Zenph Sound Innovations Acquires TimeWarp Technologies
Company now poised to lead the intelligent, interactive music software market and offer revolutionary new applications for music practice and performance
Zenph Sound Innovations, a pioneering music technology company based in Durham, North Carolina, today announced it has acquired TimeWarp Technologies, a leader in the field of intelligent, interactive music software. The acquisition combines Zenph’s revolutionary, data-driven process for understanding musical performance with TimeWarp’s strong product portfolio, and expands Zenph’s reach into the music software space.
Founded in 1997, TimeWarp Technologies is the creator of innovative solutions for music practice and performance. Its popular score-following program, Home Concert Xtreme™, recently received the prestigious MTNA Frances Clark Keyboard Pedagogy Award for its contribution to the world of keyboard study and music-making. The company’s President and co-founder, George Litterst, will become Chief Creative Officer and CTO at Zenph.
“There are few ‘celebrities’ in the world of music software and pedagogy, but George Litterst is certainly one of them,” said Dr. John Q. Walker, Chairman and CEO at Zenph. “He has spent his career developing ground-breaking music software products and earning the utmost respect of music educators. TimeWarp’s considerable assets and intellectual capital fit in perfectly with our plan to create music software at the very highest level of quality.”
TimeWarp Technologies’ products will now be carried under the Zenph brand. Home Concert Xtreme, TimeWarp’s flagship product, provides a unique learning and performing environment that enables students, teachers, hobbyists, and professionals to play from a score shown on a computer screen with MIDI accompaniment that intelligently follows the player. Another TimeWarp product, Classroom Maestro™, provides private and classroom music teachers with an interactive electronic-blackboard capability that instantly displays musical concepts with an on-screen staff and keyboard.
Internet MIDI™ connects MIDI instruments over the Internet for real-time music instruction and performance. Internet MIDI was a featured technology at the 2010 Intel Visionary Conference.
“I’ve been following and celebrating Zenph’s extraordinary technical and musical accomplishments for a number of years,” Litterst said. “There is a terrific sense of mutual respect and understanding between our companies, and I’m very excited to be collaborating with so many other like-minded technologists and musicians.”
In addition to his work at TimeWarp Technologies, Litterst is also a consultant to Yamaha Corporation of America’s Keyboard Division, and he is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on Yamaha’s Disklavier™ piano products. He is also Technology Chair for the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy and Associate Editor for Technology for Clavier Companion.
About Zenph Sound Innovations, Inc.
Zenph® Sound Innovations is a music technology company based in Durham, North Carolina. The Zenph team, comprised of equal parts musicians and computer scientists, devotes itself to understanding precisely how musicians play. That understanding, combined with groundbreaking technology, produces incredibly rich, highly detailed data that is transformed into dazzling new recordings and live re-performances®.
Zenph creates revolutionary technology that opens new possibilities for music listening and interaction. The company has developed a fundamentally new method of encoding music as performance data rather than audio. This performance data is easily transformed in a number of ways, enabling users of Zenph products – professionals, hobbyists, students, and listeners – to participate in compelling, interactive musical experiences. The company’s re-performance® process was called “a technological miracle” by The Wall Street Journal and one of the “Best Ideas of the Year” by The New York Times Magazine. Zenph’s recordings have received multiple GRAMMY® nominations, and its Rachmaninoff Plays Rachmaninoff album on Sony Masterworks was described by Stereophile as “one of the finest piano recordings ever made.”
About TimeWarp Technologies, Ltd.
TimeWarp Technologies is a music software company that specializes in intelligent, interactive tools for music students, teachers, hobbyists, and professionals. TimeWarp was founded in 1997 by Frank Weinstock—pianist, computer programmer, and acting Dean at the College Conservatory of the University of Cincinnati, and George F. Litterst—pianist, technologist, and music educator.
TimeWarp has several patents in the area of score-following, which is the art and science of matching a musical performance in real time to a musical score. Score-following lies at the heart of the company’s award-winning flagship product, Home Concert Xtreme. TimeWarp has invented additional technologies for extending music education and performance beyond studio and concert walls, providing musicians with a means of connecting musical instruments together over the Internet.