[3] Taylor's uncle (Jane's brother) was Tommy Johnson a "first call" studio musician who played tuba on over 2,000 recordings including the soundtrack to Jaws.
He introduced microtonality to the vocabulary of film music [5] with his score for The Giving[6] composed solely using a scale with 58 tones per octave, unequal.
Other Taylor scores incorporating microtonal cues include Why Do Fools Fall in Love, Gregory Nava, The Lion King's Timon & Pumbaa,[7] Mickey Mouse Works, The Final Insult, Powers of Time, A Question of Faith, The Glass Shield, Black Panther, The Eames Aluminum Chair, and A Gathering of Elephants.
He also composed the score for Richard Tanne's 2016 feature debut, Southside with You, which dramatizes the first date between President Barack Obama and his future wife, Michelle Robinson.
His prime time music career began in 1981 when he joined the composing team of Mike Post and Pete Carpenter writing and orchestrating for such shows as Greatest American Hero, The A-Team, Magnum, P.I.
He co-wrote the theme to ABC’s Gideon Oliver in 1988 and in 1993 he was hired by David Chase (who later went on to create and produce The Sopranos) to write the music for the 2nd season of NBC's I'll Fly Away resulting in Taylor's 2nd Emmy nomination.