<\/p>\n
A tiny, Richfield-based tech startup found itself in rarefied air last week, as an award finalist alongside Apple, Fender, and Steinberg.<\/p>\n
Those are multinational powerhouses, whereas Caedence was built by \u201cfive dudes in a basement,\u201d says co-founder Anton Friant.<\/p>\n
Caedence is a music-making program like Ableton or GarageBand. On Jan. 22, it competed in a five-product lineup for what many regard as the sound-recording industry\u2019s highest honor: a NAMM TEC Award<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Its two co-founders left the ceremony, held in Anaheim, California, feeling buoyed. \u201cIf you\u2019re going to lose to a company, lose to Apple,\u201d says Jeff Bernett, the other co-founder.<\/p>\n To get here, the two friends have spent years self-funding (up to a figure with \u201ca handful of zeroes,\u201d Friant remarks) an idea they discussed pre-pandemic. Bernett, playing in a cover band, had felt frustrated by rehearsal interruptions. He wanted a solution to the regular flurry of \u201cWhere do we start?\u201d, \u201cWhat key are we in?\u201d, \u201cWhat\u2019s the tempo?\u201d It would work like \u201ca Guitar Hero <\/em>for real bands,\u201d as Friant puts it, referring to the video game.<\/p>\n Caedence looks like a grid, similar to GarageBand. All parts of a song appear in stacked blocks. A cursor triggers them as it glides left to right. Patented technologies have made the platform easier to sync and customize among musicians, they say.<\/p>\n And, uniquely, Caedence is browser based. That means band members can share a link, no software necessary. \u201cIt\u2019s like Google Docs,\u201d Friant says. \u201cAnybody in the world can log into your Caedence session and play along, or sing along, or clap their hands.\u201d<\/p>\n They developed Caedence under a Richfield-based LLC called Stagewear, working with three other tech developers: Terrance Schubring, Demetri Dillard, and Jon Voth. The platform launched as a subscription service<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n Moments have stood out to them as proof of concept: A friend used Caedence to play at Paisley Park. Two musicians used it to whip out a couple recordings in one afternoon. \u201cWe just 4X\u2019d the time it would otherwise take to get to the end result,\u201d Friant remembers thinking.<\/p>\n In an enthusiastic YouTube review<\/a>, Harry Younger, who makes videos about drum technology, described Caedence as equal to or better than Ableton, the (much pricier<\/a>) industry-standard music-making program. \u201cI didn\u2019t realize how powerful you can essentially make a website,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Bernett and Friant met as college-age musicians in the early 2000s, with Friant at the University of St. Thomas and Bernett at the University of Minnesota. In the mid- to late 2010s, they reconnected while jamming at a mutual friend\u2019s warehouse and discussed the Guitar Hero <\/em>idea.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bernett hired someone to make a prototype. Friant couldn\u2019t get involved because of an NDA. Fender, the guitar manufacturer, had employed him to work on an app, he says. In his day job today, Friant runs Antigravity, a consultancy that designs and builds websites and apps. Bernett works as a marketing automation manager, teaches guitar lessons, and gigs around town.<\/p>\n Friant\u2019s NDA expired as the pandemic took hold. Realizing there was little else to do, \u201cthat\u2019s when we hit the ground running,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Their first new technology, Timelock, patented in 2020, can sync \u201can indefinite number of devices,\u201d according to Friant. \u201cOur \u2018light bulb\u2019 came when we started working with cloud computing and thinking about how we could essentially create a virtual click\u2014a BPM up in the cloud,\u201d he says, \u201cthat would inform every connected device.\u201d<\/p>\n The second patent, Flexview, came a few years later. It lets users click on and expand parts of a song. \u201cI know that no two musicians like to see the exact same information,\u201d Bernett says.<\/p>\n During live performances, Caedence can trigger a smoke machine or a dance of laser lights. Friant says they\u2019ve spoken with the Guthrie Theater about how the platform could handle stage control. At a NAMM show several years ago, schoolteachers kept approaching Friant.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were able to have these amazing conversations about, you know, \u2018Every one of my students has a Chromebook,\u2019\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n They\u2019ve adapted the technology so it can detect the device in use and deliver the appropriate pixel density and frame rate to keep it from overheating. \u201cThere are hundreds or thousands of those little checkers that are constantly, 60 times a second, trying to optimize the experience,\u201d Friant says.<\/p>\n Bernett notes Caedence is part of the MIDI in Music Education Special Interest Group, a coalition of educators, manufacturers, and retailers. \u201cWe are trying to get curriculum out to teachers\u2014open source, free,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Caedence earns revenue from a subscription model, with pricing adjustments available to educators. A one-person subscription goes for $4.99 per month. The monthly rate is $17.99 at an \u201censemble\u201d tier (for band leaders, private lesson instructors, and gigging musicians) and $29.99 at an \u201corganizational\u201d tier (for touring artists, studio producers, venue directors, and worship leaders). Friant says the Minneapolis Public School District has a discounted subscription.<\/p>\n He estimates the company is bringing in 5-10% of the money it would need to break even.<\/p>\n They haven\u2019t raised funds but are \u201cnever not considering that route,\u201d Friant adds, noting their legal counsel has introduced them to funding information.<\/p>\n For now, they\u2019re still high off NAMM, where Bernett watched Riverside City College students cue audio and visuals over a live performance using Caedence.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was such a great pat on the back from the industry,\u201d Friant says, \u201cand the folks we talked to last week out there are telling us we\u2019re pointed in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source tcbmag.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A tiny, Richfield-based tech startup found itself in rarefied air last week, as an award finalist alongside Apple, Fender, and Steinberg. Those are multinational powerhouses, whereas Caedence was built by \u201cfive dudes in a basement,\u201d says co-founder Anton Friant. Caedence is a music-making program like Ableton or GarageBand. On Jan. 22, it competed in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2256871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2256870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Music-Tech-Startup-Reached-New-Heights-at-NAMM-TEC.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2256870"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2256872,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256870\/revisions\/2256872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2256871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2256870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2256870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2256870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Pandemic, Patents, and Pixels<\/strong><\/h5>\n