This unique MIDI controller makes for simplified music creation whilst teaching you the essentials of music theory.

A few years ago we looked at a unique new MIDI controller that was gaining traction on Kickstarter called TheoryBoard. The innovative design made for a controller that made jumping into music production and creation on computers easy whilst an intuitive design taught it’s users as they used it.

3 years on and TheoryBoard are back with an updated and enhanced controller and a fresh new Kickstarter which has already soared past its fundraising goal. Within 3 hours the new TheoryBoard had reached it’s goal of £7,963 needed to make it an available reality and it’s now sitting pretty at over £180,000 at the time of writing.

The board is designed with classic MIDI push pads for playing out rhythm and notes on but is colour-coded to show users where the matching notes of a scale stand without any prior knowledge needed. It allows creators to explore and produce chords and notes that are always going to sound correct.

The most impressive sounding part of the new and updated TheoryBoard is the ‘Live Note Update’ feature. This new section highlights 4 octaves of the notes within a chord whenever you press one of the chord buttons. This makes creating melody lines and solos the smoothest they can be as you know exactly where to press to stay in key.

If it all sounds incredibly simple that’s because it is. It’s designed with total beginners in mind so that the barriers to getting started with creating something that sounds good are diminished whilst also allowing learning through playing so that you’re not just pushing at buttons that will always sound “correct”.

It sounds like an intuitive way to play with music production that may open up the doors to the creative world for a lot of people who’ve found the learning curve to steep to really dive in before.

Find out more on their Kickstarter campaign and back the project to nab one for yourself when they plan to start shipping in December for as little as $499.