.
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And when we come to the situation that the weekly videos are obstructing the path
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for the Marble Machine X to become reality,
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the weekly videos has to give way for the Marble Machine X completion.
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What I'm going to do is that I'm going to skip the weekly upload schedule.
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And I'm going to keep making videos; more epic, more relevant videos.
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Videos that I feel 100 percent great about.
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Videos that I really think are worthy of your time.
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So whenever something worth covering has happened in the process, I will make a video about that,
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and, hopefully, it will be more exciting and better than ever.
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And... I've been trying hard to make the Wednesdays exciting but...
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The artistic process that I'm going through is not always really exciting.
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It's mostly like a monumental grind.
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I remember a comment a viewer made when I made a similar statement some years ago.
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I've been talking about this non-stop.
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The viewer said, like basically, "You do you. We support you!" and
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"It's only a shame for us because the window through which we look into your beautiful world gets smaller."
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And that comment stayed with me and I kind of...
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I kind of agree...
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But we are now choosing between panoramic window looking into
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nothing being finished, nothing being created, no music being done;
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or a little peephole into the future where we're gonna explode the walls
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and actually go on a world tour
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with music that makes the hair on my arm stand up, okay?
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I want to propel the project to that phase as quickly and as beautifully as possible,
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I think one of the largest qualities that I can show you
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is the power of delayed gratification
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and the power of, like, latent potential when you
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give your best into a project for a long time and you don't give up.
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I've no clue how often a video will come out,
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which leads me to addressing especially
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all the youtube members and all the patrons.
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First of all, I'm amazed what you have done for me
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and that you put me in a position
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where I am free to think about art 24/7.
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I want to take your generous gift to me.
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You have given me time.
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I want to take your gift
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and take care of it.
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And I want to make the best possible use that I can of my time that you have given me.
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So, depending on how you feel about your support and what the support is for,
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you might reconsider your support at this moment and I fully, fully understand that.
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If you feel you want to support
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the music part of what I'm doing and the machine,
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then I hope you understand I'm doing this for the music and for the machine.
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I am not working less, I'm going to work smarter.
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Okay, so I think there is now, like, maybe 300 000 people thinking this thought:
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"But Martin, what if you just make simpler videos?" [laughs]
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I've been having the same question mark in my head for two years,
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I've been trying a lot of different ways, I didn't find a single way that worked.
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Me being satisfied about what I put out in front of... of...
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every one of you is not something I can compromise with.
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It's... it's a fact that we can't change.
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So to illustrate the situation,
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I made a preparation here on the table.
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Are you ready for this?
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So every Wednesday you've been eating at the Wintergatan restaurant,
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where Martin Molin is the head chef in the kitchen,
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calling the shots. Okay.
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There is one dish on the menu, pasta with tomato sauce.
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And you order it and you tell the cook:
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"Make it simple, so it doesn't take too much of your time,
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so you can also build the Marble Machine X."
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"We don't want you to cook the tomato sauce all week."
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So what you basically think that I should do then is this:
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I'm taking the pasta...
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Yummy!
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[laughs]
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There you go! So I come out to your table, I slid this plate in front of you,
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and I'm, like, "Bon appetit: pasta with tomato sauce!" [laughs]
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I don't want to complain about video making,
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but I want to explain,
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and when you're not into producing videos,
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this is basically how most people think that a video is being made:
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You take the film,
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you take it out of the package and you put it on youtube.
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That's not how I make tomato sauce.
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To make a tomato sauce you need some garlic, you need to slice it thin,
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like in the Irishman, so it melts in the high quality olive oil.
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Add a little bit of salt with piment d'espelette inside
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and some nice shallots, and make the onion, like, soft.
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Then you finely chop the tomatoes, you put them over
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and you let them slow cook for, like, two hours.
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Take all the water out of it.
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Boil a lot of water with salt in,
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put the pasta in, make sure it's al dente.
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Pour the water out,
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put the tomato sauce in the same pot you boiled the pasta in,
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put the pasta back into it,
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sprinkle some basil on top.
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That's a tomato sauce with umami!
