Garry Schyman
Encyclopedia
Garry Schyman is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 film, television, and video game music composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

. He graduated from the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...

 with a degree in music composition in 1978, and began work in the television industry, writing music for such television series as Magnum, P.I.
Magnum, P.I.
Magnum, P.I. is an American television series starring Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum, a private investigator living on Oahu, Hawaii. The series ran from 1980 to 1988 in first-run broadcast on the American CBS television network....

and The A-Team
The A-Team
The A-Team is an American action adventure television series about a fictional group of ex-United States Army Special Forces personnel who work as soldiers of fortune, while on the run from the Army after being branded as war criminals for a "crime they didn't commit". The A-Team was created by...

. By 1986, he was composing for movies such as Judgement
Judgment (film)
Judgment is an HBO made for TV film. It first aired on October 13, 1990 and was written and directed by Tom Topor.- Plot :"No one stands beyond the reach of the law, not even the Church."...

and Hit List
Hit List (film)
Hit List is a 1989 action–thriller movie directed by William Lustig. The tagline for the movie was: They attacked the wrong woman... They kidnapped the wrong child... And they made the wrong man their target. The film was produced by Cinetel Films and Warner Bros...

. At the request of a friend in 1993, he composed the music for the video game Voyeur
Voyeur (video game)
Voyeur and Voyeur II were full motion video games released in 1993 and 1996 respectively. The first game was originally released as the "flagship" product for the short lived Philips CD-i multimedia system/video game console...

, but after creating the music for two more games he left the industry, citing the low budgets and poor quality of video game music at the time. He continued to compose for film and television, only to return to video games for 2005's Destroy All Humans!
Destroy All Humans!
Destroy All Humans! is a video game developed by Pandemic Studios and published by THQ. It was released for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 on June 21, 2005. The game is set in the late 1950s in the U.S. and parodies the lifestyles, pop culture, and politics of this time period...

. Finding that in his absence the quality and perceived importance of video game music had risen substantially, he has since composed for several games, writing the scores to Bioshock
Bioshock
BioShock is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Boston and designed by Ken Levine. It was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 on August 21, 2007 in North America, and three days later in Europe and Australia. It became available on Steam on August 21, 2007...

and Dante's Inferno
Dante's Inferno (video game)
Dante's Inferno is a 2010 action-adventure video game developed by Visceral Games and published by Electronic Arts for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. The game was also released on the PlayStation Portable and was developed by Artificial Mind and Movement...

among others. His latest score is that of Bioshock 2
BioShock 2
BioShock 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Marin for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The sequel to the 2007 video game BioShock, it was released worldwide on February 9, 2010....

, released in 2010. He has won numerous awards for his video game scores, including several "soundtrack of the year" awards. Throughout his career, he has worked on over 25 television shows, 10 films, and 10 video games.

Early life

Schyman graduated from the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...

 in 1978 with a degree in music composition. He intended to compose music for film and television, going so far as to present two student film scores at his senior recital, which was an unconventional move at the time. Upon graduation, through one of his friend's father, the actor Dennis Weaver
Dennis Weaver
William Dennis Weaver was an American actor, best known for his work in television, including roles on Gunsmoke, as Marshal Sam McCloud on the NBC police drama McCloud, and the 1971 TV movie Duel....

, he was invited to watch a recording session for the music of a television show Weaver was working in. There, he met a ghost composer for the show, who in turn told him about a job composing for Lutheran television which he applied for and was hired. He also met the composers Pete Carpenter
Pete Carpenter
Peter Clarence "Pete" Carpenter , was an American jazz trombonist, musical arranger, and a veteran of television theme song scoring....

 and Mike Post
Mike Post
Mike Post is an American multi-Grammy and Emmy Award winning composer best known for scoring some of the most popular TV theme songs in the United States, for primetime series such as Law & Order, NYPD Blue, The Rockford Files, LA Law, Quantum Leap, Magnum, P.I., Hill Street Blues, among numerous...

