Meet David Roche the composer who turns the art of writing music into a science
David Roche is stood with a hand in his pocket and the other thoughtfully rubbing his shaggy beard. The 27 year-old composer turns his ear to listen with expert attention to an unusual tone that is slowly filling an auditorium.
While this sound could be described as beautiful, it also has a distinctly mechanical quality. As its slightly “whiny” pitch begins to increase it is accompanied by traditional wood and string instruments which are rising to meet it. Together they swell, getting louder and louder, until suddenly they drop leaving a deafening silence.
This is the beginning of a piece of music which is unlike anything most people will have ever heard before.
David turns with a smile to speak to the conductor and his players who are rehearsing the piece of music which he has written. They collectively appear to be happy with the results.
But this isn’t just pride, it’s also blended with relief — which isn’t at all surprising given the relatively incredible feat David’s piece has already achieved.
What’s unusual about David’s piece is that it wasn’t written for a traditional complement of orchestral instruments.
“When I’m music-making the only criteria is that there is something good in there. Anyone can churn out a piece of music if they really have to. But the hardest part is coming up with ‘that good idea’.”
While his piece, which is called “Acoustical Anatomy”, does make use of the Orion Orchestra’s 80 instruments, it also includes some alien additions. Namely, Amp-sichord (p. 10), twelve purifiers each with three tensioned guitar strings which are played by mechanical plectrums, Cyclophone (p. 12), a pipe organ which bellows air through 48 flues, a “motor synthesiser” capable of playing the sound of eight electric motors, and, last but by no means least, two fans which gently blow a set of chimes.
It takes a uniquely ‘experimental’ composer to even attempt to include these inventions in a new composition. But David has a passion for writing music that is “a little bit different”.
David has been writing music since he was a young boy. He describes the early musical education he recieved in his native South Wales as a “brass band free tuition.”
“Music was something that was just in the DNA of everyone in my part of Wales at the time. Everybody played guitar all the time, it was a huge part of the community culture. I come from Tredegar, which is a very poor part of South Wales, and there was absolutely no infrastructure there for classical tuition. It was a really amazing time for music-making in Wales. Everybody was in a rock band, everybody was talking about how to produce music, and how to write better music. People just made a lot of music. It wasn’t formal, but I was very lucky that it was part of the social environment.”
Although he has just recieved a PhD in music at Cambridge, at first David found classical music impenetrable. “I actually couldn’t read music at all, even when I was about 15 and I sat my Grade eight exam I could barely read it.”
He explains, “classical music is organised in a very different way to popular music. It often gives the impression that it’s inaccessible, but I really don’t necessarily think it is. Certainly for me there were a lot of very, very generous people, who helped me to overcome that particular barrier.”
Since leaving Wales, his love of classical music has propelled his musical career to new heights. In the past year alone he has written six orchestral pieces, taken three residencies with Wales Arts Review, Endelienta, and Sound and Music, and placed in numerous composition competitions, including the tongue-twisting Contemporary Piano Composition Competition.
“Oh, and I won the Dyson Orchestra Composition Competition,” he adds with a chuckle, “So, I’ve really been crunching out pieces for orchestras. But this one is a little different.”
David’s entry to Dyson’s compositional competition was unusual given the fact that he wasn’t actually judged on a finished piece. Instead, he was chosen as the winner of the competition after explaining his ideas for a piece that musically reflected Dyson’s passion for innovation, experimentation, and engineering excellence.
“The piece I suggested in my interview at Dyson was about change, about the change that is fundamental to both the process of composing music, and as I’ve learned, the Dyson design process.
“It is also about experimentation and how failing can lead you to amazing creative places. With music, just like design, you know you aren’t going to get it right immediately, so you have to learn how to overcome challenges and I think that’s something that absolutely epitomises the creative process — whether you’re making music or machines.
“My plan was to start to play with the idea of blending the sounds of the orchestra with the Dyson technologies. That way I could express the complex microtonal pitches of the sounds they make, because they are capable of doing something that an orchestra is not.”
This pitch won him the adulation of the competition’s judges Toby Purser, the conductor of the Orion Orchestra, and Sir James Dyson himself.
The meeting left a lasting impression on David. As he explains, “the impression that I get from Dyson is that it’s a good space for creative thinking. There is a serious and exciting creative component to this business, and to this industry. I was focusing in on the link between Dyson and the people making music which is quite an exciting way of comparing and explaining the way we all create and engage with things.”
After touring the acoustic facilities in Dyson’s Malmesbury technology campus for inspiration, David went away to create a piece of new music. He left with an idea in mind.
Returning to the chapel at his university college in Cambridge where he feels inspired to write new music, David started to play around with Dyson technology, attempting to unite the sounds of a Dyson motor with the range of a traditional orchestra.
This was not an easy task. After numerous drafts he still hadn’t found the piece which he felt made the relationship between music and technology suitably “beautiful”.
Then, all of a sudden, inspiration struck. “Just the day before, I’d been sat at the same piano playing for four or five hours, working on a piece I thought would become the final version. I ended up discarding everything because it didn’t feel right. The next day I played an improvised piece properly, all at once, and that was the first and only time I played the new piece of Dyson music.”
“When I’m music-making,” David explains, “the only criteria is that there is something good in there. Anyone can churn out a piece of music if [they] really have to. But if you’re given an opportunity like this, where you have a huge orchestra, and the chance to do something really experimental, I think you have to make the most of every aspect of it. But, the hardest part is coming up with ‘that good idea’.”
This is the value of taking a scientific approach to music. For David, results are empirically examined. His music is only truly a success if, he continues, “it has that good idea, the idea that I value, it’s important to everything I write, and if I’m going to put my work out there publicly, I’ve got to ensure it is as high quality as I can. Not everybody will like it, of course, but you have to be comfortable in yourself that you haven’t produced a bad idea. That also seems like a very Dyson idea.”
Click here to read more about the full story of Dyson’s symphony and the first performance of “Acoustical Anatomy”. This article was originally publishing in Dyson on: magazine.
