Music gearmaker Elektron last week announced it would not allow sharing hacks and modifications for its devices on official Elektronauts forum or social media channels. In a statement, the company says a sudden surge in firmware hacking, apparently driven at least in part by AI, helped motivate the decision. Here’s their statement.
Readers tipped off CDM to the September 16 statement, concerned about what it means for the active modding scene for Elektron devices. First — tl:dr — this should not impact some widely used existing firmware modifications. And it doesn’t even specifically forbid firmware mods — just sharing them on Elektron’s own forums.
Here’s the full statement:
Elektronauts: Topics and comments regarding modified firmware
That statement seemed to be saying two conflicting things: one, that they encouraging the “spirit of curiosity and exploration,” while also saying they wouldn’t allow for development or distribution of firmware or hardware that makes “unauthorized use” of Elektron intellectual property. That phraseology, while likely to please lawyers, would understandably be cause for concern, if it restricts how you use hardware you already own.
I asked Elektron to clarify, and they responded to CDM with a statement. Emphasis mine.
The statement itself became a necessity in light of the recent surge of custom firmware modifications – many of which appeared to be AI-assisted – on both current and legacy machines. This in turn led to a noticeable increase in the number of topics on Elektronauts encouraging users to explore this on various machines.
The fact that insufficiently tested firmware was being made available to users to the degree it was – potentially damaging their devices in a number of ways, as we explain in our statement, and putting Elektron IP at risk – was problematic. So too was the fact that the instructions, tools, and links facilitating this activity were appearing on our own forum, which could give casual readers the impression that each and every one had Elektron’s approval. So despite us understanding the general excitement around modding, it was clear that a statement was necessary.
CDM: My understanding is that in the past, third-party/unauthorized support for legacy hardware was something that could be discussed on Elektronauts, etc. Am I correct in understanding that this is no longer the case, that all such discussions on Elektron boards will be disallowed?
No. General discussion around firmware modification is not disallowed. Elektronauts has never been a place for completely unfiltered topics – we have excellent, passionate moderators there who work to ensure the environment is a healthy and helpful one and allow it to wander off piste as long as there isn’t any potential harm. And this will continue to be the case while – when needed – we take a firmer position on material that facilitates or promotes unauthorized firmware modification, including sharing or directing users to the files, tools, repositories, or instructions needed to carry it out. There remain specific long-established third-party firmware projects that we previously authorized and continue to authorize – such as the Machinedrum X firmware. Other projects will need to be considered separately on a case-by-case basis.
That last point is significant, because it means it protects some innovative work done on hardware that is no longer supported (think the original Machinedrum SPS-1). Developer Justin Mammarella appears to have taken the Machinedrum X firmware offline anyway, evidently of the developer’s own accord. I’ve reached out to him for comment.
Still online is the larger MCL project. That project in turn builds on open-source projects from the likes of Adafruit and Manuel Odendahl, and it supports other hardware, too, not only Machinedrum.
https://github.com/jmamma/MCL / MCL discussion
But Machinedrum X as the alternative firmware of choice for Machinedrum remains important. I hope Justin puts it back online, especially with the explicit (and now public) green light from Elektron.
I’m curious to hear from the Elektron user community, about what this means for you.
Software clones, not explicitly discussed here, are another matter entirely. Most recently, Berlin-based Joe Landers produced Monomachine and Machinedrum in VST3 form, forked from The Usual Suspects work — the Roland JP-8000 emulation I’ve written about (among others).
Looking beyond Elektron, this suggests a broader question about AI. Will community and open-source projects in musical instruments be able to cope with the spate of projects that generative AI coding tools are suddenly able to produce? How will they deal with potential security vulnerabilities — particularly with a corresponding surge in malicious agentic activity? And what happens to hardware value, including the value that supports development teams, when classic firmwares can be easily deconstructed and reproduced? Given the available processing power, that would include the possibility of these devices suddenly showing up as inexpensive hardware. (This is not new at all to the gaming world, which has dealt with emulators and ROMs for eons — and which hasn’t stopped Nintendo, for instance, from selling their vintage games on new systems. But music gear companies are not at the scale of Nintendo.)
There’s even an argument to be made that hacks and mods benefit from a certain amount of friction. Having to work by hand means testing what you’re doing comprehensively before it even works. It limits the sheer quantity of projects and ideas. And that matters, because in musical instruments, there are a limited number of people doing the original engineering and support work — as well as even community discussion.
Open-source and proprietary projects alike will all have to adapt to the new normal.
Speaking of security vulnerabilities, I need to go update WordPress. That’s all for now.
Photo at top (CC-BY) Shawn Allen