, the titled composers for the show Weaver had been acting in. They were working on four to five shows each week, and brought him on board as a ghost composer to help them create music for several shows, such as Magnum, P.I.
Magnum, P.I.
Magnum, P.I. is an American television series starring Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum, a private investigator living on Oahu, Hawaii. The series ran from 1980 to 1988 in first-run broadcast on the American CBS television network....

and The Greatest American Hero
The Greatest American Hero
The Greatest American Hero is an American comedy-drama television series that aired for three seasons from 1981 to 1983 on ABC. Created by producer Stephen J. Cannell, it premiered as a two-hour movie pilot on March 18, 1981...

, for which he is credited for starting in 1980.

Career

Schyman continued to work in television music composition for the next two decades, working on shows such as The A-Team
The A-Team
The A-Team is an American action adventure television series about a fictional group of ex-United States Army Special Forces personnel who work as soldiers of fortune, while on the run from the Army after being branded as war criminals for a "crime they didn't commit". The A-Team was created by...

and Land's End
Land's End (TV series)
Land's End is an American detective drama series that aired in broadcast syndication from 1995 to 1996. A total of 22 sixty minute episodes were produced...

. Beginning in 1986 he also began to compose music for movies such as Never Too Young to Die
Never Too Young to Die
Never Too Young To Die is a 1986 action film, starring John Stamos as Lance Stargrove, a young man who, with the help of secret-agent Danja-Deering must avenge the death of his secret-agent father at the hands of the evil hermaphrodite Velvet Von Ragner .-External Links:*...

. Schyman moved into video game composition with Voyeur
Voyeur (video game)
Voyeur and Voyeur II were full motion video games released in 1993 and 1996 respectively. The first game was originally released as the "flagship" product for the short lived Philips CD-i multimedia system/video game console...

, released in 1993, after being asked to by his friend Robert Weaver, an executive at Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....

, which was creating and publishing the game for its CD-i
CD-i
CD-i, or Compact Disc Interactive, is the name of an interactive multimedia CD player developed and marketed by Royal Philips Electronics N.V. CD-i also refers to the multimedia Compact Disc standard used by the CD-i console, also known as Green Book, which was developed by Philips and Sony...

 system. He used a live orchestra to score the game, one of the first video games to do so. The soundtrack won the Cybermania Award
Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences
The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences , founded in 1996, is a non-profit organization that promotes computer and video game entertainment with the annual D.I.C.E. Summit event, where its Interactive Achievement Awards ceremony has been held annually since 1998...

 for best soundtrack. He scored the sequel, released in 1996, and 1995's Off-World Interceptor
Off-World Interceptor
Off-World Interceptor is a third-person vehicular car combat game, released only for the 3DO. An alternate version of the game was later released for the Sega Saturn and PlayStation consoles, named Off-World Interceptor Extreme...

, but afterward Weaver left the company and the games division of Phillips was shut down. Rather than move to a new video game company Schyman left the industry and did not return for almost a decade, later stating that he felt that it was "not a very interesting place for composers at that time" as the budgets were low and the technical music quality poor.

After "orchestral work in TV took a nosedive", according to Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

, he returned to the industry in 2005 when THQ
THQ
THQ Inc. is an American developer and publisher of video games. Founded in 1989 in the United States, the company develops products for video game consoles, handheld game systems, as well as for personal computers and wireless devices...

 approached him to compose the soundtrack to Destroy All Humans!
Destroy All Humans!
Destroy All Humans! is a video game developed by Pandemic Studios and published by THQ. It was released for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 on June 21, 2005. The game is set in the late 1950s in the U.S. and parodies the lifestyles, pop culture, and politics of this time period...

after his agent sent them a demo tape. They offered him a budget large enough for an orchestra and were looking for a style that he found interesting, reminiscent of 1950s movies, and he eagerly accepted the opportunity. The score was appreciated by critics, and was nominated for the Game Audio Network Guild's "Best Original Instrumental Song" and "Music of the Year" awards. Feeling that in his absence the industry had moved towards wanting "strong orchestral music that is iconic and interesting" and that television music was moving towards "ambient music" that he found uninteresting to compose, he went on to compose scores for several more video games since then. He has composed the score for all three Destroy All Humans! games as well as several others such as Bioshock
Bioshock
BioShock is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Boston and designed by Ken Levine. It was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 on August 21, 2007 in North America, and three days later in Europe and Australia. It became available on Steam on August 21, 2007...

and Dante's Inferno
Dante's Inferno (video game)
Dante's Inferno is a 2010 action-adventure video game developed by Visceral Games and published by Electronic Arts for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. The game was also released on the PlayStation Portable and was developed by Artificial Mind and Movement...

