Jonathan Pearce is Tunetek – one of Canada’s resident experts in digital audio and mobile recording. Jonathan has provided tech support to clients ranging from the Louis Riel School Division, Mennonite Brethren Collegiate Institute, University of Manitoba and University of Winnipeg, to the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and many other musical groups. To date, he has been involved in the production of over 100 multi-genre recordings!
Jonathan’s music career began as a young child in his home town of Big Springs, Texas. As part of his family’s well-known gospel group, the Wesley and Dorothy Pearce Family, Jonathan spent three to four weeks a year performing across the U.S. and Canada. By the time Jonathan was a teenager, the family had traded their stable Texas living for life in a little green and white bus. The family spent 10 years touring extensively, performing in churches, halls and community theaters across North America.
Using the digital audio workstations Ensoniq ESQ-1, SD-1, TS-12, and ASR-10, along with four-track and eight-track machines, Jonathan learned the art of sequencing, sound design and digital music creation – all the while living out of the 35-foot tour bus.
He retired from full-time touring in 1997 to work at Long & McQuade Musical Instruments in Winnipeg, Manitoba, becoming their resident keyboard and computer recording expert. Jonathan watched the industry of audio recording transition from the analog to digital, hardware to software age – and was hands on in the researching and problem solving of many software glitches and computer crashes.
Studios, musicians and organizations seek him out for his expertise. For Jonathan, digital audio recording isn’t so much a profession as a calling; inspired by his father’s passion for music and desire to be a blessing with it. Motivated by his first client, Don Wise, who paid Jonathan to record backing tracks in October 1994, Jonathan never looked back. “That essentially is how this whole idea came. It hit me like a snowball in the face. This is who I am. This is what I need to be doing,” says Jonathan.
