The Power of asking "Why?" 

The only thing I don't love about the machine is that there are now years of Martin not making music, and I feel like that cost is just tremendous. I miss your music

“Why should a machine be able to play like a human? This is a dumb design requirement.” YES! Martin, I have been waiting years to hear you say this!!

I think there’s a huge “why” missing from this list: Martin, you love mechanical music machines and are utterly fascinated by the beauty of the mechanisms needed to tease soulful music from cold metal. It’s as clear as day to me that you want to make something that makes other people feel the way you feel when you stand in Siegfried’s Mechanical Music Cabinet. That’s why the 10ft engineered version doesn’t meet your goals, and it’s why you want the machine to play dynamic music.

This channel should be a master class in why engineers have project leads that keep them on track...

Martin, I don't look at all of your marble machines as failures. Failure in the sense you didn't do a world tour with them, but you still learned, and I hope you had fun while you were doing what you were doing. Now you have a good understanding of what you need to do and so with that experience you will move forward with whatever project you tackle. I wish you great success, you are going to reach it, just keep going.

5:43 i miss those days when he made songs for his videos with those things

I watched this video a couple of hours ago and now I'm in my bed relaxing a bit, but at a certain point I really felt the need to go back to this video and say thank you. I love how you're documenting this journey from the start, this is the most important part of all projects and people always hide it. You showing this process to everyone is the best lesson that I could have had for project planning and management, I'm sure that all the things that I'm learning from your videos will be super useful in my life and I really need to say thank you Martin for all of this. I'll make sure to remember your lessons and honor you by not failing on my next project

Before Martin falls into another rabbithole again: the reason "because i want to" is absolutely legitimate for a project like this. youre not here to solve a technical issue, like an engineer. No one really asked for marbles playing music, and the world doesnt depend on it. Youre not here to reinvent the wheel nor invent something completely new that would revolutionise the world. Your Marble Machine is a machine not in the sense of a lathe or mill, its a sculpture, an expression of yourself. Your goals arent necessarily financial, your goals are to express yourself through this machine. otherwise it's a waste of time if all you could do is just use a bunch of solenoids and a computer to play the instruments. Theres a guy who builds a marble clock. You might want to get in touch with him ;)

Great that you have found your “why”, Martin! You should display the “why” prominently in the room that you’re working in from now on, so that you are reminded of the “why” until the project is finished.

I live in Slovakia, in my daughter’s school, in the morning, I always can hear in the hallway your “marble machine” playing. So you have already achieved one of your goals. People like to listen to it even without looking on it. Just know it.

You can see Martin is rising out the right side of a Dunning-Kruger skill chart: MM1: he doesn't know what he doesn't know. This is the blissful, gleeful experimentation phase. MMX: He knows how much he doesn't know. This is where things get a loss less fun, as you realise now how difficult the task really is, but lacking the skills to get it done, you just know what the _correct_ way to do it is. MM3 (prototyping): He now doesn't know how much he knows. Now Martin has new skills, but it still feels like newly acquired knowledge, and every new skill learned is a new hammer, to which everything is nails. MM?: this is the other end of the valley. You know exactly how much you know, and with that comes the wisdom to _choose_ the things you want to do, simply because you want to do them, and you know now that you can. This fourth phase is I think called the Plateau of Mastery, and it is as positive as the 1st phase. Martin deciding he wants to make it because he loves it and because it's fun means he seems to be cresting the edge of the plateau. ...I hope 😅

At this point it's the Marble Machine 4. The third marble machine died in the planning phase.

The clips of the previous machine(s) playing music while parts are shaking and moving all over the place, huge cogs turning, funnels visibly struggling to catch the wildly falling marbles, the crude levers that manipulate parts of the geometry, a fully integrated bass guitar that looks like a wooden borg machine has assimilated it.. The artist working overtime with their hands to flip levers and play notes on the bass while stomping away at a floor pedal or cranking a crank for power. And it plays enjoyable music. It's absolutely mesmerizing!

"I dare to do exactly that" I'M NOT FUCKN LEAVIN

This makes sense to me. Achievability is important. Not that you can’t make a massive, overcomplicated marble machine, but something more manageable makes more sense. In the end, I just want to hear more cool music you and your band mates create.