. His score for Destroy All Humans! 2
Destroy All Humans! 2
Destroy All Humans! 2 is a video game for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox consoles and is the sequel to Destroy All Humans!. It was released on October 17, 2006, in North America. It marks the last game in the series to be developed by Pandemic Studios...

was nominated for the Game Audio Network Guild's "Music of the Year" award, while his score for Bioshock won numerous awards, including several soundtrack of the year awards.

In addition to his commercial work, he has written a 15-minute viola
Viola
The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...

 concerto
Concerto
A concerto is a musical work usually composed in three parts or movements, in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra.The etymology is uncertain, but the word seems to have originated from the conjunction of the two Latin words...

 entitled "Zingaro", published by Century City Masterworks. He also wrote the song "Praan
Stream of Life
Stream Of Life is a Bengali poem from Gitanjali written by Rabindranath Tagore.Named as Praan and sung by Palbasha Siddique it has been used as the background score for Matt Harding Dancing 2008 video...

" for Matt Harding
Matt Harding
Matthew "Matt" Harding , is an American traveler, video game designer, and Internet celebrity known as Dancing Matt for his viral videos that show him dancing in front of landmarks and street scenes in various international locations...

's "Dancing 2008" viral video
Viral video
A viral video is one that becomes popular through the process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites, social media and email...

, which earned him the "Best Music Video" award at the Hollywood Music Awards. Some of Schyman's work from Bioshock has been performed by a live orchestra in the Video Games Live
Video Games Live
Video Games Live is a concert series created and produced by industry veterans and video game composers Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall. The concerts consist of segments of video game music performed by a live orchestra with video footage and synchronized lighting and effects, as well as several...

 international concert tour from 2007 to date. In addition, "Welcome to Rapture" from Bioshock was performed by the Metropole Orchestra at the Games in Concert 3 event in Utrecht, The Netherlands on November 15, 2008.

Musical style and influences

Though he is not opposed to doing work on TV or film scores, Schyman currently prefers to compose music for video games as he feels video game soundtracks give him more freedom and a greater technical challenge. He has said that the video games industry is filled with "nice people whose egos were in check", which was not always his experience in the film and television industries. However, he feels that his television and film career has been "a great experience" and he "still love[s] scoring film and TV". He names his favorite composer "at the moment" as Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...

, and some of his favorite music as that from artists such as Prokofiev and Bartok. He enjoys music from the early to mid-20th century, and finds that it influences many of his scores, such as the ones to Bioshock and Dante's Inferno.

When he first started composing Schyman scored his music by playing it on the piano without the aid of computers, but now he composes digitally using Digital Performer
Digital Performer
Digital Performer is a full-featured Digital Audio Workstation/Sequencer software package published by Mark of the Unicorn of Cambridge, Massachusetts for the Apple Macintosh platform.-Ancestry:...

 and "the latest technology". He considers himself to be a "very intuitive composer", in that he has "something in my mind’s ear that I want to achieve" and improvises until the music he is creating matches up with it. He finds that the hardest part of composing for a project is finding the basic concept for the music that he wants to use, rather than composing any of the individual pieces. Although he has written a concerto, Schyman does not regularly compose "art music" pieces, as he finds his commercial work to be "satisfying music from a creative standpoint".

Television

  • Magnum, P.I.
    Magnum, P.I.
    Magnum, P.I. is an American television series starring Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum, a private investigator living on Oahu, Hawaii. The series ran from 1980 to 1988 in first-run broadcast on the American CBS television network....

    (1980)
  • Father Murphy
    Father Murphy
    Father Murphy is an American television drama series that aired on the NBC network from November 3, 1981 to September 18, 1983. Michael Landon created the series, was the executive producer, and also directed the show in partnership with William F...

    (1981)
  • The Greatest American Hero
    The Greatest American Hero
    The Greatest American Hero is an American comedy-drama television series that aired for three seasons from 1981 to 1983 on ABC. Created by producer Stephen J. Cannell, it premiered as a two-hour movie pilot on March 18, 1981...

