Elektron Machinedrum in the Browser
risktopark
52 points
25 comments
September 21, 2026
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Discussion Highlights (10 comments)
tab8000
I'm really liking this, I used to own one back in the day. Is this reverse-engineered from the original Machinedrum firmware? Any plans to develop a VST/AU plugin?
wartywhoa23
I wonder if the author is aware that Machinedrum is also an established American electronic musician.
hdb2
Those original Elektron machines are just amazing, as are their current devices. This is great!
devin
This is pretty great. Having the physical knobs to do the step locking tweaks makes the experience a whole lot better, but the fact that this is exists is great. I have an MK1 and this is pretty darn accurate.
polytely
I love Elektron gear, I have a Syntakt and it is the piece of gear that I'm the most productive with.
dnewcome
I have a UW (user wave) version. It doesn't look like they implemented some of the more interesting parts of the MD. I wonder if this was a firmware R/E effort? I don't see any details on what's behind this and I can't read the non-english parts of the app. Anyone have more details?
LMKIIW
Elektron's been bought by private equity so I suspect their legacy devices will continue to gain popularity.
jamesjolliffe
Dude. No way. Way cool. Yes! But genuinely, thank you!
MomsAVoxell
Having a real Machinedrum right next to me, I jumped right into this for a bit of a play. It’s kind of accurate, but on iPad it’s a bugger to play like the real one. One of the great things about the real Machinedrum is you can just kind of ‘swipe’ across the pads to mute things - this doesn’t really work in the web version, and its a pity because this kind of live dynamic interaction is why I still have the real Machinedrum for my use. I also couldn’t work out how to dynamically change the drum set - this is another thing thats really nice about the real gear. Would be nice to see multi-touch events handled as well, so that I can use 2 fingers to do things and have both actions register - as it stands now it seems it handles only single mouse events. Still, a wonderful simulucrum for a bit of bopping around. Add a multi-timbral Virus emulation in a new tab, wire them up with a QY700 simulator as well, and you’ve got my holy trinity of devices for jamming .. ;)
gravitronic
For people asking for details here are some other links: There's at least two vst options in the works, one extracts just the voices and one emulates the whole machine interface https://youtu.be/nY0bRaKWLmk?si=nhi4O6gx8Ld-RMuP https://github.com/joelanders/gearmulator-md-mm/releases There are other diy projects on github.. honestly with the GitHub links below and modern AI tools you can get something functioning in a day. A lot of this work is made possible by the following. As well as people hacking on firmwares for current devices like digitone song mode hacks etc https://github.com/mischa85/elektron-firmware-tool https://github.com/dsp56300 There is MAME support for the relevant CPU/DSP and hint MAME archivists are also good at rom backing up... Also look at the usual suspects and gearmulator for more digital music device emulation