
Wintergatan's Marble Machine in Minecraft [video] - CaliforniaKarl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_QgyahFHYk
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SOLAR_FIELDS
I encourage those who have enjoyed the efforts of Wintergatan to also check
out the bandleader’s previous effort: Detektivbyrån. It’s a rare glimpse into
Swedish street music and really captures a beautiful Göteborg vibe. It’s a
nice Scandinavian minimalist approach to music that I’ve gotten a lot of
enjoyment out of.

For further Nordic minimalism I also recommend the band Múm from Iceland,
specifically the album Finally We Are No One. This album features the
beautifully calming lyricist Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir, who was a former wife
of David Portner, who some in America might know as Avery Tare of the band
Animal Collective. She is featured on their 2005 album “Feels” singing and
playing a deliberately off-key piano with some really interesting and very
flower-child-in-the-fields melodies such as on the track “Did You See The
Words”.

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Legogris
Hey, got to say say that I am a big fan of your music as well.

Seen you live outside Volvo and at big festivals. Random Friday eat all are
excellent for unwinding and reflecting as the darkness comes.

I feel there’s something particularly Scandinavian to the style of you and
Carbon Based Lifeforms as well, but in a very different way to Wintergatan’s
urban vibes of course... Makes me think of misty fern forests, the barren
broken-up landscapes in the north and something mysterious in the twilight.

Have not heard about the others you mentioned though, will definitely check
out!

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ptr
Is SOLAR_FIELDS actually the real Solar Fields (Magnus B)?

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Legogris
Oh, I actually have no idea, I just assumed it must be him given the comment..

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DEADBEEFC0FFEE
I heartily recommend the YouTube series for the Marble Machine X. It's a
wonderful journey, and anyone who has had a dream it idea, started building,
needed skills, tools, redesigns, etc will empathise. Marten's is incredibly
talented, and has formed a great team too.

~~~
Timothycquinn
I agree whole heartedly. I've been following their work for some time now. The
collaborative work coming from around the world is great to see.

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elif
the logic required to make the redstone timing on a machine that large precise
enough to control a falling block is insane, to get 99%+ of the blocks like in
the video makes this look so much easier than it is.

For those not aware, unlike CPU design where a wire is a wire, in MC, pulses
can travel for only 15 blocks before needing a repeater, which necessarily
adds a delay.

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mlyle
In fairness, in high speed digital design it's not true that a "wire is a
wire".

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throwaway66920
Wintergatan has an excellent YouTube channel cataloguing their efforts to
build a better marble machine

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thatswrong0
Absolutely. This thing is a work of love.

Original video that inspired this Minecraft recreation:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q)

And the rest of his WIP videos for the "Marble Machine X":
[https://www.youtube.com/user/wintergatan2000/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/wintergatan2000/videos)

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loa_in_
The Marble Machine is a musical instrument designed and (currently being)
constructed by this one determined and very talented guy.

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disordinary
That's the marble machine X, the marble machine was the first iteration and
was built and performed in a video a few years ago. It was unreliable and
couldn't be disassembled to perform with outside of a studio hence the new
project.

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mastazi
Did anyone understand what is it that constitutes the “piano roll” here? Is it
those carts on powered rails that we see towards the end?

~~~
russellsprouts
Looking at the world download, it's using powered rails and observer blocks as
a solid state storage.

There are only brief glimpses in the video, but here's what that looks like:
[https://imgur.com/a/AkOAzgF](https://imgur.com/a/AkOAzgF)

The 14 left-right powered rail tracks are the music channels. Each vertical
slice is a tick of music, and they are grouped into 9, the max length of a
powered rail signal. The presence of an observer block underneath the rail
indicates a note. The whole machine appears to be 128 x 14 bits. It has a
serial read interface.

In more detail:

From the bottom of the image to the top you see:

\- A row of redstone blocks, pistons, and redstone wire.

\- A row of repeaters facing north

\- A row of repeaters facing west

\- An observer facing north

\- 14 east-west powered rail/observer wires, sending signals to the east.

\- In a layer underneath the east-west observer-rail wires, alternating
columns of rails and redstone wire facing north-south. (Not visible in the
picture)

\- (A mirror image of the bottom)

The west facing repeaters control the current read location. The machine sends
a signal until they all turn on, then waits until they all turn off, then
turns them on again, etc. When one of the repeaters toggles between on and
off, the north-facing observer above it sends a pulse. The pulse travels
upwards in the north-south rail (in the invisible lower layer), and then if an
observer is present, the signal is sent east along the east-west line for the
channel.

The bottom two rows form a pause mechanism. The redstone block, piston,
redstone wire row is an instant repeater line. When the north-facing repeaters
are turned on, they will lock the west-facing repeaters in whatever state they
are in. Using instant wire ensures the pause will happen immediately.

The whole system is mirrored at the top since the north-south rails in the
lower layer can only send a signal up to 9 blocks. With read signals coming
from both sides, this design could support up to 18 channels.

One last detail -- one column of music is read every 2 redstone ticks, so most
of the repeaters are set to a 2 tick delay. However, the signal for a channel
must be repeated using an observer every 9 blocks (adding a 1 tick delay), so
the first repeater in each 9 block section is set to 1 tick. This compensates
for the delay.

EDIT: I originally stated that there were 14 channels, but I overlooked that
it's double-layered, and that there's a similar quad-layered system on the
other side. There are 50 channels in total.

~~~
mastazi
Thank you, that was a fantastically detailed explanation! I didn’t realise
that there was a world download in the video description, thanks for pointing
that out!

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gchamonlive
We need a compiler backend that outputs to Minecraft. This looks painful to
assemble by hand.

How is this even done? Through in game mechanics and creator mode? (never
played minecraft myself)

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reilly3000
There is an item called a structure block that consists of a 2d array of block
types and their relative positions. Once you've defined a structure block in-
game you can place copies of it into the world. That can really help with some
of these larger projects to have some boilerplate.

Additionally, there are some really interesting ways to build minecraft
content with various programming languages. I'm aware of a Python[1] Library,
a mod that provides in-game Lua scripting[2], and even a Clojure library used
with Overtone/Supercollider[3] - be sure to check out that video for some
incredible live-coded music with generated visuals.

[1]
[https://github.com/arpruss/raspberryjammod](https://github.com/arpruss/raspberryjammod)
[2]
[https://github.com/dan200/ComputerCraft](https://github.com/dan200/ComputerCraft)
[3] [http://blog.josephwilk.net/clojure/overtone-driving-
minecraf...](http://blog.josephwilk.net/clojure/overtone-driving-
minecraft.html)

~~~
gchamonlive
Ohh that seems to alleviate the problem. Place every single block individually
would take forever

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andybak
There's a crazy VR Steampunk mash-up of a build-your-own synth and marble
machine that I'd love to see people do something elaborate with:
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/673970/MuX/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/673970/MuX/)

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tibbydudeza
Wow ... like a giant loom making music.

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skykooler
I made a rendition of this in Factorio, though it doesn't simulate the
individual marbles like this does:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgnJ_5y5uhM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgnJ_5y5uhM)

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kiddico
Reminds me of a video I saw in early alpha of a guy making a calculator with
redstone.

Not all the redstone conveniences existed yet, so it was... large.

They weren't the first to do it, but it still blew my mind seeing the memory
unit built out further than the game was rendering...