    (1981)
  • Tales of the Gold Monkey
    Tales of the Gold Monkey
    Tales of the Gold Monkey is a 1982 television show broadcast by ABC. Most critics saw it as the network's attempt to capitalize on the fame of the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark the previous year, in the same vein as Bring 'Em Back Alive on CBS...

    (1982)
  • This Is the Life
    This is the Life (TV series)
    This Is the Life is an American Christian television dramatic series. This anthology series aired in syndication from the 1950s through 1980s. The series was originally produced by the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, and distributed by the International Lutheran Laymen's League.-Format:This Is...

    (1983)
  • The A-Team
    The A-Team
    The A-Team is an American action adventure television series about a fictional group of ex-United States Army Special Forces personnel who work as soldiers of fortune, while on the run from the Army after being branded as war criminals for a "crime they didn't commit". The A-Team was created by...

    (1983)
  • Yeshua (1984)
  • Rags to Riches (1987)
  • The Great Gondoli (1987)
  • Buck James (1987)
  • Assassin (1989)
  • The First Valentine (1989)
  • Waiting for the Wind (1990)
  • Treasure of Lost Creek (1992)
  • Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation
    Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation
    Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation is a 1992 sequel to the 1984 comedy Revenge of the Nerds.-Plot:In the beginning of the movie a new generation of nerds rule the Adams College campus, upholding the traditions of nerds from the first film. The Alpha Betas are now respectful of the nerds'...

    (1992)
  • Trade Winds (1993)
  • Day of Reckoning (1994)
  • Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love
    Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love
    Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love is a 1994 sequel to the 1984 comedy Revenge of the Nerds and the follow-up films in 1987 and 1992.-Plot:...

    (1994)
  • Mortal Fear (1994)
  • Land's End
    Land's End (TV series)
    Land's End is an American detective drama series that aired in broadcast syndication from 1995 to 1996. A total of 22 sixty minute episodes were produced...

    (1995)
  • Deadly Invasion: The Killer Bee Nightmare (1995)
  • Virus (1996)
  • Terminal (1996)
  • Tornado! (1996)
  • NightScream (1997)
  • The Napoleon Murder Mystery (2000)
  • Ringling Bros. Revealed: The Greatest Show on Earth (2003)


Film

  • Never Too Young to Die
    Never Too Young to Die
    Never Too Young To Die is a 1986 action film, starring John Stamos as Lance Stargrove, a young man who, with the help of secret-agent Danja-Deering must avenge the death of his secret-agent father at the hands of the evil hermaphrodite Velvet Von Ragner .-External Links:*...

    (1986)
  • Penitentiary III (1987)
  • The Magic Boy's Easter (1989)
  • Hit List
    Hit List (film)
    Hit List is a 1989 action–thriller movie directed by William Lustig. The tagline for the movie was: They attacked the wrong woman... They kidnapped the wrong child... And they made the wrong man their target. The film was produced by Cinetel Films and Warner Bros...

    (1989)
  • Horseplayer (1990)
  • The Last Hour (1991)
  • Judgement
    Judgment (film)
    Judgment is an HBO made for TV film. It first aired on October 13, 1990 and was written and directed by Tom Topor.- Plot :"No one stands beyond the reach of the law, not even the Church."...

    (1992)
  • Lost In Africa (1994)
  • Spooky House (2000)
  • Race for the Poles (2000)


Video games

  • Voyeur
    Voyeur (video game)
    Voyeur and Voyeur II were full motion video games released in 1993 and 1996 respectively. The first game was originally released as the "flagship" product for the short lived Philips CD-i multimedia system/video game console...

    (1993)
  • Off-World Interceptor
    Off-World Interceptor
    Off-World Interceptor is a third-person vehicular car combat game, released only for the 3DO. An alternate version of the game was later released for the Sega Saturn and PlayStation consoles, named Off-World Interceptor Extreme...

    (1994)
  • Voyeur II
    Voyeur (video game)
    Voyeur and Voyeur II were full motion video games released in 1993 and 1996 respectively. The first game was originally released as the "flagship" product for the short lived Philips CD-i multimedia system/video game console...

