My live orchestral score for Cappelli Miles' live-action/animated commercial for Acorn Dentistry. Very obviously composed to evoke the rich, joyous vibes of Disney soundtracks and to match the traditional hand-drawn animation. Recorded by the Cape Town Philharmonic at Milestone Studios, with additional guitar and choral samples by me. See the piece being recorded here:  https://youtu.be/o7ipHJiRP5Y

"A Magical Place" - Acorn Dentistry, 30s (live orchestra TV spot)

One of 8 15s orchestral cues I composed for Cappelli Miles' "Over the Moon" campaign for The Mattress Company. The 8 cues all followed the same musical framework, with different sections or instruments highlighting different moods. This, my favourite, evokes a child's wonder at the stars.

"Over the Moon" - The Mattress Company (orchestra, 15s TV spot 3)

Another of my "Over the Moon" cues. This was the only substantially different one, where the client requested the orchestral music slowed down significantly with a solo violin (recorded by Leos Strings) soaring over the top.

"Over the Moon" - The Mattress Company (orchestra & live violin, 15s TV spot 6)

An unhappy piano piece. Mockup with Spitfire Audio LABS' Soft Piano.

Forgetting (Dave Dexter)

A wonderful live recording of my setting of the Robert Frost poem. This piece was composed for Lux in 2020 and premiered by them in their "Traditions Renewed" concert in Jan 2023.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (performed by Lux Choir 1/7/23) - Dave Dexter

Frontier-folk-western-stomp-acoustic-guitar-thing trailer music (and pretty much one of the gameplay themes) to TerraTech.

TerraTech Trailer Theme

Stripped down guitar-only music for those moments in TerraTech where you're not smashing your rivals into chunks.

TerraTech Exploration Music

TerraTech's christmas update music, featuring jingly things and many acoustic fiddles.

TerraTech Christmas Music

My most played track! NOW I MAY EAT

One of the variants on the background music that plays when enemies and danger get too near. Based on the trailer theme with a few extra bits.

TerraTech Danger Music  (acoustic, western, frontier-folk)

Retro-wave synth-lead-strewn track for upcoming Blood Alloy. It's tinged with 80s, rust and some kind of fine dipping sauce. Mainly the other two though.

CyberShieldGunArray (Retro synthwave)

Another collapsed game; Lifeless was a zombie MMO that offered the chance to record some pretty cool dark acoustic/folk rock.

Lifeless (acoustic, dark folk, alt rock)

I was blocking out a piece with some rough recordings and thought this was cool, so I did some improv on top and completely made a mistake on the very final run. Surely no-one will mind? 

Bouzouki Improv

A guitar/bouzouki arrangement of John Williams' Star Wars music - force theme, imperial march and main titles/overture - mixed in with The Animals' "House of the Rising Sun". Enjoy me playing all this live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05JfqDCvtfA

The idea came from my long-overdue working out of the force theme chords and realising that it shares a whole bunch with House of the Rising Sun. I arranged a minor version of the main theme that would work over it (as well as a cheeky slipping in of the original melody when the piece returns to E major) and pretty much accidentally figured the imperial march section backed onto the force theme. That bouzouki part is horrible to play; the transition to the F is far more difficult than it should be. There's also a wonderful bluesy transition from C to E at 1:12 which I lifted entirely from a LSO orchestral arrangement.

GO FALCONS

Force of the Rising Suns (A guitar/bouzouki tribute to John Williams, Star Wars and The Animals)

I found my mum dead over christmas. There have been better days, but given she died in her sleep, in her bed and in her house, there have been worse deaths.

She'd started learning ukelele over the previous year, which meant I'd been able to offer small tips on general guitar-type playing, so after she died I took her uke home and recorded a piece to play at the funeral. Ukes are more traditionally associated with mobile phone adverts and cat videos, but I think I made it suitably sad. The piece was based around something I'd always play on the uke when I was visiting.

So have this sadhappy and phone up your mums if they're still around.

In Your Sleep (for Mum)

This quite quickly became a conscious attempt to write action music in the style of John Williams' jagged dissonance, but before that there's big chords, dramatic crescendii and all that other good stuff.

Risky Business (Orchestral action soundtrack)

The recording session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek4OZ3eG2t8

One of my earlier orchestral pieces that I adapted into a cue featuring as many of my preferred styles as I could put together without getting too much; an uplifting brass-led theme, mysterious woodwind interlude and than a crashing, dark and dramatic tutti.

The purpose was to check that how I write, and how I orchestrate, would work in the real world and prove my ability to take a project from mockup to score, parts and performance myself. And also because I've been wanting to hear my music played by an orchestra for years.

Elaborate Revenge Strategies (heroic, fantasy, adventure)

The recording session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc4Oa1VfZOY

This was a much later piece that I added to the session purely because I really liked the self-contained nature and power of the theme, and it was a perfect excuse to try some twinkly Hollywood orchestration under the muscular brass-led fanfare.

The purpose was to check that how I write, and how I orchestrate, would work in the real world and prove my ability to take a project from mockup to score, parts and performance myself. And also because I've been wanting to hear my music played by an orchestra for years.

The Valency Of Valiance (brass fanfare)

The first music I wrote for the game, establishing the general feel and main themes. This is for the 2nd wave of gameplay.

Hangry Bunnies From Mars (Original Soundtrack)

A Hare To The Left (Wave 2 theme)

More orchestral recording. A less bombastic affair than my previous session, "Sails and Waypoints" focuses on woodwind and string melodies, with brass and percussion more supporting than fanfaring.

