Four minutes of sound that took 14 months to make. 

This incredible hand-made machine is a real life “animusic:” a video animation portraying a computer-animated symphony made up entirely of marbles hitting various objects. Animusic is an impressive display of music, physics, and computer animated steam punk (see video below), but one could hardly dream of making it a physical reality ... until now.

The Marble Machine was built by Swedish band Wintergatan and, put simply, it’s a music box ... with a twist: all its sounds are produced by 2,000 marbles. 

Musician Martin Molin crafted the incredible contraption from scratch, from the melody to the wooden cogs and levers, to the complex operation of the instrument. Once brought to life, melody flows along with the stream of marbles running through it. 

All comes together in the video above, made by Hannes Knutsson. You can also see the whole process of its creation on Wintergatan’s YouTube channel.