Jonathan Pardo - Music, The Beatles Rock Band, QA, and "Chaos Mode"

Posted on

April 25, 2023

The world of music and audio is wildly creative, and within the art of creating the perfect song or crafting the right sound, feedback is essential. What’s even more creative, and possibly chaotic, is where music, audio, and technology cross paths with each other. It comes with its own set of unique challenges, but also its own realm of unique joys. Especially when it comes to handling a culturally significant musical legacy, or collecting insights from thousands of users across a global audience.

Joining Stefan Stenroos and Chris Rader to explore all these ideas is Jonathan Pardo, Producer at Google-owned VR developer Owlchemy Labs, and formerly of Sonos and Harmonix, the studio behind the Rock Band series.

Throughout his career in both video games and tech, Jonathan has had the opportunity to work on games such as Rock Band VR, The Beatles: Rock Band, and Fantasia: Music Evolved with Harmonix, and recently served as Manager of Beta Quality Engineering at Sonos, helping maintain a Beta Community of over 150k testers.

During our conversation, Jonathan brought some incredible stories to the table, from the importance of developing The Beatles Rock Band with care, to the “chaos mode” of testing, and how QA can be a place where you can find your career and develop yourself further.

In this episode:

Jonathan's past companies and current projects
Working on The Beatles Rock Band
Unique feedback from Yoko Ono, demoing for Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson
Immersive experiences and the importance of QA
Sonos, "Chaos Mode", and working with a massive community of testers
Centercode, templates, and the importance of having structure in testing
How will AI shape the future of beta testing?

About Our Guest:

Jonathan Pardo has worked in the video game and tech industry for fifteen years. He started his career with a decade at Harmonix Music, developing award-winning titles such as Rock Band VR, The Beatles: Rock Band, and Fantasia: Music Evolved. After Harmonix, Jonathan joined the smart speaker company Sonos, running software beta programs and maintaining the Sonos Beta Community of over 150k testers.

Jonathan is also a passionate VR developer, having founded Trio VR and The Pardo Brothers, the latter of which is actively developing the VR game SAXOPHONE. He is now a Producer at the Google-owned VR developer Owlchemy Labs.