Marble-Dropping Music Box Produces Beautifully Complex Sounds

Your eyes and ears are in for a treat today, so be prepared to be amazed by this otherworldly music box.

Sweedish maestro Martin Molin's Music X had vowed the internet when it first hit the internet. This machine used 3,000 components and a hand-turned crank to drop marbles in sequences onto acoustic and electric surfaces to make some very interesting music.

Now, it has a tribute act. With its key elements taken from the actual one, designer Love Hultén has designed a tiny version which is called Marble Machine XS, and not only it looks perfect, it also sounds like it has 20 instruments hiding in it.

In this video, you can watch the instrument in motion as the designer operates it with his hands. It has 16 available in total, and according to the YouTube description, you can program as much as 128 bars of music.

He states that the build took him about 8 months and since he couldn't source the blueprints, it was a process of trial and error from start to finish. Before you tune in, you should know that all the sounds that you'll be hearing are generated by the marble machine, with the only exception being the background layer and the lead pad created by Bivalvia Synthesis. Enjoy!