Can Moving Vibraphone Bars Still Sound Good?

Ever since I saw the pipe dream video, I wanted to build a marimba machine with vibraphone plates that moved down when being hit, just like in this video. But the question is, can I make the vibraphone plates move and still sound great? That's what I want to find out now. I got these PVC pipes to build a prototype to test if I can make this work. I printed a little stop block. So this plug will go into this pipe, tune this pipe, and become a resonator for our A tone. The PVC resonator makes a huge difference to the sound. You can hear the difference here. — [bell] — First I wanted to find out how close to the vibraphone bar the resonator needed to be. So I tried different distances. I'm like 1 mm from it now. I think that's going to be a bit worse. I think this is the sweet spot. loudest. To my ears. Yeah. Now it's going away. I think it's the centimeter. — [bell] — And I found out that 11 mm is the perfect distance. The big new idea that I want to test here is what happens if we let the resonator tube move with the moving vibraphone plates. Because then the resonators can keep that 11 mm sweet spot distance from the plate at all times. The only problem is that we have a vibrating vibrato flap that needs to turn around and that cannot really move. So we got an idea to cut a slot in the resonator. I have no clue if that would work, but that's what I want to try now. If that could work, that would be great news. I tried making a vibrato flap from duct tape and some brass rod, and even this simple setup sounds really good. — And then I started to cut the slots here in the tube for the vibrato axle to go through. The live stream chat hates the idea of the moving plates because of the increased complexity and one of the main arguments against it is that it will be hard to see for audience on huge arenas. But we will have cameras and on the video you will always see them move. So I'm happy if you can see the movement on video. That's enough for me. So the next step was to find a pivot point and we want a pivot point that makes the tube move as little as possible around the vibrato flaps. And after finding the pivot point, I could design a holder that becomes one with the resonator tube. This makes it much easier to build. The resonator tube can be part of the structure that holds the vibraphone bar up. It's really nice design if this turns out to work. Oh, look at that. Looks fantastic. That is wonderful. It's very light Oh, this feels great. It's so lightweight and it's really sturdy in this direction. And then I designed the pivoting arm. I made it in plywood so I cut all these holes out to make it lightweight and then I cut it out on the CNC in a flawless operation on my Watson CNC machine. Haha. We did it, sir. And the arm fit the holder perfect. Haha. I added the vibraphone bar to the 3D printed holder. And then Marcus Plat us drummer came and visited the studio. It was so much fun. Uh Hannes has been with me in the studio this week. The energy has been great in the studio. So much fun building with all my friends around me. — Look at those two handsome fellows, the ones. Not to mention all the friends in live chat that is constantly helping me and giving me great advice along the way. I attached a pivoting arm to my test lab bench. Then I added some stops that limits its up and down pivoting. And then I added some adjustable counterweights as well. — Even down there it sounds good. So, this the closer it is uh the more loud is the resonator. — But, we need to cut the slot. I love the good vibes from you. And then the huge question is would that slot ruin the acoustics? I put the resonator back in and then I could tune it by just listening to the tone the mallet made when I adjust the stops. And here's the moment of truth. Would it still resonate despite the slot? —

— I wonder if we can hear the note actually. There. YES. WOAH! — SO GOOD. SO, THE last remaining step was to build some kind of motor. And I found my old 80s Technic LEGO motor in my drawer. The speed here we can I I'll add a flat uh one one one one one That is so beautiful. through here Let's go to the front. What makes me really happy here is that when I strike the note and move the note it almost sounds the same in whatever position the note is. Let's take a peek at the backside. There we have it. There's the motor running it all. The test with the mallet was promising, but now I want to test with the marbles. I'm moving everything around and trying to direct the marble drop onto this vibraphone. I couldn't find the silicone wedge that is meant to adjust the volumes. I added just some tissue paper to soften the blow of the metal marble on the metal vibraphone. And now for the last test, can a marble move the plate while the sound is still good? I think this means I just wanted to say it's all systems go for the moving of the vibraphone plate. So the reason I'm trying this vibraphone is I want to make the CAD version better of the entire marble machine, and I think the vibraphone is the proper place to make the CAD better. Uh so that's where I want to start. On the first machines I started with the gears. This time I'm starting with the hardest one of them all, the vibraphone, and this is a very promising right now. All right, it seems like this is working. I'm so happy. Chat from the livestreams hates this idea because of the complexity. There's a lot of great arguments against this and some very important artistic arguments for me for this solution. The pipe dream video is the whole reason I wanted to make this project and the movement is one of the key feature that creates awesomeness of this thing. So for me as an artist, I feel in my stomach this is the correct path to explore. This prototype shows me that my potential to make this work is really high. Are we paying a cost with complexity and time? We are. So I have to keep my word to take the simpler solutions on other designs of the machine. For this one I wanted to go the ambitious route because it matters so much to me artistically. There's been two teams in chat. Team static that doesn't want the place to move and team jiggly that does but I thought that team jiggly had a branding issue such a bad name it doesn't sound like a feature that we should fight for. So we come together and we started our new name for our team and it's team depression. So yeah, team depression won for the win. Left to find out if it's depression because the machine is never going to be finished or because the plates are going to be depressed when he hit being hit. Anyway, Wilson is happy, I'm happy. See you next Wednesday. Ciao. Quick channel update from now on we will do the live streams on our second channel so that we don't bog down the feed of the main channel where we will keep this highlight recaps. So enjoy a bit of a cleaner feed from Wintergatan from now on.