Tyler was born and raised in Orange County, California. His grandfather was art director Walter H. Tyler, and one of his earliest musical influences was his pianist grandmother. Self-taught on dozens of instruments — including drums, piano, guitar, bass, cello, world percussion, synthesizer, charango, and bouzouki — he pursued formal academic training in parallel, earning a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Los Angeles and a master's degree from Harvard University.
Tyler began scoring films shortly after graduating from Harvard. His first feature was the independent film Bartender (1997), directed by Gabe Torres, followed the following year by Six-String Samurai (1998), co-scored with the Red Elvises. His breakthrough came with Frailty (2001) and Last Call (2002). Last Call earned him an induction into the music branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the first of three Emmy nominations, and a gold record. William Friedkin, impressed by Tyler's work on Frailty, hired him for The Hunted (2003), which brought Tyler the World Soundtrack Award for Best New Film Composer of the Year.
From 2003 onward Tyler moved steadily into large-scale productions, scoring Timeline (2003), Godsend (2004), The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005), and Constantine (2005). His cues for the television miniseries Children of Dune found widespread use in theatrical trailers, appearing in campaigns for Master and Commander, Sahara, Cinderella Man, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Star Trek.
Over the course of his career he scored seven instalments of the Fast and Furious franchise, the fourth and fifth Rambo films, Eagle Eye, the fourth and fifth Final Destination films, the first three Expendables films, Crazy Rich Asians, and the fifth and sixth films of the Scream franchise. He also scored The Super Mario Bros. Movie and its sequel The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.
For the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Tyler composed Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, and Avengers: Age of Ultron alongside Danny Elfman. He also created the 2013 to 2016 Marvel Studios logo fanfare, which debuted with Thor: The Dark World at the Odeon Leicester Square on October 23, 2013. His Marvel Studios fanfare replaced the previous logo music and became familiar to audiences worldwide through major MCU releases of that period.
In 2012, Tyler arranged a new version of the Universal Pictures logo fanfare — originally composed by Jerry Goldsmith — adding a choir, a more majestic orchestral style, and a closing drum cadence to mark the studio's centenary. The arrangement debuted with The Lorax on March 2, 2012.
His television work includes three series set in the Yellowstone universe — Yellowstone, 1883, and 1923 — all composed alongside Breton Vivian. He also composed the NFL Sunday Countdown theme for ESPN and the official anthem of the Esports World Cup, entitled Dare to Triumph, announced on July 16, 2024, for the tournament held in Saudi Arabia. For his film output he received the IFMCA Awards 2014 Composer of the Year. As of April 2026, films carrying his scores are approaching 20 billion dollars at the global box office, placing him in the top ten highest-grossing film composers of all time.
Tyler also records and performs electronic music under the alias Are We Dreaming, which he has described as an exploration of space and human emotion channelled through his film-soundtrack sensibility. A separate stage name, Madsonik, has appeared on collaborative tracks such as Shell Shocked, released alongside the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) film and reaching number two on the iTunes hip-hop singles charts.
On March 2, 2018, Tyler announced that he had been commissioned to compose a new official theme for Formula One. The piece was released on March 23, 2018. It was subsequently adopted by Formula 2 and Formula 3 from the 2019 season, and by the F1 Academy from 2023. Played at race weekends and broadcast events across all three series, the theme has become one of the most widely heard pieces of purpose-written motorsport music in the world.
Tyler's Formula One theme represents the first bespoke anthem commissioned for the series in the modern era. Its adoption across the Formula 2 and Formula 3 support ladder, and later the F1 Academy, has given it an unusual reach within the single-seater motorsport pyramid and embedded it in the pre-race atmosphere experienced by hundreds of millions of television viewers each season. Together with his work scoring some of the highest-grossing entertainment franchises in cinema history, the commission confirmed Tyler's position as one of the most commercially visible composers working across screen and live-event music.