I don't think this process reduces my interest in watching the videos. Rather, I'm finding that the lessons you're sharing about planning and project management, clarifying goals, etc., are proving to be very useful in my own life and work. I know me, and I would not have set out on my own to learn about project management. So for you to do that and to share the journey with me is an incredible gift and a benefit. It's very interesting, and gives me new and better ways to think about my own life. I will definitely keep watching!

After almost 10 years of working on is a good question 😅

Simple = achievable In a moment I thought Martin was losing his mind, now I think he just realised that we just want him playing good music, the machine is just complementary not the main thing.

The one thing you may not know, is there those of us who are here for the long haul. Ok so you take a break before actually starting the next build. That’s ok. Those who truly believe in you will be here until the end. (I’m included in that) There is probably more than just seeing another machine being built that keeps me here, but I won’t go into that. What I will say is that you have sparked a fire that I think will keep people here to see this until the end. As an artist I never ask why…I usually reply with why not? Because mostly when someone wants to know why, I come back with”because I can” and that is reason enough. We don’t need to validate beyond our own understanding of what we can do, to make something from our mind, and bring it to fruition. Keep moving forward,and you will get there.❤❤

You will be surprised how a lot of big things are made bc of a 'why not?' It always surprises me

I work as a software engineer. Our team asked this very question today. In some ways, we didn't need to know... we could have just continued doing the task requested of us without knowing the answer. But, if we wanted to function both as engineers and artists, we needed to know. Because without knowing why, we can not modify the requirements while working on the project to make it better. So, weirdly, I don't view asking 'why' as an engineering question. It is an artists question, as applied to engineering.

This seems to be going in a great direction! Seeing you go from the design goal of "greatest mechanical music machine of all time" to "fun" has been a huge relief, cause after the bass slide videos i was convinced the machine will never be. Also I really enjoy the learning to plan videos and don't mind them at all. For this one and the previous one i have been sitting down with a notepad and writing down ideas i could use for my future projects!

A marble machine is something that is inherently imperfect, simply due to physics. The more you chased perfection the less you allowed this machine to be a marble machine. The machine was losing its identity. I hope that with this altered mindset you can bring it back.

Welcome back to Philosophy Wednesdays with Wintergatan!

This channel went from "Let's build a marble machine" to "Let's learn project management"

it's slowly morphing into a philosophy channel now

I don't know how many years I've been following Martin, this video really spoke to me more than anything before. This is not about the great engineering solutions or the process of finding out which escape gate works the best. It's a journey of self discovery and soul digging for the utmost purpose of an artist. I've been dealing with depression and lots of wrong turns in my artistic career, and watching this video really made an impact. Martin, or whoever reads this, it's wonderful that you allow yourself going this path and I truly hope you can achieve your goals. And because this is one of the few of the latest videos that you didn't say it, I will say "good luck with everything that you're doing".

Isn't it funny, if you were to watch all of Martin's videos backwards you would watch a great series of making a brilliant machine from design to full stage production 😂 maybe that's the point?

Martin, I love the way you think. I am going through the simplify stage in my own life. Thanks for sharing your deep dive one step at a time. It's been terrific. I'm sending you a hUg, Lee

The other marble machines were certainly not failures, especially by your current criteria and reasons why: they both allowed you to learn and have fun, they were total success in that regard. I also think that the requirement for tight robotic music and not losing marbles are dumb, there I said it, elephants out now, maybe this is just me being me and not being a music aficionado, but to me the sounds, imperfections and unintended memorabilia (aka marbles on the floor) are part of the quirks that endear me to the marble machines and their journey. Cheers!

In the time you're spending finding the reasons to build the machine, Dough from sv seeker has built an entire ship and now the guy is sailing aboard his own dream, why? well, because his dream wasn't related to RU-vid income.

Martin could write the best book on procrastination.

Next episode of Wintergatan "Why do we even exist?"

Finally I heard Martin say what I've been thinking all this time I've followed this project: let the machine sound like a machine playing music and use the humans, i.e. the Wintergatan band members, to sound like humans playing music. The whole purpose of an autonomous machine is appealing to me and I would like Martin to reconsider using an electric motor to power the beast instead of a complicated manually cranked huygen drive. The highlight of a live concert would be the machine playing a tune all by itself while the band goes offstage for q refreshing intermission

congratulations on finally finding the starting line. now remember slow and steady wins the race. best of luck on making it to the finish line!!

