Nathan Grigg

Nathan Grigg (b. 1970) is an American video game composer, sound designer, and programmer. He had been working as the Principal Composer at Monolith Productions since Feb 2001. Grigg started playing piano at six and studied composition with Peter Winkler (7) and Peter Randlette from 1989 to 1991, and further with Janice Giteck (from 1991 to '92). He graduated from The Evergreen State College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1992. Nathan debuted as a game composer in 1994, writing the music score and designing all sound effects for Sylvester and Tweety in Cagey Capers game for Sega Genesis. He established Orca Games company with his wife, Elizabeth, composing music for a tiny video game publisher Alexandria Inc. in Los Osos, California (active from 1992 to '96). As Sega competitors introduced several new platforms claiming to be the industry's "next big thing," such as 3DO's 32-bit Interactive Multiplayer and Atari's Jaguar, the business became quite challenging for indie Sega game publishers. Nathan was unable to keep Orca Games afloat. In 1995, Nathan Grigg began working as an Audio Lead and Music Director at Microsoft Corporation. He composed two MIDI files, Flourish.mid and Town.mid, that are still "hidden" within every Microsoft Windows operating system since Windows 2000, including the current Windows 11. Grigg's files replaced PASSPORT.MID and George Stone's CANYON.MID from the iconic '91 "Microsoft Multimedia Extensions 1.0" bundle by Passport Designs, Inc. from earlier Windows versions. Nathan Grigg also composed a few short MIDI compositions for Microsoft Powerpoint clipart gallery and Microsoft Clip Organizer, such as "Global Underscore," j0074226.mid (NaturH), or j0074267.mid (Soweto Underscore). He worked at Microsoft until 1999, creating music for reference titles, games, and the MSN launch. In early 2001, Grigg joined Monolith Productions game developer in Kirkland, Washington. Since then, Nathan has composed, directed, and implemented music for all of Monolith's titles. His best-known work is for the F.E.A.R. series.