André Buttler was born in Gelsenkirchen, Germany in 1993. He began his musical education at the age of 10 with piano and composition lessons with his music teacher Wolfgang Dietrich at his high school. At 14 he continued his composition lessons with the Hungarian composer István Nagy. He also learned cello and percussion with a focus on timpani.

In 2008, 2009 and 2010 he was a laureate at the national composition competition of the Jeunesses Musicales Germany. In 2008 and 2009 he was honored by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of the Federal Republic of Germany at Talent Day for his special achievements as a young up-and-coming composer. In 2014 he was a scholarship holder of the GEMA European Music Author Scholarship.

In 2010 he began studying composition at the Folkwang University of the Arts (Essen, Germany) as a young student. He continued his studies in 2013 at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster (Germany) in musicology and philosophy. André Buttler began his training as a film composer in 2017 at the Musicube Academy (Bonn, Germany) and continued his studies in 2018 at the ArtEZ University of Arts (Arnhem, Netherlands).

In addition to his studies, he also studied with various composers from Hollywood and London such as Garry Schyman, Joe Kramer, John Lunn, Anne-Kathrin Dern and Conrad Pope.