A Perfect 10 For Tyler Bates

Film composer Tyler Bates was the featured guest for a recent installment of the GRAMMY Museum's Reel To Reel: An Evening With series. In an intimate interview setting, Bates discussed becoming a film composer, his early influences and composing the score for Conan The Barbarian. Following the interview, Bates took questions from the audience, held a live composing demonstration and performed a brief set, including "White Tide" with singer/songwriter Lisa Papineau.

"I was fortunate enough to meet people who liked me enough to teach me," said Bates. "There's a purpose to the music that isn't expressed on-screen. You need to understand what that is and it took me years to get to that point."

Raised in Chicago, Bates relocated to Los Angeles in 1993 to pursue a career in film composing. While in Los Angeles, he formed alternative rock band Pet along with Papineau. The group released a self-titled debut album in 1996 and were featured on the hit soundtrack to 1996's The Crow: City Of Angels and 1997's The Last Time I Committed Suicide, the latter of which was scored by Bates. He subsequently composed the scores for films including Get Carter (2000), City Of Ghosts (2002) and Dawn Of The Dead (2004), among others. Bates also collaborated with GRAMMY-nominated artist/film director Rob Zombie to score The Devil's Rejects (2005), Halloween (2007) and Halloween II (2009).

More recently, Bates has scored films such as 2011's Sucker Punch, Conan The Barbarian and The Darkest Hour, as well as the television show "Californication." Aside from film, Bates has also composed video game scores for "Watchmen: The End Is Nigh," "Army Of Two: The 40th Day," "Transformers: War For Cybertron," and "Sucker Punch: Annihilation," among others.

Upcoming GRAMMY Museum events include An Evening With Thomas Dolby (Oct. 17), Reel To Reel: The Original 7ven (Oct. 18), Great Guitars: Steve Lukather (Oct. 24), Great Guitars: Steve Cropper (Oct. 25), and An Evening With Judy Collins (Nov. 1).

For more information on the GRAMMY Museum, visit www.grammymuseum.org.

Click on the "GRAMMY Museum events" tag below for links to other GRAMMY News stories in this series.