Unveiling Matt Christiano's Latest Musical Creation

Erika's Pinball Journey·video·17m 53s·analyzed·Jul 8, 2024

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.024

TL;DR

Matt Christiano releases pinball-themed album with Easter eggs hinting at Planetary Pinball remakes.

Summary

Erika interviews Matt Christiano, a 30-year pinball collector and partner in Planetary Pinball, about his new album 'Pinball'—a collection of 17-18 songs entirely about pinball culture, themes, and personal experiences. Matt discusses his creative process, collaborations with outside producers, and hints at Easter eggs in the album related to Planetary Pinball's upcoming remake games.

Key Claims

Matt has been a pinball collector for about 30 years and is a partner in Planetary Pinball
high confidence · Matt introduces himself: 'I've been a pinball collector for about 30 years and I'm also a partner in Planetary Pinball'
Matt has approximately 400 games at his ranch
high confidence · Matt states: 'I've got about 400 games at my ranch so it keeps me busy'
Matt's new album 'Pinball' contains 17-18 songs, each entirely about pinball
high confidence · Matt: 'there's already 17 or 18 songs on the album' and 'every song is a pinball song on this album'
The album idea came from his wife and daughter suggesting he 'lean into this pinball thing'
high confidence · Matt: 'my wife and my daughter said you know your next album should be about pinball you should really lean into this pinball thing'
'Pinball Heaven' was inspired by the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, where Matt has known Tim for 20-25 years
high confidence · Matt: 'Pinball Heaven is a song about the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas and I've known Tim for 20 25 years'
Matt worked with outside producers on 3-4 songs, including Timothy Drury (Eagles, White Snake keyboardist) on 'Pinball Portal'
high confidence · Matt: 'there's three or four songs on the album that I did not do entirely' and 'Timothy Drury who's a a pro keyboard player who who plays you know he's played with the Eagles and White Snake'
The album contains Easter eggs hinting at future Planetary Pinball remake games
high confidence · Matt: 'if you listen to the album carefully you might be able to discern some ideas about some future remake games that Planetary is making'
Matt's first album featured song titles based on System 80 games (except 'Potential Commotion')
high confidence · Matt: 'the first album was all System One games except for Potential Commotion every other title on that album was a System One game'

Notable Quotes

“I've been a pinball collector for about 30 years and I'm also a partner in Planetary Pinball so I'm very involved in the hobby”
Matt Christiano @ ~0:30-0:50 — Establishes Matt's credentials and deep involvement in both pinball collecting and the industry
“every song is a pinball song on this album”
Matt Christiano @ ~1:30 — Core concept of the album—complete thematic commitment to pinball
“Pinball Wizard is getting getting kind of old at this point”
Matt Christiano @ ~1:00 — Lighthearted comment suggesting the community welcomes new pinball music beyond the canonical reference
“I made a medley which describes a pinball show so there's eight songs on the album that comprise a pinball medley of what kind of happens at a pinball show”
Matt Christiano @ ~3:30 — Novel creative structure—8-song medley mimicking a pinball show experience
“the hardest thing for me to do is the lyrics so I usually start with the lyrics I start with a title and then I'll try to do the chorus”
Matt Christiano @ ~4:30 — Reveals Matt's songwriting process and workflow
“if you listen to the album carefully you might be able to discern some ideas about some future remake games that Planetary is making”
Matt Christiano @ ~23:00 — Teases unreleased information about Planetary Pinball's upcoming remake projects embedded in the album
“Steve was a really good player but more than that he was like the System 80 expert so if anybody had a problem with a Gottlieb System 80 Steve was the guy who could fix it”
Matt Christiano @ ~16:30 — Tribute to Steve Cherin, a beloved community figure known for System 80 expertise
“I loved writing these songs I loved recording them and they're out there for people to enjoy”
Matt Christiano @ ~18:00 — Articulates Matt's motivation for creating the album

Entities

Matt ChristianopersonErikapersonPlanetary Pinballcompany Pinball Hall of FameeventTimothy DrurypersonSteve CherinpersonTimpersonErika's Pinball JourneyorganizationThe Pinball Scientistcompany

