What's up?! I hope everyone is doing well. Let's get right into it. All of the patent stuff has finally cleared so we are safe to disclose information with all of you. I want to share our PCB design with you even though I know for a fact that competitors have been watching our campaign. Designing the PCB was not an easy task. With this major feat out of the way we can start to focus energy on other aspects of the TheoryBoard. This file (along with components) has been sent off to the board house so we should be receiving the PCB within 11 days. When this comes in I will post pictures/videos. At the same time, we hired an outside engineering firm to review our circuit design. If they see anything that can be redesigned in a more efficient manner they will make minor changes. The revision that we receive from them will be the final PCB. This is what we will use for our production run. We chose to do this to make sure that these boards stand the test of time.
We added an extra 4 by 4 grid to the right hand side of the TheoryBoard. This opens up a lot of new possibilities for the user including:
- Easy access to the chromatic scale (all 12 notes)
- The ability to invert (or flip-flop) the chord and melody side
- The ability to run different chord sets on both sides at the same time (i.e. A Mixolydian chords on left, E Melodic Minor chords on right) (pictured below)
- One side to act as a step sequencer, while the other side loads a melody or chord set that can be sequenced (pictured below). Color information will stay intact to give the user visual feedback
Above each 4 by 12 button pad section you can see 12 additional buttons (pictured below). These are designated for on-the-fly key change/modal interchange functions. These buttons will be capacitive touch (touch sensitive). The 96 other pads (with the LEDS in the middle of them) will be velocity sensitive, elastomer pads (think ableton push) with aftertouch. The TheoryBoard can be used the exact same way as you saw in the first prototype, or you can easily get into some deeper musical concepts.
First let's talk key-change. These 12 new pads allow you to shift the root note of the loaded scale on-the-fly in real time. If I was playing a song in D major and in the middle of a progression I started playing in B major, this would be called a key change and/or direct modulation. I shifted the root note, but the scale stayed the same (D major --> B major..... same scale, different root note). So as you can see below, the root note D would be illuminated because I am in the scale of D major.
Now let’s say I apply a key change / direct modulation to the loaded scale. I hit the root note of B... B becomes illuminated and the chord and melody side follow suit and adjust accordingly. I now have the scale of B major loaded (Figure 4). In more complex musical pieces the musician might want to apply direct modulation and this layout allows them to do so.
Now let’s take a look at how the 12 new pads on the right side of the TheoryBoard would allow the user to do something called “modal interchange”. The left side is still loading chords and the right side is still loading single notes like in the first revision. Let’s say we are in the scale of D major. The right control pads (top 12 pads) will now suggest completely different scales, but they will share the same root note (pictured below). If a musician is playing in D major and then shifts into D Harmonic Minor mid song he/she just executed a modal interchange (I.E. D Major --> D Harmonic Minor, same root note different scale). The chords and single notes will adjust accordingly to the modal interchange.
If you want a great explanation of how modal interchange works click
HERE. These pads can easily be programmed by the user (they can swap out unwanted scales for other ones).
Now the control panel shown in the below image isn't finalized yet. In order to continue to develop new features we designed this PCB with slots for a development board to plug into it. This ate up a lot of real estate so we were forced to temporarily shrink the control panel. Eventually this development board will be replaced by a much smaller ARM chip. This will free up more space for the control panel. I wanted to tell everyone that just incase you were wondering why the buttons were so small. Also, we are still experimenting with other layouts and if we find something better we might adjust it.
The control panel consists of:
- Octave, invert, and spread capacitive touch buttons
- A rotary knob
- Left and right side control buttons
We also added the 3 inch LCD. On the back of the TheoryBoard we have MIDI in, MIDI out, USB, and power (this might not be needed, but we added it just incase).
Here is a picture of all of the components for two TheoryBoards.
So, Scott will spend the time leading up to the release writing and testing software. Some of the focuses are: improved menu system, firmware update-ability via USB, and aftertouch controls. A crucial feature is that the firmware needs to be updatable over USB so that we can ship the TheoryBoards as soon as we get them in, and then be able to update users with new features as they are finished and tested for release. This will allow people to use the TheoryBoard as it was shown in the video, but give us the flexibility to drop (free) feature updates like chord step sequencing.
If you were to model the human body you would start with the skeleton and build out from there. This is a similar situation. Now that the PCB is designed we can expand outward. I will be focusing on button and case development. Our elastomer/polymer guy (Ian) has our files so we expect to be receiving some pads around the same time we get our PCB back.
This was definitely a difficult part of the process, it feels good to have the majority of the hardware design out of the way. We have been keeping our heads down, staying focused, and working as hard as we can to make this happen. We are still on pace to deliver in May. Stay inspired people! We love you guys! We should have some physical items to show off in the next update... Peace and love.