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This is what I want to serve to you all, and...
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To get a really, really nice tasty tomato sauce,
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by the way, don't be shy on the olive oil.
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Vegetarian food should be fat and salty and punchy.
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Just because it's vegetarian it doesn't mean it has to has no taste.
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Somehow people think sometimes that vegetarians don't like salt and sugar and fat.
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Give it some punch! [laughs]
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These kinds of aspects...
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see the difference between this pasta and tomato sauce
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and the finer aspects of the punch in an umami taste,
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these kinds of aspects is what I love to think about.
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So when I'm making a youtube video I'm thinking about the quality of the olive oil
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and if the garlic is thinly sliced enough. [laughs]
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And if you look at the Sisyphus mountain again, the music part...
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I don't have any time to create music at all.
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The building in itself has been a detour already,
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an amazing detour, but still it's a detour that I just took like that.
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And the youtube documentation process is a detour...
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further away from the music, so I will continue to make videos whenever there's a great video to be made.
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We're back in the restaurant and now there's maybe 300 000 people
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whose question marks has turned into an exclamation mark, saying:
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"I actually would like to try some of that raw Wintergatan pasta, maybe it doesn't taste so bad".
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I'm humbled and thankful, but I'm not going to serve it, okay? [laughs]
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I can't even make a channel update video without coming up with like...
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angle or concept for the video, right? [laughs]
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This is a perfect illustration of why you have to keep me working on the machine and not producing videos.
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So, concretely, the plan for the Marble Machine X is to try to make a test song as soon as possible.
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I might make a cover. I've been thinking about making "Give Life Back to Music" by Daft Punk.
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I realized afterwards how prophetic that song title would be, so now maybe I have to do it.
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I'm going to start with the process of arranging a piece of music on the machine, maybe... maybe that song
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and I will cover that in detail on the Wintergatan youtube channel.
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That process will leave up to a bookend finale
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about the first chapter in the Marble Machine X life, where it plays its first song for you.
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But what will happen right after that is that I...
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will produce the next album for Wintergatan.
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I will compose and produce.
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I'm talking more and more with Marcus, David and Evelina
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and they're all ready to play together.
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They're just waiting for me.
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I've been thinking about this so much and I have some notes.
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I would like to talk a little bit now, when we're here together,
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about this kind of decision.
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I think...
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We live in a fast food economy,
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where delayed gratification...
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the ability for us to employ delayed gratification and work towards a goal...
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is decreasing rapidly.
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Our public square, the internet,
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is a place where everything goes in ultra speed.
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I think a lot of you are tuning in to Wintergatan...
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maybe just because it takes time, somehow...
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That I'll allow it to take time. I don't know.
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So let's put the pasta over here.
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Wilson, you want to taste it? He loves it!
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I hope the pasta analogy can help you understand my decision a little bit.
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I think some discrepancy in understanding the situation will come from the fact that
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it is hard to understand how much extra work goes into...
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making a video, a video that I want to sign off on.
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I come to terms with the fact that it's a personality trait I have
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that I cannot do that much about.
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The cool thing... the really cool thing is...
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What I really want to do... align perfectly with what I really should do. [laughs]
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My ultimate...
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My ultimate responsibility towards myself
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is to make music with a machine I've built.
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The machine is only a tool otherwise, it's a soulless body.
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Once you get down to the core of the fact why you are watching,
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it's because once upon a time I closed myself into a dark room...
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and performed some magic trick, and a year later I came out with the Marble Machine video, or...
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some years before that I closed myself in a dark room
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and I came out with a Wintergatan's debut album.
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It's really difficult to step off a successful train, like the Wintergatan youtube channel,
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but I think this is also a sickness of our times that...
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once you find something that kind of works,
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you just stick to it for too long.
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And I think pivoting a youtube channel is...
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something that is really, really important
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for the long life of a channel.
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Otherwise, if you just do the same thing over and over, you're gonna have a huge popular spike
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and then you're gonna go over the mountain and down on the other side.
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You can see that in all youtube statistics.
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So, by doing what I'm doing now, reassessing the situation, it's...