Signals

?
community_signal: Album contains Easter eggs and hidden references designed to engage listeners in active discovery
medium · Matt: 'if you listen to the album carefully you might be able to discern some ideas'; Erika: 'so people have to listen to the album themselves and get those little Easter eggs'; also mentions possible Easter egg about song titles
?
event_signal: Matt Christiano releases 'Pinball' album—first major pinball-themed album project beyond 'Pinball Wizard'
high · Album with 17-18 pinball songs; discussed in detail; now available for community consumption
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sentiment_shift: Community celebrates and mourns legacies: Steve Cherin remembered as System 80 expert and beloved figure
high · Matt dedicates album tribute to Steve; describes his expertise and community impact; expresses affection: 'everyone who knew Steve really loved him and he was such a great guy'
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community_signal: Pinball community creates and celebrates original cultural content (music) beyond gaming itself
high · Album spans pinball experiences: collecting, broken games, addiction/passion, personal road trips, hall of fame visits; 17-18 songs of original composition
?
personnel_signal: Matt Christiano identified as partner in Planetary Pinball, indicating leadership/creative involvement in upcoming remake projects
high · Self-identification: 'I'm also a partner in Planetary Pinball'; tantalizes with knowledge of future remake games

Topics

Pinball music and cultureprimaryMatt Christiano's songwriting process and creative methodologyprimaryPlanetary Pinball and upcoming remake gamesprimaryPinball collecting and communitysecondaryPersonal pinball experiences as creative inspirationsecondaryCollaboration with outside producers and musicianssecondaryTribute to deceased community figure Steve CherinsecondarySystem 80 pinball gamesmentioned

Sentiment

positive(0.92)— Warm, celebratory tone throughout. Matt speaks with pride and joy about his album and the pinball community. Erika expresses genuine enthusiasm for Matt's work and gratitude to the community. No negative sentiments expressed; community members (particularly Steve Cherin) are remembered with affection and respect.