Gotta’ be honest, I’ve followed this journey with great interest and respect. I loved the original machine with all of its flaws, still listen to the album at least once a month and look forward to the next. Would also be great to see live. But…all of this theory and chasing what, why, and how, just screams to me of procrastination and makes it feel like it’s all just an idea now. Of course, it is, but you know what I mean. At the end of the day, through all that has transpired, there is more than enough experience, data, information, knowledge and even some wisdom to build what you know you want to build to the tolerances and specification you’re happy with. Rather than being all philosophical about it, it needs to get back on track with some practical development.

One of the most powerful things this process of asking 'why' does, and it's important not to skip over this, is highlight the *wrong* reasons for a project. To call out the poor excuses your brain creates. You know they are poor excuses, and if they're weighing you down then it can drag your whole project down and kill your motivation. By reminding yourself that they are terrible reasons and you have much better ones, you can refocus mid-project negativity into positivity.

Hi, Martin. You're search for the fundamental question and you willingness to question and reqestion the process makes you're canals one of the most intressting on RU-vid. All love to you

Glad to see you setting your project on a pace that lets you time to ask yourself the big questions.

I love that you're asking "why?" Design is is modeling. But the mind is infinitely creative. Design gives us the tools to make better decisions. By asking why you're designing the scope before you design the elements. I'm here for the journey.

When we make digital music, half the time we focus on splitting sounds via frequency ranges. That might work to simplify the intrument too! Maybe one bass string with a whole octave and semitone range, maybe 2 whole octaves on midtone instruments, and the rest is simple percussives. No need for a mega sized drum, when modulating it on stage for a clean impact is always possible. Those contact mics worked wonders before.

As a first-year engineering student, seeing you go through this massive change in mindset is genuinely inspiring. I am just as interested in watching your videos as before, not because of my own sunk-cost fallacy of wanting to see your project be finished, but because seeing you take this journey to become an artist-engineer is compelling in of itself. Do not worry about people leaving because you aren't building. There is a real story that you want to tell, and the people who watch you have come to see you narrate this story. Work hard, Martin, you got this.

To build the machine, first build the man. Don't listen to the haters bro, I'm here for the journey. ❤

Even if i prefer mechanics above everything, I love this serie so much, wow. WOW

So proud of you! Living to embrace Youthful Curiosity nonjudgmentally IS the why we do things. That’s why we love being here with you, this journey. Ask Bilbo, the journey started scared with one step, being judged by his peers, he became the hero when he asked ‘what is in my pocket?’. In the end he reflected in peace and wrote his journeys while Sméagol chasing loss. Take care, recharge your dopamine, we’ll see you when you have the energy to write your adventures again. You got this!

Martin’s project isn’t the marble machine. It’s a RU-vid channel.

Thank you for this. It makes me realize that I also need to ask myself these questions. Thank you for sharing your process!

I’ve learned so much about engineering and design processes from you. Thank you for sharing your hero’s journey with us. 😊

If hiding procrastination with philosophical questions was a country this guy would be president (Im joking btw, love your videos)

I love this process that you are going through Martin. This machine is going to be perfect by the time that you are done! Keep it up.

Finally, you have realised that it does not have to play like a human. The Moog synthesizer didn't but it changed music forever.

Your journey of becoming a better engineer has been fascinating and inspiring watch, I have learned so much by watching you learn. Keep up the good work!

I'm worried that your quest for perfection will be your undoing. Part of the charm of the first marble machine was how flawed it was.

I’m so glad to hear that you are making this machine for fun. I believe you can and will make an awe-inspiring and fun machine. And I am here for it as long as it takes. Keep it up, Martin.

I love this series. It’s inspiring me to think in more detail about my own projects. I’m behind you 100%, Martin!

I have and will watch all of your videos Martin. I am not a musician but I have a passion for creativity and that is enough for me to enjoy living vicariously through your creative process. I believe in you.

"Why? To learn and have fun." This. You spoke to my soul, Martin. It's the reason I'm alive. I almost shed a tear.

