With a number of recent high-profile films under his belt, including The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, and four films lined up for 2007, film composer BRIAN TYLER is quickly becoming a major player in Hollywood.
By Mike Todd
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Brian Tyler |
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UCLA and Harvard-grad Brian Tyler's love of film was greatly inspired by his Academy Award-winning art director grandfather Walter Tyler, who was one of the most nominated art directors of all time with 10 Academy Award nominations. Brian began composing music at an early age and was performing his own concert pieces around the U.S. and Russia by his mid-teens. He continued playing piano, classical percussion, guitar, bass and drums in various ensembles and bands all the way up to 1997 when he decided to enter the world of film scoring.
That's when his story gets even better. Brian has composed over 35 scores in the last five years, and has been awarded with Cinemusic's "Best New Film Composer of the Year" (2001) and a 2002 Emmy "Best Score" nomination for The Last Call. In 2005 Brian scored three films: Constantine from Warner Bros. Pictures, starring Keanu Reeves (for which he received an ASCAP Film Music Award); Bill Paxton's The Greatest Game Ever Played; and Justin Lin's Annapolis. His most recent projects are The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift and the historical epic, Partition, which is a romance set against the violent struggle between Pakistan and India in the 1940s. He also recently scored the Cannes Award-winning film Bug for Academy Award winning director William Friedkin, which will be released in December. Brian will also score the intense action thriller, Time to Kill, starring Nicolas Cage, which is due in 2007.
Which film would you consider your first big break?
The first film that I scored that got some notoriety was the indie film Six-String Samurai which was also my first soundtrack release. That certainly was a great break for me coming from virtually nowhere. But then Bill Paxton's amazing thriller, Frailty, starring Matthew McConaughey, came along and after I scored that, my career changed. In fact, legendary director William Friedkin called me the day after Frailty was released and asked me to score his big budget studio action film The Hunted. The Hunted ended up leading to so many films after that point, most immediately Timeline directed by the great Richard Donner.
What would you suggest to a composer who is just starting out and building their career?
It seems obvious but learning as much as possible about film music, classical music, and all forms of contemporary music is of absolute importance. Being comfortable in many styles can help a composer create their own unique style. Honing your craft from a compositional standpoint is vital. Work on your own sound and what you do best as a composer. Something that is often overlooked is described in the first half of our job title as "film composers." That is to say, film itself. Learn about film history. Become a movie aficionado. Learn how films are edited, shot, color-timed, directed, etc. Not only is having an encyclopedic knowledge of film useful in refining one's craft as a composer in the medium, but a film composer's direct link to the movie is the director, and film is the language they speak best.
Do you think composers in general can control being "typecast" or "pigeonholed" into one genre?
I don't know if we can directly control it, but certainly becoming more adept in composing different styles will help avoiding being typecast. I have been incredibly lucky in that I seem to move around genres a lot. The last year has been a whirlwind of opposites. I went from the dark thriller of Constantine to the uplifting Americana story of the 1913 US Open in The Greatest Game Ever Played to the adrenalized modernity of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift to the 1947 romantic war epic Partition that takes place in India. As you can see, I enjoy variety! But just because one has the ability to score in many genres does not mean it will happen that way. Sometimes really talented composers do get typecast.
Do you think that agents help or hinder this process?
Agents help. My agents work as an extension of me as a composer and are genuinely my friends. From a business perspective, they are aware of opportunities that I would not necessarily be aware of since I have my head buried in the music.
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Brian Tyler discussing the music for Frailty with director/actor Bill Paxton |
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Do you have any composer influences or favorites in the business?
There are too many composers that I greatly admire to even list here. All of the great orchestral composers in and out of film: Mahler, Webern, Stravinsky, Mozart, Holst, and the modern guys such as John Adams and Penderecki. Of course the great film composers such as Bernard Hermmann, John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Alex North, Maurice Jarre, Georges Delerue, Michael Kamen, Ennio Morricone, Henry Mancini and Elmer Bernstein are all giants of the field. There are a lot of contemporary film composers I admire as well such as Elliot Goldenthal, James Newton Howard, Howard Shore, Hans Zimmer, John Powell, Thomas Newman, Harry Gregson Williams and James Horner. But hey, I dig so many non-composer artists such as Muse, The Mars Volta, Sigur Ros, Bjork, Tool, DJ Shadow, Anberlin, Slipknot, M.I.A., etc.
How much do you like to use your own skills as a musician when you compose each score?
I tend to play a lot of live instruments myself on my scores. I typically record myself playing the piano, guitar, drums and various stringed instruments. And certainly my percussion playing is in nearly all of my scores (djembes, timpani, congas, cymbals, various African, Indian and Asian percussion). This tendency to layer myself playing instruments live developed by necessity. At the start of my career, recording a full live orchestra was too expensive a proposition so I turned to myself to capture a live sound as opposed to using a huge amount of samples and synths to replicate live instruments. I already played a large amount of instruments so why not use myself as a player? Early scores such as Six-String Samurai and Bubba Ho-tep were exclusively me recording myself as the sole instrumentalist albeit playing many instruments. As time went on I learned to play more and more instruments such as bouzouki, dulcimers, oud and many other world instruments. I even tried my hand at playing the sitar and tambur for Partition.
Is there a particular genre you haven't covered yet that you would like to?
I just want to score films I love. All genres welcome!
