Chris Granner is returning to pinball after 20 years in video game sound and music to lead sound direction for Turner Pinball's Yukon Yeti

Chris Granner previously worked on Jersey Jack's The Wizard of Oz in 2013 and the original Whitewater game

Chris Granner is returning to pinball as sound director for Turner Pinball's Yukon Yeti game

Chris Granner worked on Jersey Jack Pinball's The Wizard of Oz in 2013 and the original Whitewater game music

Chris Granner is the GOAT of sound design and there has been no better pairing than Raul Julia and Chris Granner.

Chris Granner's last pinball work was in 2013

Granner worked on the original White Water

Chris Granner worked on Jersey Jack's Wizard of Oz

Chris Granner worked on Stern's Lord of the Rings

Chris Granner created sound and/or music for more than 50 pinball machines and arcade games

Chris Granner worked on Williams' White Water

Chris Granner has composed music for over 40 pinball machines throughout his career

Fishtails is Chris Granner's personal favorite pinball game of all time with no close competition

Transition from Yamaha FM synthesis to BSMT sampling synthesis was creatively challenging due to pre-existing instrument library Granner did not design

Chris Granner owns a prototype of Fishtails at his office and maintains competitive gameplay with his son

Chris Granner worked on approximately 40 different pinball machines during his career

The Yamaha YM2151 synthesizer chip had exactly 8 individual voices available for polyphonic sound generation, plus a separate drum track

Craig Beyerwaltz was the hiring manager at Williams who recruited Chris Granner after reviewing his Fortran-generated demo tape

Mark Ritchie is Chris Granner favorite game designer to work with due to his collaborative and curious approach

The rhythm guitar technique developed for Taxi using voice alternation is one of Chris Granner proudest career achievements

Brian Schmidt and Chris Granner collaborated to enhance the pinball music programming language from early 1987 through 1990-91

Chris Granner attended Eugene Jarvis 65th birthday party where he met and bonded with Kendall Hale and their wives (who are both writers)

The Fishtales call-out 'You gonna talk or you gonna fish?' originated from a dynamite fishing joke that emerged during collaborative brainstorming between Mark Ritchie, Jack Scalin, and Chris Granner

Pat Lawlor and Steve Ritchie had more directorial control over sound design compared to Mark Ritchie, who was more willing to collaborate and change his mind

Chris Granner's Grand Lizard work was his first sound design for a pinball game.

Chris Granner designed the sound for Twilight Zone and Addams Family

Chris Granner was the sound designer for Addams Family

Chris Granner recorded voice call-outs with Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston for Addams Family

Chris Granner had the shortest composition timeline of any Williams game he worked on for Whirlwind

Chris Granner worked on Whirlwind under the shortest development timeline of any Williams game he was involved with

Fish Tales is Chris Granner's favorite game and represents his first composition where he felt musically authentic

I was responsible for the sounds coming out of about 40 unique pinball machines

Williams Electronics hired me in 1986 in the month they installed the first Yamaha synthesizer chip in a pinball game, and I was the first person to write music for that system

The modern pinball soundtrack model I helped develop in the 1980s-90s is still the industry standard followed by Stern and Jersey Jack today

Whirlwind was created under the most aggressive schedule of any game in that era

My demo reel that got me hired at Williams was created using Fortran code running on a supercomputer at the University of Illinois, not synthesizers

Steve Ritchie is a 'killer, killer guitar player' and the Ritchies were musicians who played in a band

Larry DeMar was a fan of music, particularly Broadway, but not primarily a musician like the Ritchies and Eugene Jarvis

The key difference between interactive pinball and linear media is that the player generates the audio experience through their physical actions, making it coherent to them even though it sounds chaotic to observers

I had approximately 1,500 lines of Fortran code in my demo reel that became my entry to the industry

There are no limits to what can still be done in pinball audio design; innovation continues just as in film and other arts

Chris Granner retired from Stern pinball audio work after designing sound for World Poker Tour, the first SAM system game designed by Steve Ritchie

Chris Granner worked in pinball for 22 years starting with Road Kings for Williams in 1986

Chris Granner's last pinball work before JJP was Shrek in 2008

Chris Granner sees the JJP Wizard of Oz project as exactly what he has been waiting for creatively

Chris Granner worked at Williams from March/April 1986 until 1995

Road Kings was the first Williams game to use Yamaha synthesizer hardware for sound

The Yamaha sound chip was used in Williams games from 1986 to approximately 1993, lasting 7-8 years

Twilight Zone was originally intended to be the first DCS game with 98% of work completed before hardware delays forced re-engineering for WPC

Adams Family sold 22,000 units; Fish Tales sold 14,500 units; Terminator 2 sold 16,500 units; Twilight Zone sold 16,500 units

Pinball sales declined significantly after the mid-1990s peak, beginning the industry downturn

Chris Granner left Williams in 1994-1995 due to economic concerns and artistic frustration with industry direction

Capcom's sound hardware was a two-voice system compared to DCS's four or five channels

The WPC system's major innovation was combining Yamaha and Harris CVSD chips onto a single sound board

High Speed was the first System 11 game to attach separate hardware to the sound system

I worked at Williams from March/April 1986 to approximately 1995, with Road Kings being my first game using Yamaha synthesizer hardware.

The Yamaha synthesizer chip had eight synthetic voices and required music to be written in macro assembly language, not MIDI.

I wrote music on manuscript paper, then transcribed it by hand into macro assembly language code, line by line.

Twilight Zone was originally intended as the first DCS game with the entire soundtrack composed for high-fidelity synthesizers and recorded in my studio, but had to be re-engineered for WPC in approximately three weeks when DCS hardware wasn't ready.

Adams Family sold approximately 22,000 units, Fish Tales ~14,500 units, Terminator 2 ~16,500 units, and Twilight Zone ~16,500 units, representing the peak of Williams production.

I declined a job offer from Myelstar (formerly Gottlieb) in 1984 due to a hiring freeze, the factory shut down six months after I declined the re-offered position.

Fun House was the first Williams game to use real WPC hardware with significantly increased RAM capacity.

I left Williams around mid-1994 to mid-1995 due to a crisis of faith about the company's direction and declining economics, and accepted a Capcom offer partly for financial compensation.

Capcom's sound hardware was a two-voice recording and playback device using ADPCM compression, compared to DCS which had become 4–5 channels.

The period from Fun House through Whitewater and Adams Family represented my most productive and best work in the pinball industry.