New York, NY (Top40 Charts) MakeMusic, Inc., makers of SmartMusic interactive music learning software, announced today their acquisition of Weezic.
Weezic is an interactive music practice tool that provides accompaniment and assessment for student performers. Its cutting-edge technologies include polyphonic assessment and adaptive score following, which can sync the score with the soloist even when the musician skips measures. In addition, Weezic is also noteworthy in being web-based, rather than downloaded and installed.
"We are committed to growing SmartMusic and providing world class practice tools to musicians, teachers and composers," stated Gear Fisher, MakeMusic CEO. "With this acquisition, SmartMusic will become available on the web, and in particular, it will become accessible on Chromebook."
"An equally exciting aspect of this acquisition is the addition of the Paris-based Weezic team," said Fred Flowerday, MakeMusic vice president of product. "This group is composed of top-notch talent with proven acumen for solving incredibly difficult technical challenges. Their agility and ability to continuously innovate and iterate represents an exceptional fit into the SmartMusic ecosphere."
"We founded Weezic with Grégory Dell'Era to build the best digital platform for practicing music," stated Nicolas Arbogast, Weezic co-founder. "Joining MakeMusic will allow us to reach that goal faster. SmartMusic has been driving music learning software forward since the 1990s. Our combined expertise will ensure that this was just the beginning. With unmatched content, years of experience with music education, and reinforced innovation capabilities, MakeMusic will remain the most advanced and relevant connected practice platform for musicians."
Through the acquisition, MakeMusic SAS will be established in Paris, providing the company a physical presence from which to grow European operations in the future. Existing Weezic products will be wound down over the coming months, in order to focus the entire team's efforts on a web-based solution of SmartMusic. The agreement will also include exclusive technology from Arpege
Music that will provide powerful, proprietary HTML5 rendering technology for MusicXML on all platforms.
Learn more about Weezic on their web page. Join the SmartMusic community on our Blog, Forum, and pages on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
About MakeMusic, Inc.
MakeMusic®, Inc. is a world leader in music technology whose mission is to develop and market solutions that transform how music is composed, taught, learned, and performed. For more than 25 years, Finale® has been the industry standard in music notation software, enabling musicians worldwide to create, edit, audition, print, and publish musical scores. MakeMusic's SmartMusic® interactive music learning software transforms the way students practice. With an online library of thousands of band, orchestra, and vocal pieces, students practice with background accompaniment and receive immediate feedback on their performance. Teachers leverage SmartMusic to individualize instruction and document the progress of every student. MakeMusic is also the creator of Garritan® sound libraries, providing state-of-the-art virtual instruments with the playback quality of a live performance, and MusicXML™, the internet-friendly way to publish musical scores, distribute interactive sheet music, and share music notation with a wide variety of software programs. Additional information can be found at www.makemusic.com.
About Weezic
Weezic was founded in July 2011 by Gregory Dell'Era and Nicolas Arbogast, two musicians fond of music and technology. Weezic offers interactive and connected content and tools to make music practice more simple, entertaining and stimulating. The Weezic team is made of musicians, entrepreneurs, computer music researchers and developers. Weezic has been awarded many times for its technologies and its approach has been recognized as one of the most innovative in the music education world ("Best Tool for Schools" award at Los Angeles NAMM Show in 2015, winner of the 2014 MidemLab). Augmented Sheet Music® is the result of 3 years of research and development, with the support of the French Ministry of Research and Higher Education.
