Can Lego play the drums? [video] | Hacker News Reader

Can Lego play the drums? [video]

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144 pointswhocansay19 comments

Reminiscent of Wintergaten's Marble Machine, which continues to evolve as Martin Molin works on it.

Full song, with an earlier version of the machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q

Martin is working on V3 of the machine. Plenty of updates on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Wintergatan/videos

I love its mechanical-only design; that really is a piece of musical art. And at 1:30 in the video, it looks like LEGO is used for the encoding pegs (also possibly some gears and supports at 1:36).

Someone else made an entire version in LEGO [1] [2] but without marbles and playbacking to/covering the original:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP9x3t5HUa4

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCsgpq9e2AE

https://youtu.be/WN90HYiFpAw?t=736 His recent update is good watch.

He learned after 3 years that he made a few things too complicated because 'it looked cool' and he should have instead kept the design 'dumb'.

His journey post v1 has been fascinating to watch. I hope he eventually makes a full length documentary based on his vlogs. It’s a great story about the relationship between ideas, execution, business, and real life in the context of the modern maker economy.

Don't forget Animusic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyCIpKAIFyo

Is he? Last update on V3 was 5 months ago. Last update from him was 3 months ago about a new studio.

I've been following his journey for years, it's been a fascinating and some times heartbreaking story not to dissimilar to Sisyphus. Every other chapter is about him renewing his mental strength, grit, determination, and then months later tearing it all apart because of fundamental flaws. Repeat for years. His mental health is an underlying theme throughout the story we're watching and I worry for him.

With that said, he is truly an imaginative and great engineer and musician and while my discipline is primarily software, he's taught me a lot about design principles I apply today. Namely, keep things simple, emphasis on unit testing and measuring results, recognizing and addressing sunk cost fallacy and many many others.

I've grown to really respect and admire him. But I fear this project has a stranglehold over his mental health and I fear for what that means for his future if he cannot get to a place he is truly happy with.

God speed Martin, I hope you can get the boulder up the hill one day.

edit: Update, after some sleuthing, apparently he is moving and taking care of his family right now(?) https://www.reddit.com/r/MarbleMachineX/comments/usk6ru/wher...

Once upon a time somebody made a Lego mindstorms robot that walked up to objects and then drummed on them. It was very cute. Can’t find the video now though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RyodnisVvU

Description here: https://www.robotshop.com/community/forum/t/yellow-drum-mach...

Although it doesn't seem made using LEGO Mindstorms, I'm sure that is the one you mention; it was quite successful at the time among robot building aficionados.

It's a music box, a very impressive one. But you don't need the Roland kit Lego even has sound modules for it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mspB1BmO-F0

Ha ha, I suspect the little bit of flex in the Lego plastic, other imperfections adds a "humanization" to the drum pattern that is output.

It was funny after electronic drums started to gain steam that software sequencers started adding a "humanization" attribute to take the robotic perfection out of drum sequences. Sort of the opposite of auto-tune.

I used a Roland R8 in the late 80s and loved/hated it for the humanization functions they added to the instrument; it could subtly modify the sound parameters at each hit to make it sound like it came from a real person hitting a drum or cymbal in different areas, however it lacked the most important one: timing. A human drummer will never be accurate to the millisecond, but rather will apply very small anticipations/delays at each note, with good drummers capable of doing it on purpose within given limits. Adding such a feature would make it sound even more real. Nothing compared to a real drumset played by a real drummer, however: the number of variables is just too high to be accurately emulated by today's technology. AI might help with that, but don't forget about latency: when drumming live, a few milliseconds is already too much delay.

A possible mod to add dynamics: shape the rear part of the "stick", the one being hit by the programmable pins, so that by inserting or extracting the pins from the rolling cylinder, the sticks can be raised to different extent emulating the hitting of a drum with different force when they're released. Dynamics makes a huge difference in making electronic drums sound more natural.

Incredible! That conveyer belt design... Wow

If you look back through the channel's previous videos, other versions of that conveyor belt are used as a rolling road to test different types of suspension for lego cars and motorbikes. Really cool stuff in there.

I love how a programmable piano-roll was clearly forgone for a great big long manual one, because it looks cooler.

the giant conveyer belt feels like the punch cards of old computers, wonderful video and great editing!

We have found the exception to Betteridge's Law.

Or, perhaps, there is a Lego proviso to Betterige's Law, where any question with Lego in the headline is always "yes."

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