*_Science_* asks, "Why?" *_Art_* asks, "Why not?"

Simple is much harder than Complicated.

I've been following, for a long time, this journey that Martin is on. I've not been disappointment in the experience, mostly I learned a few things. I haven't given up on Martin and his Marvelous Marble Machine. I was a bit worried when it was going to be a stage. I thought that that would be less magical and more of a prop. But if he had done it I would have been impressed. I like the gears and the marble runs. I think that could be part if the music. I though know little to nothing about music. Martin though knows a lot about music and has come to know a lot about marble machines. Loving your journey Martin.

I'm here for the journey. :) You don't owe us anything. These videos are more than enough. Cheers Martin.

Your videos are helping me create a better process with my own project I’m working on! Thank you

So happy you reworded it. As soon as you were talking about “why”, I was thinking, “‘why’ leads to a bunch of false justifications. Better to ask, what do I hope to achieve?” You basically mirrored this in your rephrasing. Edit: if it works for you, that’s great, but my experience has told me not to dive too much into personal motivations. The problem is, there is always another why, and ultimately you cannot really know yourself or your motivations. Everything basically comes down to, “because I want to.” I have found that it is often better to just have faith that you know what you want and focus on achieving it. So much more enrichment comes from achievement than trying to satisfy some nebulous and mercurial concept you have of yourself. Only update your preferences based on evidence.

I truly love when you stop your process and think about everything. It really shows your care for craft and want to make sure this succeeds. Stopping your process isn't stopping anything, it's just putting the focus on where it needs to be to grow and develop the best thing you can! Love ya, Martin, and keep on keepin' on!

I don't think these videos are less interesting than your more mechanical hands on building videos. I think these are beautiful in their own way! I am working on some big design projects myself and your videos on this topic are helping me understand how I can be successful in my own life. The self-help RU-vid channel I never expected. Thanks Martin!

I think one (among many) of the reasons I like watching your videos is that I also love marble runs. I grew up in the 1970s, so way before the internet and video streaming, but, probably like many kids my age, I independently (I think - can't remember seeing anything about them at the time) discovered marble runs. In my case, it all started with Lego, with which I was somewhat obsessed. I remember making towers supporting complex runs made of the edges of thin (1 dot wide) lego pieces or Lego train tracks with rotating features. I would race marbles down parallel slots and try to guess which one would win. I agree that this childlike sense of fun has to be an important motivation for the MM3.

This is awesome Martin. Genuinely life altering stuff, not only for you, but for us following along too, especially those of us with our own projects in mind.

Like "why do people continue giving Martin money on Patreon?"

9:04 You have no idea how positive I see this pause. It’s a dopamine boost. You are looking at the most important things again, the “whys”, at a point where you might have just about enough experience to make a good design. Maybe. This feels like absolutely the right thing to do.

You maybe forgot “To share the adventure creating the machine with all your fans”

Horseshoe theory is going to bring us right back to the OG Marble Machine :^)

Great insight! I am currently working on a new project of my own and have applied a lot of the wisdoms I learned through your and fellow influencers openly growing projects. Being a silent observer of your videos for years, I came to the same conclusions while working on this over the past 2 months, each time I made significant progress, I see your videos not long after displaying the same kind of evolution, breaking it down for us even more consicely while adding your own ideas and thoughts. And I wanted to thank you for this, you helped me open my eyes on a lot of things and processes I took for granted. Your work is greatly appreciated and I, for one, will keep watching this beautiful journey of evolutionary birth and rebirth not just of a machine, but also of it's maker and everyone following along. Peace

these videos are not less interesting to me and likely a large portion of people watching! this is really interesting and it makes me happy to watch, as this not only helps your marble machine but helps me open up too! ive been very close minded with projects but ive taken help from your videos and it really made a difference. im so glad to see how the marble machine project is changing. keep up the great work

I'm here for this kind of content. I really enjoy your chatter and scribbles.

