The Zen Machine™ is brought to you by The Sound-O-Mat and is made to add "acoustic colouration" (as described by Brian Eno about Ambient Music) to your personal space. The Zen Machine takes the concept of the FM-3 Buddha Machine to the next level, vastly far beyond the many limitations of the original Buddha Machines that are very commonly found in Buddhist and other temples all over Asia, which FM-3 appropriated (we do not use this term in a derogatory manner) and made popular in the Western world (North America and Europe) with their own loops and player design.
The short version: In a certain way, yes, it borrows from the same concept of the FM-3 Buddha Machine. But that little box, which has sold between 50,000 and 100,000 units, depending on what you read, is nothing more than a Chinese "Buddha Jukebox" as they are called, which are found in almost all Buddhist temples across China, with the usual sound loops changed to nine loops created by FM-3.
The Long Version: When we first heard about the FM-3 "Buddha Machine" we were very excited. We had heard stories about these small boxes playing loops in various Buddhist temples from a close friend of ours who has traveled Asia extensively and being huge fans of Minimalist Composition, in particular Steve Reich's work and his Process Music (from 1968) in particular, we were delighted by the concept. It was not until 2007 that we were finally given an FM-3 version of their "Buddha Machine" by our friend's father, who is also a huge fan of Process Music, and while we admit that our expectations were very high, we felt that even if they weren't, the results were rather disappointing. In the spirit of creativity and invention, we set out to produce an alternative that we felt would truly allow the listener to enjoy the concept behind the music loops played in temples but in a far more dynamic manner.
described as such, with our comments in bracket quotes "[]":The short version: In a certain way, yes, it borrows from the same concept of the FM-3 Buddha Machine. But that little box, which has sold between 50,000 and 100,000 units, depending on what you read, is nothing more than a Chinese "Buddha Jukebox" as they are called, which are found in almost all Buddhist temples across China, with the usual sound loops changed to nine loops created by FM-3.
This project is meant to address what we felt were a number of limitations with the FM-3 version of the Buddha Machine, which has been described as such, with our comments in bracket quotes "[]":
"The Buddha Machine is a little plastic box that plays music. [When the FM-3 version was created, these had been made for Buddhist temples in China and other Asian countries for well over a decade.]
"Specifically, FM3 constructed nine drones, varying from two seconds to 42 seconds, which repeat endlessly in the listeners ear until the track is switched to the next drone (or the two AA batteries run out). [All of the drones on the FM-3 version are poorly recorded, which works fine with the Buddha Machine speaker but not when connected directly to stereo system, which we found in many cases very harsh, distracting, or even irritating (the two second one in particular!) and work against rather than assisting one in meditation or achieving a Zen state of mind & being. Our loops come in different MP3 formats allowing you to decide the sound quality vs. cost of storage space.]
"The machine has its own built-in speaker, in case one would like to fill a room with the drones, but there is also a headphone jack for more personal meditative experiences. [The speaker is small and "tinny" but helps with how the FM-3 loops are recorded, but attaching headphones or to a stereo brings out the poor recording quality, so we suggest only using the speaker and enjoying the "lo-fi" wonder that is their creation.]
"There's a switch on the side that allows for traversal of the tracks [meaning that when turned on, it starts with the same loop, not a random one, and stays on that loop until you push a button and change it] and a DC jack (though an adapter is not included) for those who would like the Buddha Machine experience be truly endless. [We encourage people who have bought Buddha Machines to buy a DC adapter and not add toxic, poisonous batteries to your local landfills and garbage dumps, and that you do recycle any batteries used in our product!]
"In a way, its like the cheapest pre-loaded IPod youll ever be able to buy. [Given its USD $25-30 price, it's really not much cheaper than a used iPod "Shuffle" but it is definitely 100x cooler than the iPod, which we think is over-hyped and over-priced.]
—excerpt from review at PopMatters.com
As you can tell, we had very high expectations when we got our own Buddha Machine but were vastly disappointed by it. But given that its origins were completely appropriated (the only thing unique about the Buddha Machine are the nine loops by FM-3, who we do think create excellent musick, and highly recommend for their ambient work) — we decided that we would work with some artists whose music we've released to create a new version of this concept that would be truly useful and rewarding, and would address most of our criticisms above, and unlike the Buddha Machine, would allow the user to change loops, mix them up, play them on their own player, or even create their own!