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It kind of consolidates the future of the channel as well.
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And talking about that I want to end...
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with a story from my life that is...
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really valuable to me. I once knew a bass player.
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I think I was 16 and the bass player was 14 and we were playing like...
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a lot of jazz together and we were playing jazz on bars for payment.
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It's starting to go better and better, we had more and more gigs.
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So I almost worked like a guitar player when I was 16-17,
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getting some cash in the pockets from the bar owners, that kind of thing...
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It was awesome and I was loving it.
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Like, "can I make money playing music?!"
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Like, "I play guitar and someone gives me 20 euros?"
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Like, it was maybe not so much money.
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But then the money started to become more and more, because we became better and better at playing jazz.
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And this bass player... The culmination was when this bass player was offered
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300 dollars to play one song, "Autumn Leaves", on the...
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on an opening ceremony on a university.
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And I was, like...
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"Wooow, you really made it! Like, 300 dollars to play one song!"
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"Autumn Leaves, such an easy song as well!"
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The bass player... declined the gig because that week he had started a hardcore band
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with his three friends. And I was like:
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"But... you can play in the hardcore band, and play Autumn Leaves, and keep the 300 dollars."
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And he was like: "No, we want to focus!"
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And I was like: "Okay..."
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I didn't understand the decision at all. I thought like:
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"Why? You can do both..."
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And this hardcore band went into their rehearsal place
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and five times per week they played their whole set list of ten songs, two times per rehearsal.
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One year later I had moved to Gothenburg, Sweden's second city,
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and they were coming to Gothenburg to play. And they were playing on this kind of youth place,
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on the floor, no stage, like no real PA system, just two speakers for the vocals and...
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one microphone on the kick drum to give some bass, you know.
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And it was like distorted guitar and all the other sounds comes directly from the amplifiers.
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So, no stage, everyone's standing on the floor,
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and...
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it's the tightest concert,
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the most impressive performance I've seen in my whole life to this very date.
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And I've been on a lot of large festivals,
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seeing bands performing in front of 50 000 people.
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And they, just standing on the floor there, just rolled over me...
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like a machine; they steamrolled over me!
[imitates crushing sound]
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It was such an impactful experience! They had honed...
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their edge to perfection, right?
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They cut through all the bullshit... there is.
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And I went out of there and I was, like... because I was a music producer at the time, producing other bands,
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I was like: "I have to start my own band!"
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So I went out of there, I took my phone up and called the drummer
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that I've been working with in the studio and I was, like:
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"Hey, we have to start a band!" [laughs]
"When can you rehearse?"
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I was like Cartman in the South Park episode when he goes to Butters:
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"We have to make a platinum album! Get your drums up and meet me at my place now!" [laughs]
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I was like that enthusiastic: "We start tomorrow, right?"
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And we started to play around a little bit.
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That band, through some iterations, later became my first band Detektivbyrån.
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So Detektivbyrån was the band who propelled me from being a music producer
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into transitioning into being artist myself, where I'm actually fronting my own music.
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That later led to me starting Wintergatan.
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So... that little decision...
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of saying no to "Autumn Leaves" for the fast buck, right?
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Nothing against Autumn Leaves, I think it's a great song.
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To focus on rehearsing with your hardcore band that no one knows about - yet...
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That decision, in hindsight, I thought it was so impressive.
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There is something very similar about the situation now,
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and I hope that you can actually share my excitement in
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grabbing control of my situation and...
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taking 70 percent of my time and resources
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and putting it back on my table for creating art and see what I can do with it.
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Yeah, so that's it. So for some weeks now, I think we will have videos every week.
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Last three weeks in September I'm taking a vacation to meet my parents.
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When I come back from that, from first October...
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that's probably when you're gonna start to see
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how often we upload videos. We'll just see what happens.
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I'm really grateful for having such an intelligent
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and patient audience.
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And I'm looking forward to taking what I'm doing as seriously as I need to take it
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to really reach the goal I'm striving for.
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Thank you so much. See you on the next Wintergatan Wednesday.
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Wilson, you have to finish the video.
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[shooop]
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Bye!