Chris Granner

Career and biography

Granner's father was organist/pianist, so he was interested in music since his childhood. He studied composition and computer sound/music at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign under prolific musicians Ben Johnston, Herbert Brün, Salvatore Martirano and Scott Wyatt. After finishing university with a Bachelor of Music and a Master of Fine Arts in music composition he moved to Evanston-located Northwestern University's music lab. There Granner heard that Williams Electronics (which evolved in Midway Games) was looking for composer, and he took the job and became leading composer in coin-op and pinball industry. After leaving Midway Granner set up his own sound production studio CGMusic and produced music and sound for many video games, advertisements and pinball games.

From 2006 to 2011, Granner had retired from composing music for games, after he was finished with Stern / Steve Ritchie Productions' pinball, World Poker Tour. In 2011, Granner came out of retirement and joined the newly formed Jersey Jack Pinball, where he served as the composer and audio director for their first pinball game, The Wizard of Oz. In April 2012, Granner began audio work with Spooky Cool Labs, a Chicago-based startup company developing social games for Facebook and mobile platforms. He joined Spooky Cool, in-house, as Audio Director in October 2012. In June 2013, Spooky Cool was acquired by Zynga; Granner is currently serving as Audio Director of that studio, now known as Zynga Chicago, which produces games for the Hit It Rich! social casino.

Granner's Works

Note: The titles shown are in chronological order.

Williams

Midway (Bally)

Capcom

Stern

Jersey Jack Pinball

The names in superscript are the designers from the pinball machine, PLD stands for Pat Lawlor Design, SRP stands for Steve Ritchie Productions

Williams

Midway

Electronic Arts

Atari Games

Incredible Technologies

Microsoft

THQ

Zynga