So we intend no disrespect towards FM-3 nor the Buddha Machine, but we feel it's time to take this 20+ year old concept to the next level, giving the end-user the ability to control almost every aspect of the device, so it becomes something more than a novelty with a limited span of interest and instead a useful tool that can be modified, expanded, etc.
Other than using their own loops, the FM-3 machines, how they're made, how they're packaged, everything except the loops and the FM-3 logo on the player are identical to the same machines that have been made and used in China for the last two decades at least. For example, the "two dozen bought by Alan Bishop" (one of the Sun City Girls) were Chinese versions, not the FM-3 one. Overall, there are probably millions of these little players sold in China, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Nepal, and Tibet, and more, and were first made, according to our sources, back in the mid-1980's.
FM-3 claims to have spent "3-4 days at least listening to each loop continuously and "e;changing it"e; to get it to work well as a loop", but we find this hard to believe. We are familiar with FM-3's music and most of the loops are simply lifted from recordings of theirs that they had already released, many of them poorly recorded, with very low fidelity and often tape hiss that is not noticable when played with the Buddha Machine but becomes very noticable and annoying when listened to with headphones or hooked up to a stereo system.
If you think this claim is untrue, listen to the original loops yourself, which can be found here. If that site is taken down, we have put up the original and re-mastered FM-3 loops here, and you can compare them to our own versions of their loops which we've cleaned up, repaired, and mastered so they sound far superior to the originals.
We had been reading stories periodically about FM-3's Buddha Machine for about two years but had never gotten around to getting one - we tried a few times but the sellers always seemed to be out-of-stock. Then, in the spring of 2007, we received one from a friend as a gift. At first we were very excited and impressed, but after that initial "glow" wore off, we found ourselves very disappointed by a number of limitations with their version:
So after the first day, it ended up sitting on our stereo for several weeks, collecting dust, unused. It didn't seem worth $25 plus shipping for something that we grew bored of in a few hours, and when we tried playing it quietly while sleeping, we found that since the loop being played never changes, at some point we would wake up and turn it off.
A few weeks later, we were reading a frequently-quoted review about it on Pitchfork.com, and it concluded by comparing it to the Apple iPod™. One of us joked that we'd be better off downloading the loops, cleaning them up, buying an iPod Shuffle™, and playing them on that, so at least we could have it start with a random loop each time. This idea soon blossomed into what would become The Zen Machine™. You can read how we feel we've addressed almost all the limitations we felt about the FM-3 Buddha Machine below, as well as what we feel ours is still lacking.
The Zen Machine™ was created specifically to address all of our disappointments with the FM-3 Buddha Machine. We think the FM-3 version is a great idea in concept, although it is neither anywhere near as original as articles about it have made it out to be, but we are big fans of their ambient and "sound collage" music, and we're really glad they brought this concept to the "Western" world (mainly the U.S. and Europe) and they deserve the utmost credit for that.
But given the limitations we felt when we finally got the FM-3 sound-box, we felt a better version could be made. Although ours is slightly more expensive, we feel it offers a lot more and is something that people can buy and use for a lifetime.
The most important feature is that our player is a SanDisk™ flash card memory-based MP3 player. That means that if you already own an MP3 player, you don't have to bother buying The Zen Machine™ but can simply purchase Zen Machine Loop Collections™ available from The Loop-O-Mat either on SanDisk cards or as digital downloads. If you buy the SanDisk™ or MicroSD™ version, you can simply plug it into your MP3 player if it supports it, or download the loops on to your computer with a card reader, and upload them to your player. With the digital version, you would simply "unzip" the collection and copy the loops to your player.
The best part about using a SanDisk™-based player is that it can always be upgraded as larger memory cards become less and less expensive.
There are those who will say we are ripping off or even impinging on the work of FM-3, but quite simply, their "Buddha Machine" is nothings more than an existing product common in Asia that simply has their own loops and has been "Westernized" and marketed to the populace of North America and Europe. In fact, we would argue that our version takes the original concept found in Buddhist temples much further to a new level far beyond the work of FM-3, who have sold at the time of this writing over 100,000 units at the retail price of USD $25-30 each. Quite simply, we believe dynamics are important but lacking in their version, so to address this, we decided to create our own. We do not intend any disrespect to FM-3 but we were so disappointed by their version of the concept that we had to do our own, and decided that it could become something much more expansive, inclusive, and diverse.
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