    (1996)
  • Destroy All Humans!
    Destroy All Humans!
    Destroy All Humans! is a video game developed by Pandemic Studios and published by THQ. It was released for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 on June 21, 2005. The game is set in the late 1950s in the U.S. and parodies the lifestyles, pop culture, and politics of this time period...

    (2005)
  • Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers
    Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers
    Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers is the sequel to the Full Spectrum Warrior video game. It was developed by Pandemic Studios and published by THQ...

    (2006)
  • Destroy All Humans! 2
    Destroy All Humans! 2
    Destroy All Humans! 2 is a video game for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox consoles and is the sequel to Destroy All Humans!. It was released on October 17, 2006, in North America. It marks the last game in the series to be developed by Pandemic Studios...

    (2006)
  • Bioshock
    Bioshock
    BioShock is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Boston and designed by Ken Levine. It was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 on August 21, 2007 in North America, and three days later in Europe and Australia. It became available on Steam on August 21, 2007...

    (2007)
  • Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon
    Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon
    Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon is a third-person shooter video game published by THQ. The game is set in 1979 and is the fourth Destroy All Humans! game to be released, and is the third game in the Destroy All Humans! trilogy, released December 1, 2008 in North America for the Xbox 360...

    (2008)
  • Resistance: Retribution
    Resistance: Retribution
    Resistance: Retribution is a third-person shooter handheld game developed for Sony's PlayStation Portable. It was announced on July 15, 2008 at Sony's E3 press conference and released on March 12, 2009 in Japan, March 17, 2009 in North America, March 20, 2009 in Europe and March 26, 2009 in Australia...

    (2009)
  • Dante's Inferno
    Dante's Inferno (video game)
    Dante's Inferno is a 2010 action-adventure video game developed by Visceral Games and published by Electronic Arts for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. The game was also released on the PlayStation Portable and was developed by Artificial Mind and Movement...

    (2010)
  • Bioshock 2
    BioShock 2
    BioShock 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Marin for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The sequel to the 2007 video game BioShock, it was released worldwide on February 9, 2010....

    (2010)
  • Front Mission Evolved
    Front Mission Evolved
    is a third-person shooter video game developed by Double Helix Games and published by Square Enix Co., Ltd. and was released in Japan on September 16, 2010, September 28, 2010 in North America, and October 8, 2010 in Europe. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360...

    (2010)


Awards

Year Award Category Work Result
1993 Cybermania Award
Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences
The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences , founded in 1996, is a non-profit organization that promotes computer and video game entertainment with the annual D.I.C.E. Summit event, where its Interactive Achievement Awards ceremony has been held annually since 1998...

Best Original Score Voyeur Won
2005 Game Audio Network Guild Best Original Instrumental Song Destroy All Humans! ("Main Theme") Nominated
Game Audio Network Guild Music of the Year Destroy All Humans! Nominated
2006 Game Audio Network Guild Music of the Year Destroy All Humans! 2 Nominated
2007 International Film Critics Association Best Original Score for a Video Game or Interactive Media Bioshock Nominated
G4 Television Awards
G4 (TV channel)
G4, also known as G4 TV, is an American cable- and satellite-television channel originally geared primarily toward young adult viewers, originally based on the world of video games...

Soundtrack of the Year Bioshock Won
Game Audio Network Guild Music of the Year Bioshock Won
Game Audio Network Guild Best Interactive Score Bioshock Won
Game Audio Network Guild Best Original Instrumental Song Bioshock ("Welcome to Rapture") Won
Game Audio Network Guild Audio of the Year Bioshock Won
Spike Video Game Awards Best Original Score Bioshock Won
Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition Bioshock Won
Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Outstanding Achievement in Soundtrack Bioshock Nominated
2008 Hollywood Music Award Best Music Video "Dancing 2008" ("Praan
Stream of Life
Stream Of Life is a Bengali poem from Gitanjali written by Rabindranath Tagore.Named as Praan and sung by Palbasha Siddique it has been used as the background score for Matt Harding Dancing 2008 video...

")
Won
2010 Hollywood Music Award Best Original Score- Video Game BioShock 2 Nominated

External links

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