There are a ton of videos out there where a marble or ball bearing falls vertically, going down small ramps and hitting little tone bars at just the right time to create elaborate music. Are any of these videos for real and not computer generated?
I don’t see why they wouldn’t be. It’s not like it’d be particularly hard to make.
I like Wintergatan’s best.
If this is CGI, they went overboard with extra detail (like dozens of ball bearings falling out of the tracks and scattering across the floor).
I don’t see why they wouldn’t be. Philadelphia International Airport has a permanent art installation in one of the baggage claims. It is enclosed in plexiglass to protect it. The machine is a beautiful noisy thing. A motor pushes balls up a ramp. They veer off to different destinations and do interesting things when they fall- including striking metal bars and wooden blocks to make certain notes.
Give me a minute and I can upload a photograph to Imgur and link to it.
Not what I am talking about at all. I am talking about one or two balls falling vertically down a series of small ramps, curved and straight, hitting little bars at just the right moment to create songs.
Perhaps you can find and post a video example, then. That way the rest of us can understand the distinction you want to make.
Trying to embed an example.
https://imgur.com/gallery/amazing-ball-machine-cffszIg
I would have taken a video. But tragically the machine was broken at the time.
If you’re thinking of something like Animusic, that’s Wintergatan’s inspiration for the machine he’s currently working on.
No, not one of those machines. The ball falls, by itself, down a somewhat vertical series of small timed ramps and small tonal bars for a long period of time, hitting each small bar at just the right time. No machines, no hundreds of balls, no mechanical devices-just gravity.
I found a bunch like this, clearly all animated. Is this an example?
This is what I am referring to. Thank you.
Trying searching for something like “rube goldberg music machine” that brings up some examples that might be closer to what you’re thinking of.
They’re CGI.
“3D content creator”
No need, since @Maserschmidt has given an example of what I am talking about.
This specific example is CGI.
There’s no reason a real-world example couldn’t be built, although you’d run into height limitations if the musical output was very long. Hence the machine-driven examples that “fold” a long gravity drop into shorter segments.
Has one?
Not that I know of. But obviously, I know very little on the topic, other than the meager and apparently inapplicable examples we’ve described.
Like I said, duration is equal to running length, and running length is height in a vertical design like you describe, so it would take a rather committed bit of engineering to safely build such a device IRL.
I’ve never seen it, but the world is big and not all of it winds up on YouTube. And I don’t go rummaging around YouTube anyway.
Not marbles, but a car.
There’s a musical marble ramp at the Magic House in St. Louis (a children’s museum). There are two song options, which I cannot remember - but they’re much more simple and less complicated than what OP is describing. I can’t find a video, but I played with it last spring when I took my family there.