The founders of TONALSOFT™ have a passion for music, and especially in nuturing the somewhat neglected discipline of just intonation and microtonal music. Our founders have the unique combination of skills, motivation, and long-term vision for bringing innovative microtonal electronic music software applications to market.
Chris Wittmann is the President, acting Software Architect, and has an MBA from Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business Administration. Prior to TONALSOFT™, Chris Wittmann directed the European operations for American Management Systems' Internet Services Group, based in The Hague, Netherlands. The Internet Services Group provided back-office-operations support, software, and IT integration services to a variety of customers across Europe. Before assuming this role, Chris Wittmann directed American Management Systems' European support operations, based in Düsseldorf, Germany. In that role, he was responsible for maintaining on-going operations while using fiscal discipline to trim more than € 10 million from the yearly operations budget.
Before completing his business degree, Chris Wittmann was a software developer and system architect with a focus primarily on real-time system development within the aerospace industry. His primary responsibility was the design and development of air-traffic control systems for civilian use. Chris Wittmann was first introduced to just intonation by reading Harry Partch's book, Genesis of a Music.
Education
Joe Monzo is the Chief Musican and has been a microtonal and just intonation music composer for a number of years. Prior to TONALSOFT™, Joe Monzo founded the Dictionary of Tuning Terms, now called the TONALSOFT™ Encyclopedia of Microtonal Music-theory, which is one of the premier information sources on microtonal music theory. While developing the dictionary, he was also the webmaster at sonic-arts.org, where he was one of the microtonal musicians in residence. Sonic Arts is a foundation dedicated to the advancement of microtonal and just intonation music. Additionally, Joe Monzo was one of the primary contributors and organizers for a number of microtonal-tuning, and mathematical tuning internet discussion groups. It was during this time that his original interest in just intonation was augmented by advanced mathematics.
Joe Monzo was first introduced to just intonation by reading Harry Partch's book, Genesis of a Music, while he attended the Manhattan School of Music as a composition major. Thereafter, he was inspired to expand on Partch's ideas and to publish his own theory on microtonal music in a book called "JustMusic: A New Harmony". Joe Monzo was responsible for introducing Chris Wittmann to Harry Partch's approach to just intonation music composition.
Some Microtonal Pieces