Sails and Waypoints (melodic, thematic)

Uplifting, adventurous fantasy score.

Recorded at Smecky Studios with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, November 14th, 2018. Cond. Richard Hein.

  Composed, orchestrated and mixed by Dave Dexter.
 Mastered by Nimrod Sound.

Paintings Of Clouds (uplifting, adventure)

The piece that I'll always think of as my first "real" orchestral writing. Deeply textured orchestration moving through several dramatic themes.

Recorded at Smecky Studios with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, November 14th, 2018. Cond. Richard Hein.

  Composed, orchestrated and mixed by Dave Dexter.
 Mastered by Nimrod Sound.

Icebreaker (thematic, adventure)

A whimsical piece, led by woodwinds and strings, that's either Christmassy or when the vicar did something scandalous.

Recorded at Smecky Studios with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, November 14th, 2018. Cond. Richard Hein.

  Composed, orchestrated and mixed by Dave Dexter.
 Mastered by Nimrod Sound.

Concerns of a Small Town (festive, whimsical, sparkling)

Someone with really chiselled stubble is probably being chased.

Recorded at Smecky Studios with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, November 14th, 2018. Cond. Richard Hein.

  Composed, orchestrated and mixed by Dave Dexter.
 Mastered by Nimrod Sound.

Get My Lawyer (action, suspense)

The most fanfare of all the fanfares I ever fanfared.

Recorded at Smecky Studios with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, November 14th, 2018. Cond. Richard Hein. Additional trumpet and horn by Marc Papeghin.

  Composed, orchestrated and mixed by Dave Dexter.
 Mastered by Nimrod Sound.

Out Of Options (fanfare, exciting, heroic)

A compilation of my favourite parts, or those most representative, from my Prague session. For the impatient and busy.

Prague Supercut (live orchestral compilation)

My second arrangement of Bi-Mart's jingle for the holiday season. The original plan was to take my acoustic arrangement and simply add some sleighbells and other wintry percussion to it, but it developed into an entirely new piece with extensive re-orchestration and added seasonal themes.

Bi-Mart ad jingle, 30s, holiday arrangement (TV and radio spots)

I was commissioned to produce two tracks for Bi-Mart, a retail chain in the American Northwest. Rather than creating entirely new music, my task was to arrange new and updated versions of one of their established themes. Working from the supplied track, I built up and re-recorded the music from scratch with a more acoustic, folk-country rock feel, playing all instruments.

Bi-Mart ad jingle, 30s (TV and radio spots)

A fast and loose dive into the world of fauxbourdon, a form of medieval choral harmonisation. In this case, the upper voice establishes melody, the middle voices follows in parallel 4ths and the lower voice harmonises the upper voice in 6ths. But with a string quartet, so there's an added cello to add beef and lots of points where I broke rank and did something else. 

Recorded by Leos Strings @ Brookespeare Music

Relics (fauxbourdon for string quartet)

My choral setting of Psalm 139:14-15, arranged for string sextet (four violins, viola & cello).

Fearfully And Wonderfully Made (chorale arranged for string sextet)

“Hiraeth” is a Welsh word for homesickness - not only for a home you’ve left, but a home you cannot return to or never existed at all. Having moved house shortly before I began composing the work, and being prone to crippling nostalgia for places not just months but decades in my past, this concept of extreme homesickness immediately caught my attention. Thus Hiraeth became a tone poem for my old homes and haunts, trees and rivers - places I’ve walked and never will again.

 

Compositionally, Hiraeth is centred round a five-note theme first established (0.45) after the work’s ominous, divided low strings opening. At first played without harmonic support, bass and cello divisi are introduced before the theme’s darker four-note variant is introduced (1.12), both joining for the piece’s crescendo (4.38). A second, more romantic and mournful theme acts as a counter to the bitter triumph of the first, played initially by violas and cellos (1.52) and returned to later with double bass, cello and finally unison violin octaves (3.46). The piece closes as it opens, ending with a flourishing if slightly dissonant swell.

 

A highly tonal piece, the orchestration is appropriately traditional - themes often played in unison across octaves between either cellos and violas, or violins I & II, with the other sections providing harmonic support. To achieve the wide, lush sound I love in string music, these supporting sections are generally divided; tremolo is often used for texture in quieter moments, and themes are passed between sections to be explored and evolved.

Mastered album audio, uploaded privately for review.

Hiraeth - Dave Dexter

Dave Dexter is a composer, orchestrator and multi-instrumentalist, specialising in classical, choral and orchestral writing for live players.

His string quartet piece "St Clement's Isle" was recently played on Classic FM on Jessica Curry's "High Score" show, and his works "Descendentem Sicut Columbam" and "Leaving the House" on BBC Radio York & 3 respectively. His choral setting of "I Sing Of A Maiden" was chosen for recording by ORA Singers and Suzi Digby in 2019 as part of their Christmas Gift scheme.

It's always risky to find an epoch one feels best represents music as a whole and state "This. This is what I want to do", but Dave certainly prefers the more traditional approach to scoring and composing. He'll work with samples if he has to, but the best moments come from hearing great musicians planting a glorious flag in the earth of a piece and making it their own. His music ranges from the beautiful and intimate, the achingly sad, the whimsical and the thunderously exciting; if not watched like a hawk he'll probably attempt to combine all four.

Dave is writing in the third person but is totally a cool guy and not arrogant in the slightest.

DaveDexterMusic

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