Tyler Bates | Movie-Music Maestro

Apr 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Mike Levine

           
 

INSIDE THE WORLD OF HOLLYWOOD FILM SCORING WITH WATCHMEN COMPOSER TYLER BATES

Photo: Photography by Mitch Tobias, Grooming by Denika Bedrossian for margaretmaldonado.com

Tyler Bates picks up his Togaman GuitarViol (see Fig. 1), a six-string electric instrument that's tuned like a guitar and bowed like a cello, and starts playing it into a Boss Loop Station pedal connected to a Fender amp. He records an initial legato pass and then layers several more over it as it loops. The resulting piece of music is rich, ambient, and heavily delayed. Bates is demonstrating to me one of the methods he uses for developing score ideas. “I explore textural ideas with it,” he says of the instrument. “By using delays and different bowing techniques, motifs and thematic ideas often emerge in a crude form. I frequently extrapolate elements from these little space jams that ultimately become central to the orchestral aspect of a score. The GuitarViol was all over 300” (see Web Clip 1).

FIG. 1: Tyler Bates often uses his Togaman GuitarViol for generating score ideas.

Bates, who has been busy scoring movies since the mid-1990s, has been on a major roll over the past several years. In addition to 300, he composed music for The Day the Earth Stood Still (the 2008 remake), The Devil's Rejects, Halloween (Rob Zombie's 2007 remake), and the Showtime series Californication, among many others.

He does most of his work from a modestly sized but well-equipped studio on the ground floor of his L.A. home (see Fig. 2). Bates's scores cover a wide range of musical styles, frequently blending orchestral and electronic elements. The electronic aspects of his music are often developed through collaborations with Wolfgang Matthes (aka “Wolfie”), who brings a deep knowledge of synthesis and sound design into the mix. Bates told me that most of the electronic and nonorchestral acoustic instruments in his scores are played live rather than programmed. Matthes has been involved in most of the scores that Bates has created over the past 11 years, and the two have developed a unique work style, with many musical concepts developed on the fly as they bat ideas back and forth from their respective keyboards in Bates's studio. (For more on Bates's gear, see the online bonus material at emusician.com.)

FIG. 2: Bates’s home studio, with Wolfgang Matthes’s Synthesis Technology analog modular synth (right).

I had a chance to visit Bates's studio and talk to him at length about Watchmen and his approach to scoring.

You're comfortable with both orchestral and electronic scores, as well as with hybrid ones. How do you decide which approach is going to work? I have no presumptions of what a score should be. I tend to think in terms of what it can be, with respect to the director's artistic sensibilities. Regardless of how interesting an idea is, it has to register within the director's musical vernacular; otherwise, he or she will have difficulty understanding how it's affecting their film and ultimately will lack confidence in the score. Time and budget are also important when conceptualizing a score, as are its production values. In my studio, we always ask ourselves, “Does it sound expensive?” [Laughs.] Joking aside, these details, in addition to the texture of the film, lighting, editing style, and pacing, all influence whether the emphasis leans toward orchestral or nonorchestral music. Nearly all of my scores end up as hybrids because of the process I engage in from the beginning.

When you start on a scoring job, what are you trying to figure out from the material at hand?

It is critical to get into the emotional palette of what the movie is and who the characters are before writing any music. It is also important to understand what the director wants to communicate with the film in general, and to know whose scene it is when two characters share a scene that consists primarily of dialog. I tend to look for a connection between that material and something that I have experienced personally.

Bonus Material

Talkin' Tech With Tyler Bates

Video Interview With Tyler Bates

What inspires you musically when you're writing a score?

I don't consciously think in terms like we should do a [Gyorgy] Ligeti thing, or a Brian Eno-type thing, or a Jerry Goldsmith thing, for that matter. I think I would be a bit embarrassed saying something like that out loud. There's no doubt that music and images have seeped into my brain over the years, which must influence my train of thought and my sensibilities. I guess that's what sets the parameters for any artist. I'm not sure I can answer your question in a general way. I am always battling the insecure artist within me. Maybe trying to kick its ass is my greatest inspiration? [Laughs.] I'm not sure.