Transcript

youtube_auto_sub · $0.000

hey everybody in this episode we're going to interview my friend Matt who just released a new album now you're probably wondering Erica why are you interviewing someone that just released an album isn't this a pinball Channel well that's because this is a pinball related album and my friend Matt here he is a pinball Enthusiast and I brought him here to talk about his new pinball songs thank you good to be here yeah do you want to go ahead and uh give a slight introduction as to who you are and what you do sure okay so I'm I'm uh I've been a pinball collector for about 30 years and I'm also a partner in planetary pinball so I'm very involved in the hobby uh I've got about 400 games at my Ranch so it keeps me busy when I'm not writing music I'm fixing or playing pinball so that's kind of all I do these days one or the other nice right on yeah you have a wonderful collection I've had the honor of getting to see it and um it's really cool um that you're now making some pinball music because uh as much as I love Pinball Wizard uh it's great to know that there are more songs out there that we can listen to yeah Pinball Wizard is getting getting kind of old at this point Let's uh get started on some questions uh when did you start making music so I started like all of my friends right after the Beatles went on Ed Sullivan we all learned to play guitar and we all joined bands so in the mid-60s I was I was playing in bands and I did that for years and years off and on and then I started writing music in the mid 70s I wrote a few songs and then there were about 20 years where I didn't do anything writing wise and I finally started writing again seriously in 2019 so in 2019 I I've wrote the first album and since then I've written three others and this latest one called pinball is an album entirely about pinball so every song is a pinball song on this album yeah and I've got a chance to listen to it and I am grooving to pinball Heaven a lot now I've been thinking of the chorus so thank you for that what inspired you to create this pinball album I know that you're a big pinball Enthusiast but like of all you know hobbies and things you could have written songs about you just went back to I guess your roots yeah well I was finishing up my last album and I was on vacation with my family and my wife and my daughter said you know your next album should be about pinball you should really lean into this pinball thing so I thought yeah that's a good idea so I I started started collecting ideas and writing songs for pinball so yeah it was as simple as that nice did you have any personal experiences that influenced any of the songs on this album then yes several of the songs on the album are related to things I've done personally pinball Heaven is a song about the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas and I've known Tim for 20 25 years I've been down to that facility you know even before he had a building I was at his house where he had all his games in his backyard I went to the one when he was in the shopping center with the movie theater and then to the one across from the Liberace Museum and now finally the the new one which is really spectacular and if you haven't been to it of course you should because it's it's really great um so then some other other songs on the album there's pinball addict and I think all of us are to some extent pinball addicts um oh yeah one more game is kind of the collector's lament you know I just need one more game really I just need one more um broken pin game blues we've all had that experience and the the one that's really autobiog biographical is pinball road trip that describes a road trip that three friends and I went on to go down and pick up some of Sam Harvey's games and I think pretty much everything that could have gone wrong on that trip did you know we we blew out four tires blew out a car engine you know one thing after another so it was it was quite an experience well very cool uh I love the that the Personal Touch on all the songs and getting to know a little bit more about you and like why you decided to go that path it seems like you have a huge history with pinball so totally makes sense to make some songs about it yeah you know you have the skills to do it and the chops why not I did one thing that I really wanted to do which I made a medley which describes a pinball show so there's eight songs on the album that comprise a pinball medley of what kind of happens at a pinball show so I I really enjoyed that too when it came to writing these songs what was your creative process how did you um from these stories how did you know like where you wanted to write the oh yeah well I think you know every song WR is different and there are as many ways to write songs as there are people who write songs for me the hardest time hardest thing for me to do is the lyrics so I usually start with the lyrics I start with a title and then I'll try to do the chorus and then from the chorus I'll I'll generate the rest of the lyrics and then once I have the lyrics the music is easier for me so I'll I'll then take the lyrics and you know add music to it um and then you know what I what I tend to do is I tend to I tend to do it incrementally so I'll I'll record something and then I'll come back later and I'll Spruce it up a little or add some other parts so I I don't I don't just sit down and record the whole song at one time I will record it over a period gen often of months where I'll record the chorus and I'll like that and then I'll figure out a verse later and I'll record the verse later so the song kind of gets put together over time and um like like many software people I have a hard time finishing so I'll play it and I'll play it and I'll decide no I can I can make this part better so at some point you just have to decide it's done and I'm going to release it but there's a lot of tweaking that goes on during the course of the of writing and recording oh yeah it's cool so you can take I know you're a bit of a software engineer background right so you take a little bit of that into all of your work it seems yes yes I try to make everything as good as I can make it were there any challenges or surprises that you encountered as you were going through this project there were um it turns out you know I've played 12 Bar Blues for 50 years and one of the songs in this album is a 12 Bar blue song but I've never played guitar on a 12 Bar blue song so I was as I was writing and recording this song I played guitar and it was just horrible I mean it was I hated it so the biggest surprise I had was I took several of the songs in this album and took them to outside producers and they they improved the the songs themselves so there's three or four songs on the album that I did not do entirely I wrote them and I recorded the vocals but then I sent them off and somebody made them much better yeah I mean it it's music is like a whole team and the fact that you did most of these songs by yourself is really quite amazing right yeah about three quarters of the songs I did entirely on my own but there were four or five that I had a lot of help on well good thing that you knew how to Outsource it I guess you had some sort of you you knew that that wasn't your strong suit right and so that's you just kind of had to yeah one song uh in particular pinball portal I have a friend Timothy Drury who's a a pro keyboard player who who plays you know he's played with the Eagles and white snake and he did the keyboard Parts on pinball portal and they just came out amazingly well I mean it's not really amazing because he's so good but they came out amazingly well for me oh well that's awesome to hear it's glad to know that you had someone that was able to help bring that same passion to your song that you're looking for yeah yeah he did a an amazing job hey there just wanted to give a quick shout out to my sponsor the pinball scientist they have pinball mods kits and restoration items on their website that you guys can buy they also have a new little thing for Black Knight sort of Rage which I thought was pretty cool so if you want to check out their website I've got the promo code in the description below and we'll cut back to the video thanks so do you have a favorite pinball machine