The Irijule website says Now Shipping!
They also have new pictures and have a new specifications page.
ADDED: Early backers have received theirs and are raving about the quality and feel of the TB. They say the buttons feels like a Push 2, and that the colors are easy to distinguish, and that the chassis is solid.
They’re going out in the order of backing – mine shouldn’t be too far away, i was pretty early. Irijule will confirm directly with you before they are shipped.
Finally.
First youtube performance done on a Theoryboard:
Using the keys to trigger samples, is a good use of this too. The Theoryboard has polyphonic-aftertouch so expressive playing should be nice.
(The chord side i think has aftertouch too, but of course you can have only one chord at a time.)
Irijule also has two tutorials out now too on theirYoutube channel.
Could be a great visual performance tool to convince the audience they are watching a live act (which can get lost so easily in electronic gigs)
Just don’t also show them the piano keyboard graphic that indicates you’re effectively just hitting one key! 
I have not yet seen a video with a hardware synth setup yet.
I ordered shortly after backing was closed. How many backers are there?
They mention building, testing, and shipping these in batches of 20 to 25… about how long per batch, I would love to have a very rough guess as to delivery timeframe based on the order numbers? 25 units a month would probably mean that I won´t get mine till mid next year. Any idea?
Thanks! 
backer #657 here
i switched over to the Super Early Bird tier just before it ended. i don’t think everyone’s numbers really matter though, curious when they’ll finish shipping all of the super early birds tho.
Thanks!
I am sure they go by date of order, but even if they manage to do 50 units a month it will still take them 12 month until they reach #600 and I am not even a backer 
Super early bird does specify that that tier will receive their TBs first.
Yeah, I know, but if you are not a early bird you are a late cow…, or so haha
The Irijule website says 60 days backorder on regular orders – not that that necessarily means anything. Sorry to be a skeptic.
Yeah there are around 600 backers, i’t hard to judge by backer number as that was given sequentially and people dropped out along the way so there are empty spaces in the backer number count.
I don’t know the rate, how many a week are being completed and shipped, or how they decide who’s next. I can tell you this, i’m backer #89 and i still haven’t heard a thing. I was really expecting to either have it by now, or have gotten an e-mail saying it’s on the way. Not yet. I’ll let you all know when this thing drops for me.
I see in the comments on the Theoryboard KS site that backer #42 (super early bird) just got his.
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The video Modal Interchange/Direct Modulation Controls sounds really good to me especially the Modal Interchange in the later part. They’re just noodling around on the video, not really trying to compose with this, and yet there are some interesting musical ideas being spun out here.
One thing i will be doing with this, is using the Theoryboard for composing, and then likely will then transfer what i’ve composed back and played on a regular keyboard and work further from there.
Also, and i didn’t plan it this way but i’ve just order the ASM Hydrasynth Keyboard which has polyphonic-aftertouch too so i will have the opportunity to use the Theoryboard as a controller for the Hydrasynth. The Hydrasynth desktop would work the same way with the Theoryboard as well, and cost a lot less.
We’ll see how good the implementation of Poly-Aftertouch is on the Theoryboard – how natural it feels to use. It’s something that is difficult to implement well.
Please let us know
Thanks Jukka! I guess I´ll have to wait some more time, bought mine in February for 399, which is still a pretty good deal. Saw the 60 days backorder info as well and yes it seems not to make much sense from the current point of view regarding the numbers of shipped TBs. This is my first Kickstarter deal.
Yeah, let us know when yours arrives and share some first impressions, that would be nice.
im backer number 230
again, i really don’t think the numbers matter. i’m like 600+, but i’m super early bird. so i think the biggest deal is what tier you’re part of.
and if you weren’t part of the kickstarter then i’m sure the wait will be quite a while.
I guess so, from my rough calculation I will get mine some time next year, maybe summer, or autumn, wholy late cow… 
One can assume that Irijule will get better at manufacture, and can make them faster. And having a later delivery will be of advantage. The later ones should be better made and less likely to fail. How’s that for making lemonade from lemons?
