Brad Fiedel

Fiedel worked as a session keyboardist and touring musician through the 1970s before moving into film and television scoring, drawn early on to the emerging possibilities of synthesizers and drum machines as compositional tools rather than mere studio effects. That grounding in electronic performance rather than orchestral writing shaped his entire approach to scoring.

The synth composer's hammering, industrial Terminator theme is essentially the sound of a machine heartbeat — recorded, fittingly, on machines. He built much of the score using early digital synthesizers and sequencers rather than a traditional orchestra, giving the film a cold, mechanical texture years before that became a common technique in mainstream action scoring, and reportedly performed much of the score's percussive elements himself in the studio.

He returned to expand and darken the theme for Terminator 2: Judgment Day, adding orchestral elements to the sequel's larger scale while preserving the original's mechanical pulse, and that five-note motif remains instantly recognizable across the entire franchise decades and multiple composers later.