did any in particular like inspire a song or so what I always answer when people ask me if I have a favorite pinball machine is do you have a favorite child you know and I I don't really have a favorite game I have a lot of favorite games I have favorite games from every era but I can't point to one game that's really my favorite game um but no particular game inspired any of these songs they were the songs are more to me General about pinball but not about any any particular game there's no there's no game that inspired broken pin game blues for example although several games could have inspired that yeah I do I do remember when I was listening and like you did mention a few songs like you've named Twilight Zone and fathom like you said a few titles of song but you said a few pinball titles I did yeah so some of the songs incorporate but doesn't mean that they're your favorite that just means that maybe they match the melody or were they just like it just they just fit in yeah it you know you need that you need something that fits in the meter of the lyric and and that rhymes so you're not gonna be like oh and Cosmic gunfight I'm just gonna now I just picked some random names maybe they weren't random maybe they were random maybe they weren't oh is this an Easter egg mat how do you think the album captures the essence of pinball culture well I think the album really captures everything that pinball collectors and players do and like right it's it's got a little bit of everything you know it's it's got the it's got the collector who has too many games and can't really buy one more it's got the The Collector whose game is broken and he's really disgusted with it it's got that initial enthusiasm when you're first starting to play Pinball and you kind of become addicted to it you know it's got it all yeah I definitely uh the pinball addict I was like oh y that song uh I felt pretty pretty hard but I think I like to say pinball passion you know I don't think addicted is the right word for Me Maybe passionate I think I think addicted really describes you Erica it's okay I understand you know we all think differently I think that um passionate but you know if you want to say addicted you know I'm addicted that's fine yeah there's and there's also a uh there's a tribute to Steve charin in there which I was really happy to do Steve I don't think you knew Steve because he passed away before you started collecting games but everyone who knew Steve really loved him and he was such a great guy and I was happy to to put in a tribute to him on the album well that's wonderful so was he like a player another Enthusiast is he a designer I'm sorry I don't know he was a really good player but more than that he was like the system 80 expert so if anybody had a problem with a got Le system 80 Steve was the guy who could fix it and he modified those games and he uh one year at pagogo we had seven or eight Spirit games there and Steve took them all to his house and made sure they all worked they were all rock solid and brought them all up to pagogo and it was it was really great to see eight Spirits all lined up yeah oh I think I've seen that photo I think I've seen that photo of him yeah oh that's very nice that's very good that's very cool it's cool to know that you know how big of an impact some people in this community have on one another right like yeah how how much love and care that we have for this Hobby and um the people and the memories that come with it so it's very special very cool that you were able to add that into your album and he must have meant a lot to you in order for you to yeah everybody loved Steve Steve was such a great guy well I'm sad I didn't get to meet him but I'm sure that I'll get to feel his Spirit In Your Song and get to yeah get get a bit of that Vibe of who he was which is really cool besides some love for Steve what do you hope the listeners will um gain from your album or I just hope they enjoy it you know it it's just it's made to be enjoyed you know no more than that I I loved writing these songs I loved recording them and they're out there for people to enjoy so I know that you have the ability to get a bunch of pinball sounds and noises from machines that you have in your collection so were there any special techniques or musical elements that you used to invoke the feelings of playing pinball like are there any bells and Chimes that we can listen for or anything that's going to bring back that spark of like oh I know this game or yeah I don't think there's anything in there that you would know from a particular game I did record some sounds from primarily Em games and I had to restrain myself from putting them in every song I put them in a couple of songs but um yeah I I just recorded a few things from my collection do you remember which games or no it's fine if you didn't I recorded kings and queens and maybe I may have done some System One games but I'm not sure the system one games made it into the songs I think I think most of the sounds that are in the songs are em sounds cool yeah all those little bells and Chimes and those little there's a lot that you could add into a song you could probably even make a song solely off of some bells and Chimes and put them in some different repetitive to a little dj remix yeah that would be uh that would be another project yeah definitely maybe the next album who knows maybe maybe so yeah maybe the next one will be more of a hip-hop ALB where you can put a little bit of some uh Medieval Madness so now my last question for you is do you have any future plans to explore this theme again or is just this is your only pinball album well I think I've um taken the pinball theme to its conclusion on this album I uh if I had been able to think of more songs I probably would have put them on the album there's already 17 or 18 songs on the album um I have a theme for my next album but I'm not going to talk about that now because that wouldn't be any fun but it's not pinball oh okay for sure well I do know that some of your songs from your first album were names after System One games the first album was all System One games except for potential commotion every other title on that album was a system one game yeah no uh I I loved that about that um when I saw the songs I was like oh yeah we have the little System One games and getting to match that and it's a cool pinball thing it's a little fun it's fun for us pinballs getting to know the songs be like oh I know that game and is there any other things that you wanted to bring up or talk about no I think that was all fine the one thing I would say is if you listen to the album carefully you might be able to discern some ideas about some future remake games that planetary is making oh that's all I'm gonna say so people have to listen to the album them and get those little Easter eggs and if people don't know about it if they didn't watch this video they wouldn't know that they Easter eggs well right on well that's very cool to know thank you so much that's the hot tip for the album that's the hot tip y to to listen in and see if you can hear of any of the um what is it uh rememberable sounds or you're saying or what what would we be you know that's all I'm going to say okay listen carefully right on well very cool thanks so much for sharing Matt um it was such a pleasure getting to talk to you about your new album I'm very excited for you very happy for the pinball Community to get an some more songs added for ourselves to have more than just Pinball Wizard in our pinball song Library so thank you for creating what you've created and I'm so glad that it brought you joy and happiness and I hope that I I grew out to some of your songs and I'm hoping that some other people will feel the same I hope so too well thank you Erica it's been a pleasure yeah likewise all right see you later all right see you later thanks so much for watching I hope you enjoyed this episode I'll be sure to link Matt's new album in the description below where you guys can check it out Groove to it and then let me know what's your favorite song until next time I'll catch you on the flip side and I hope I'm recording I didn't check yet I'll just check whoa just wanted to cut in here silly hello camera I'm over here oh man my this is this is an ab work