Davide Sammarchi: Building bridges between distant musical worlds with Seaboard 2
The Italian composer finds interesting conversations in the spaces where technology and tradition meet.
Human beings have always sought ways to speak to one another. Just as spoken language has taken shape over centuries, shifting with our needs, our discoveries, our desire to say more than words alone could hold, music has followed a similar path. The earliest instruments gave us simple voices; over time, new ones emerged, each expanding the vocabulary of sound. This language has never left us, but it has grown with us, evolving as we reach for new means of musical expression. In Italy, composer and producer Davide Sammarchi listens to this evolution in action, placing instruments from different eras and traditions into conversation, and asking what traditional and contemporary instruments might have to say to each other when they meet.
Davide’s musical origin story follows a very familiar narrative to most classically trained artists. “I started learning piano at around 14 years old. At first, I took private lessons for a few years, then attended a school of music in my hometown before moving to Pescara, a city in the south of Italy, to study at the Conservatory of Music Luisa D'Annunzio in Pescara.” The Conservatory is an institution renowned for its prestige, and it helped lay the brickwork of Davide’s musical foundation, but it also opened his eyes to the boundless possibilities that are latent within music.
“For sure, it shaped my need to always have some kind of keyboard under my hands when I play, but it also allowed me to keep my repertoire open to both contemporary and classical music. In a way, if you don’t confine yourself to just one box, you can really draw something valuable from every musical genre, and for composition, that’s the best kind of inspiration.”
Not one to limit his sources of inspiration, Davide collects ideas from a wide array of places. “From any art fields, from cinema, photography, sculpture, books,” he says. “By listening to the most different genres of music and, of course, by gaining experience, traveling, meeting people, and listening to their stories.” All of these experiences and creative disciplines inform the way Davide creates and subtly infuse themselves into his musical compositions.
As Davide’s compositions evolve with his far-reaching inspirations, we find certain themes and motifs appearing throughout his discography. “The importance of melody is something that remains constant in my work,” he explains. “I’ve always been a great admirer of how evocative even the simplest melody can be. When combined with a timbre that is unique and personal, you can truly build an entire world from it. What keeps changing is the timbre.”
With melody as the central focus of the music, all instruments are at the service of enhancing that melody, whether it’s created with a hammer-action piano, the sounds of a bow across violin strings, or the MPE-powered gestures on a Seaboard. “I’m always searching for new sounds, exploring new possibilities, and playing with roles: sometimes placing the melody at the center, and other times pushing it into the background, making it almost invisible.”
These changing musical elements continue to mirror that of spoken language: tonal changes, new sounds, and the way our voices seem to shapeshift depending on context or intent. We see this in action in the video that first put Davide on our radar — a performance entitled A Conversation between Violin and ROLI Seaboard. In this performance, Davide puts the Seaboard at the centre of a dialogue with the stringed instrument. Coming from wildly different worlds with drastically different languages, you might not think that a Seaboard and a violin would have all that much to say to each other in conversation. We wanted to know what prompted Davide to bring these two together.
“This concept was born from a concrete idea I've always had as a composer: the desire to build bridges between different worlds,” he explains. “The Seaboard is the perfect tool for this purpose. In this collaboration, the goal was to let our playing styles influence each other. The articulation of the violin is translated onto the Seaboard, while at the same time, the expressive shaping of sound typical of the ROLI is, in some way, imitated by the violin. I also wanted to reflect this dialogue visually, showing two different worlds, classical and electronic, speaking the same language.”
One might wonder what the thought process is when deciding whether a piece calls for the expressive nuance and vast sonic possibilities of an instrument like Seaboard 2, the physical resonance of a piano, or a collaboration between both. “Both instruments place expressiveness at the core of their identity,” says Davide. “In the case of Terra di Confine, Lorenzo (Travaglini) has a unique touch and a distinctive sound on the piano that blends perfectly with the nuanced expressivity of the ROLI. I always try to emphasize the importance of the physical relationship between the musician and their instrument.”
Davide’s interest in bridging traditional and contemporary musical languages goes beyond purely performance; he has even written his Master’s thesis at the Conservatory exploring how Seaboard 2 can help facilitate that connection. Many of the ideas that he developed in his thesis are ideas he puts into practice with his compositions.
“The main idea behind this work was to create a hybrid form of music, something that stands between tradition and the future. A place where familiar elements blend with sounds that feel unfamiliar, a kind of retrofuturism. ROLI embodies this concept perfectly: its design recalls a traditional keyboard, yet it introduces futuristic elements both visually and sonically.”
“The creative process was rooted in free improvisation with classical and contemporary musicians, allowing for a genuine exchange of influences. Their unique approaches to their instruments inspired gestures and articulations that I translated onto the Seaboard. At the same time, the Seaboard’s distinctive and unconventional timbres encouraged classical players to imitate those sounds in their own way. This mutual dialogue gave birth to something truly new and authentic, something that couldn't have emerged in any other way. ROLI, in this sense, becomes the perfect bridge between distant musical worlds.”
So, what are the tools of the trade for someone like Davide? You’d assume that someone so intrigued by the technological potential of modern instruments would have a treasure trove of gear in abundance. But things are quite to the contrary. “I try to keep a really minimal setup,” says Davide. “I work mainly with Ableton, a small MIDI keyboard, my ROLI Seaboard, and two mics for my piano, or a small hand recorder sometimes, and that’s all.”
When using Seaboard 2, Davide finds it particularly exciting to use this new digital language of expression to emulate acoustic instruments and take traditional sounds into more contemporary, or even futuristic, contexts. “I think the sound designers who work for ROLI did a really great job in this sense. You wouldn’t normally expect to hear distortion or granular synthesis applied to a clarinet, double bass, or flute. And for me, that’s exactly where the magic begins, when you start from a recognizable sound and begin to push its boundaries.”
This continuing dialogue between traditional and contemporary sounds with the aid of almost-futurist instruments is the basis of Davide’s musical output. Playing in that space where the familiar becomes unconventional, Davide’s music blurs the lines between classical, ambient, and electronic genres, exploring the space where different languages meet and the magic that happens there. For his next release, Seaboard 2 takes a central role in the sound design. “At the moment, [Seaboard 2] is the most expressive instrument around for me,” Davide explains. “The expressiveness is the central motif of this new project. Sounds that are very personal, where the pitch fluctuates, gliding and always moving. Something that has a lot of ‘joy’ in it.”
That joy is something Davide hopes all musicians can experience, no matter their musical background. At times, the world of electronic music can feel not only alien, but also alienating for those who come from more traditional, classically trained backgrounds. For Davide, it’s not one or the other, but how both traditional and electronic instruments and sounds can influence one another, whether that’s in production or performance.
With this in mind, Davide offers some simple advice for those curious about MPE instruments like the Seaboard. “Try not to think about what you usually do on your main instrument. Explore new ways of approaching and playing. Start with the simplest things, like playing with just one or two fingers, and focus entirely on how the sound changes with every small movement you make.”
Likewise, Davide invites producers and musicians who are more digitally inclined to embrace traditional and acoustic instrumentation in their music creation and performance. “Remember that the imperfections of acoustic instruments can’t be fully imitated digitally, and that this uniqueness is essential when you want to create your own personal sound world.”
Discover more from Davide Sammarchi on Instagram, Bandcamp, and Spotify.
Learn more about Seaboard 2.
