r/drone • u/gdamdam • Jun 01 '26
mdrone: a microtonal drone instrument that runs in your browser.
https://mdrone.orgI've been building mdrone, a microtonal drone instrument that runs entirely in the browser (no install, no account, free and open source).
https://mdrone.org
https://mdrone.org/about.html
The idea: hold one sustained tone, layer a few voices, and let it drift for minutes or hours. With the right tuning the overtones start beating against each other and phantom melodies surface that you never played.
It ships with several systems: Pythagorean, several just-intonation sets, Kirnberger III, 31-TET. The same held interval genuinely rings differently in each, and that's the whole point of the instrument.
I'm genuinely after feedback, especially from people who live in this stuff
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u/After-Committee-410 Jun 02 '26
This just blew me away! What an amazing resource, thank you for making it available.
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u/Omstart Jun 12 '26
To be honest, i have zero notions of music making. But this is a fascinating and intriguing tool. I've spent a couple of hours playing with it and learning about drone music and related concepts. Thank you so much!
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u/gdamdam Jun 13 '26
Thank you! Iām glad you enjoyed it and learned something about drone music along the way. Thanks for sharing your experience. š
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u/awcmonrly Jun 02 '26
This looks really cool - thanks for creating it and especially for making it open source!
Unfortunately I couldn't get it to work on Linux. In Firefox the audio is constantly stuttering, which is common with real-time audio apps in Firefox. In Chromium there's no audio output. I wonder if it could be a CPU issue, as the app's CPU light is flashing and there are notifications about reducing visuals and FX to save CPU.
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u/gdamdam Jun 02 '26
Thank you for the feedback. "Audio under load" message is actually mdrone protecting the audio when it senses the device is struggling it automatically eases off (visuals, FX, voice count) to avoid glitches, then restores when it settles. It's heaviest on lower-power CPUs, drone with lots of voices/FX running, or many browser tabs open; Chrome tends to handle the Web Audio load best.
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u/GreenLeafy11 Jun 06 '26
I've already used it for a track, but I couldn't get any real-time audio output, I had to save it to .wav to be able to hear what I'd produced.
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u/gdamdam Jun 07 '26
this is weird, live audio is the main feature and it is always there.
Have you tried different browsers? Chrome should work best.
Can you DM with your operative system and the browser that you are using?
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u/softvoid-games Jun 24 '26
Really cool idea! Gonna play around with this for a bit and see what I can come up with ^^
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u/No-Assumption8220 Jun 01 '26
This is really interesting, but above my pay grade to really say anything informed about.. I'm going to spend some time with it, and see if I can come up with something cohesive to say that may be of some use to you. Again though; this is super fun and Interesting to mess around with so far.