Even if you don’t succeed in building this marble machine, you will not have failed! You will successfully have entertained people through your content, successfully created a community around your machines and inspired a whole lot of other ideas. Your first machine didn’t succeed but was still a huge success! Or at least that’s my view…

I've been following you since the start, since the Lego and the wood. I love all of your design and planning videos, as I'm in a similar place myself, taking on a massive project that ended up becoming my dragon.. I'm starting a company, and we have been working on our infrastructure. Several of your videos have released on times where we have been struggling to get things to work, integration hell.. but every single video about design, critical thinking and asking why have gotten our gears back running as we see a lot of similarities between our project and way of thinking, we feel we are rediscovering our project after seeing your content, and that has helped us a lot. Keep making good and informational videos, looking forward to the next discovery with you ❤

Martin, I’ll never stop enjoying this style of content, and my excitement to watch the next phase of the project grow slowly and methodically has not wavered. I’ll be here, and many others will be too. You’ve really helped me mature as a practical engineer. More often than not I find myself not asking “why”, because I would just turn to the reason: “because I was told to do it”. As I work on new projects, I will make it a point to start listing off reasons “why”, and to sort out the impractical reasons and focus on the ones that matter. If anything, doing so will greatly help me work on my troubles of assigning priority.

basically: now ive got the cash - CYA

I'm starting to think this project is going to outlive you.

Martin you are on the right track! I already tell all my friends about you all the time 😍 keep it up! I love what you do 💞

Why -> have fun -> simpler -> more achievable. This sounds like a really healthy path to be on. This video actually raised my motivation to see throgh your journey :)

The last few weeks i actually thought that a machine finally would be finished within like a year or so. Now in convinced that the project will be scrapped soon.

I love how I started watching this projet as a engineering student, in the hype for learning mechanical machines, and now I sit every Thursday morning with my coffee to listen to awesome design tips and tricks by Martin

my understanding of music is the ability to craft a story without words from the chaos and uncertainty in instruments

This is essentially the same video week after week now.

My dear Martin, please be assured, for me, as a viewer from the first marble machine on, I will continuine follow you on your journey to a funktional marble machine you play marvelous music on in a world tour. Keep up to good work! WE WILL FOLLOW YOU!

Martin, I am actually really enjoying seeing you going through the entire design process. I feel like it's making me a better engineer and more in control of my career.

This is the most profound and useful series ever, I fully resonate my with projects where feature creep has gotten out of hand, looking forward to each new episode!!

The instant you release the tour dates, I'll get a ticket, doesn't matter if I need to fly from Mexico to the heart of europe to see you (and the machine) live

It doesn't matter to me what your form your marble machine design videos take. I will always be here to see whatever you have with bated breath. Even videos like this!

This was a very insightful video, Martin. You really analyzed your motivations, obstacles, and goals and distilled them down to their essences. Remember that you are building a musical instrument that has never been built before, which is a huge undertaking. The guitar was not born fully realized. It took centuries of experimentation and refinement to arrive where it is today, and it is still being refined. You have built two highly complex versions of the marble machine, and while they weren't everything you wanted them to be, they were still marvelous. They were necessary for you to learn from, to develop an understanding of what works and what doesn't, and to envision a better, more evolved version of the marble machine. Don't look at the earlier versions as failures, look at them as stepping stones.

Some may call it "boring" but i love to see you go through this whole process and hear what you have learnt

I'm here for the mental and theoretical journey too. I don't read much, so listening to you is a platform I gain knowledge about design and wellbeing. Tack Martin, självklart vill vi se dig bygga, men kan helt klart säga att jag ser fram emot kartong och penna lika mycket some plywood. Sassa brassa mandelmassa

I'm so so so excited to see how this will turn out. It pained me to see you suffer through the last marble machine, and I'm so happy you found your "why". I'm excited to learning and having fun with you, Martin. Always have, and I always will ❤

I'm glad to see you are rethinking things. I feel like you will now be able to better focus and find your path to success.

Here since before Museum Speelklok, Utrecht, 2017. Remember that I paused the video to ensure tickets for meeting the first marble music machine 😂. Will keep following what you do. One day there will be a concert!

I think i realized the design of the past machines was so mesmeizing becasue you can see the chaos of all the marbles making beautiful music. From chaos, comes order.

This channel, the whole project it revolves around, is becoming one of the most fascinating case studies in the area of technical management.

A good design/plan makes the whole project go a lot smoother. I'm here for the long haul.

Thank you for the video, i hope you achieve your goals!