Not sure how they prioritize who gets theirs next. Perhaps they pull numbers out of a hat? Somehow i think order of purchase has got something to do with it, along with the pool that you bought from.
We’ll see which i get first, the Theoryboard or the Hydrasynth.
So i’ve watched the few Theoryboard videos, and i notice in general people almost always play the first chord in each scale degree group. (By ‘scale degree group’ i mean the chord buttons of the same color on the TB. ‘Chord buttons’ are the 48 buttons on the left side.) The first chord in each group would be the the simplest chord of that scale degree. The ones of the same color further along become progressively more harmonically complex/jazzy.
How you play melody with the more complex ones is musically different. For the choices of combinations of these more complex chords i will need to experiment and listen and learn. And this isn’t bringing in all the possible scale choices the chordal harmonies can be based upon. Rather than being simplistic, i think the TB will be an opening to complexity.
Again i do look forward to bringing things i create and learn back to be able to play on a traditional keyboard too.
While i wait for the TB i’ve been plotting ways to use it. The Hydrasynth has a real cool playable arpeggiator, with a whole series of generative sorts of controls. Feeding that with the chord output from the Theoryboard should be good. I’ve been trying to think of other ways to make other sorts of “playable arpeggiators”. I could do something with MaxForLive as for instance.
The mechanical hardware is excellent.
The most important thing first. The pads have a good feel to them, slightly softer than a Ableton Push 2. I find it’s good to bend the response curve to add more to the soft side (i’m using UVI KeySuite mostly at the moment). I wish there was a way to set the response curve in the TB.
It’s nice that the physical zone on the melody side where you can put your finger and get two notes next to each other to play together is small. So if you are sloppy with your finger you often get the right note anyway, or at least usually not two neighboring notes. It is possible but you have to try hard to do it.
But you can trill with one finger if you want. Octave trills and rhythmic staccato repeats are fun too. And expressive staccato runs and patterns are easy to do as well.
You can’t play two chord simultaneously, only one chord at a time, but you can trill between them.
The keyboard is heavy enough to stay in place, but it’s not a burden. And it’s sturdy.
Also very important – i find the TB musically interesting and stimulating.
I’d quibble a bit about the arrangement of the buttons on the controls in the middle. The capacitive touch is good, once you are used to it – a couple of days.
The key and modal change buttons are great, i think they are capacitive too and they are fast, and recess on them makes it a positive action, and are seldom miss hit.
The software is good, but has room for improvement. But they did do a very good job with the thing about software of primary importance – no serious bugs! I have been using the TB a lot – it’s addictive – and have had zero crashes or failures. Occasionally when i’m really banging on it and doing things in unpredictable ways i have had MIDI note hangs, but it’s pretty rare. EDIT: I’ve discovered the cause for this, and a fix. Not sure this is really a bug. See NOTE at bottom.
Annoying thing (a cosmetic software issue), when you select a key it is arranged in this order A, Ab, B, Bb, C, D, Db, E, Eb, F, G, Gb !? Goofy isn’t it! I think it got arranged alphabetically rather than chromatically. That will be an easy fix for them, and something to do right away.
I’d also adjust the way the menus scroll and move, and some other human factors issues, like thinking about menu depth. They would do well to contract with a human factors designer. A few hours critiquing by a pro would help them a lot. (A human factors person would probably have helped some before they laid out the center control panel, but it’s quite tolerable and good enough.) Human factors people must be a dime a dozen in the Bay Area.
That all said i was using the control panel the first day without a manual, so it’s all pretty good. I’ll leave it to you to figure out how to move the melody keys up and down octaves. It’s not hard.
I’ve had some time wondering about the chords chosen to match with the scales. (You can read more about the scales in the next post.) When i spread the chord out i sometimes wonder why they pick a particular note to be in the base. It varies some across the choices for a particular degree of a chord, and sometimes there is no chord with the root of that chord in the base. But that said they sound good, so there is probably a reason for the choices made.
