With over 15 years of experience supporting award-winning games and culturally-recognized franchises, Steve Pardo creates, produces, and directs emotional and expansive music and audio for linear and interactive media.
Steve is a recognized composer (ASCAP), woodwind and multi-instrumentalist, producer, orchestrator, and music engineer. From start to finish, he works independently and with his team at SkewSound to complete original scores out of his home studio in Nashville, TN. Steve is also Music Manager and Composer at ProbablyMonsters, collaborating with composers and musicians internally and externally to realize a suite of AAA games.
While his innovative work with interactive/generative music systems on culturally-recognized music games inspires the way he writes, Steve brings to life strong themes, creative soundscapes, and lush orchestration through whatever means necessary, typically infusing live instruments played by him or through his Nashville-based network of musicians and engineers to fully realize each project’s unique set of themes and textures.
Steve has composed the interactive soundtrack for a wide range of games, including Cypher 007, Gigantic, Grim Dawn, Signs of the Sojourner, Moonbreaker, Chariot, Fated, Super Beat Sports, The Magic Circle, Fantasia: Music Evolved, and many others. He provides original scored music for providers such as Netflix, Adult Swim, and IFC.
Steve has a deep professional history in working with generative music and building interactive audio systems for games and technology-powered experiences. As Lead Composer & Sound Designer at Harmonix Music Systems, Steve became known for influencing award-winning music games and franchises, directing audio on games such as Dance Central and Rock Band VR (US patent for "Improvised Guitar Simulation"). His work was documented in the Sound on Sound feature, Steve Pardo: Creating Rock Band VR.
More recently, Steve’s passion for generative music tech led him to serving as Audio Director at Authentic Artists, building new and inventive AI-powered music technologies and experiences for WarpSound, serving experiences for physical and virtual installations for Mastercard, Warner Music, Fan Controlled Football, Meebits, Youtube, Tribeca Film Festival, Lollapalooza, Universal Music Group, and Yuga Labs, among others.
Now, Steve and his brother Jonathan are venturing into the world of music game/VR development, forming the studio The Pardo Brothers LLC, with current, in-development projects SAXOPHONE and DOS. Stay tuned!
Steve is incredibly active in the game audio community at large. He has spoken and given talks at NYU, Vanderbilt, SAE Institute, and Boston Post Mortem, and taught classes on game audio and music design at MIT, Berklee College of Music, and Belmont University. He currently serves on the Industry Advisory Board for the Sound Arts MA program at Northwestern University, and has provided audio support on collaborations with USCF/Neuroscape on various music-video game research projects.
Steve’s saxophone and woodwind playing can be heard on various recordings and in many different forms, having been featured on recordings from musical artists such as the Nashville Improvisation Ensemble, Thad Cockrell, Jeremy Fetzer, Awesome New Republic, Steelism, Leon Chang, Chipzel, Dion Kerr, Paul Bedal, and many others.
Steve’s non-soundtrack original music projects range from his upcoming release, DOS, to the stripped-down traditional jazz album HOPE in 2017. Under the name Tweet Tweet, Steve and his wife Amy Pardo released The Bearer (2017). Steve’s project with vocalist Lindley Cameron bore fruit with two albums: Fairytale Thankyou (2008) and Come Home (2012). His family folk group Opal Puckett released two albums, Opal Puckett EP and Hymns.
Feel free to get in touch at any time. Steve is always looking to collaborate and work on new and exciting projects.