I’d also suggest Irijule use the blank buttons on the right hand side of the melody keys as duplicate keys. It would be nice sometimes to be able to play further to the right rather than having to wrap back all the way to the left side to get to the next octave.
Very much as i anticipated it is causing me to improve my standard keyboard playing too. It’s expanding my chordal choices – which is worth the cost by itself to me for the TB. Plus i am getting to discover cool scales, like the Prometheus scale. More in the next post.
I’m playing this thing a lot, and enjoying my time with it – so it’s worth it’s cost in that way too. I have also been using two hands on the melody side and playing chord harmonies there as well.
When my Hydrasynth arrives, toward the end of this month, i’ll get a chance to test the poly-aftertouch on the TB.
NOTE: On MIDI note hangs. This has to do with the chord and melody on the TB as shipped using the same MIDI-channel. If you play a melody note that’s in a chord being held, the MIDI on and offs become nested. The fix is to set the TB to use two different MIDI channels.
Since there is no documentation yet, i figured i’d put together a description of the scales and scale modes. I’ve listed the scale categories on the TB, and then show the first mode in each scale in C and the interval map.
First i list the 7-note scale categories. There are 7 modes of each available inside these categories as well – and of course these are available in all keys. Sometimes these modes have names sometimes they’re just called something like “Blah mode 3”.
Additional detail in case you don’t know, you can always flip any scale back and forth into chromatic mode – using the “12” key; and the in-between notes are in light blue. So they are there if you want to play chromatically.
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Note: These are all distinct scale categories except for the Melodic Major and the Melodic Minor which are modes of each other, and so are essentially the same just shifted around in modes. But the chords for these two are different, so they are different to play. I plan to explore this some more, to get a feel for the differences between these two chords.
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Now i move on to the Pentatonic group, all 5-note scales obviously. The arrangement of these scales is a little more ad hoc. The scale categories listed have no modes under them in the menu. But there are modal relationships between the categories.
The Pentatonic Major, Egyptian, Man Gong, Aitussen Yo, and Pentatonic Minor are all modes of each other, and completely span this note arrangement.
The Iwato Japanese, Chinese, and Hirajoshi are modes of each other.
The In Sen Japanese stands by itself with only one of its five modes presented.
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Now i move on to the Other Scales group. There are two 6-note scales in this group, and three 8-note scales.
The first 6-note scale is a 12 Bar Blues scale. Hopefully everyone is familiar with this. Nice choice of chords with this, a good minor feel to it, and worthy of study with a standard keyboard once you work something out. And again seven chords with this 6-note scale, and no chord for the “blue” note.
The next is a 6-note Prometheus scale:
There is an interesting set of chords here. There are many I and II chord choices in this. The first chords are both major triads even though the “fifth note” in the I is outside of the scale. It can be happy sounding moving between these two. The iii and iv are diminished. And the v (added extra chords again) and vi are minor. The vii is augmented.
Then there are three 8-note Bebop scales.
The note that gets added to these three scales that changes these scales to bebop scales from there similar 7-note scale is light blue in color. I put the red dash in the graphic here. This is a good idea and helpful, but unfortunately light blue is also the color of the between notes when you switch to chromatic mode so you can’t distinguish the bebop note in chromatic mode.
I would really have liked a Whole Tone scale and an Augmented Scale. Maybe later.
EDITED: For a correction/clarification on Oct 4th.
Thanks for such a great, very useful review of the TB Jukka.
Overall it sounds like it was worse the purchase. Can´t wait for mine to arrive and I am eagerly awaiting to use it with some of my synth.
I just have a very basic knowledge when it comes to music theory, just some years as a guitar player, so my experience will be more in a happy accidents kinda style with my ears as a reference and hopefully there will be some new ways to “stimulate” me in different ways, like you mentioned
Thanks again!
This is great review.
The ability to venture into other keys without looking at piano keys really has opened things up for me musically. I had felt stuck certain repetitive habits.
Looking forward to future updates and refinement. the point about the extra blank keys is a good one.
note: I was backer 100 something I believe.
Cheers
