Doyle & Keogh Music

'Face to Face' was released one year ago today. Thank you so very much to all who have listened, liked, shared or said nice things. It's heartening to see that 'Up at Night' has had a healthy number of plays on spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/album/5C3WwnD7v3TuOJSpe8yyuG?si=G6h3K-mPS6aaNo382jhKIg&utm_source=copy-link

Face To Face Doyle & Keogh · Album · 2020 · 11 songs.

We've added all of the weekly posts about each of the tracks on 'Face to Face' to our soundcloud page. For example...
https://soundcloud.com/doyleandkeogh/face-to-face

Face To Face The title track, 'Face to Face' is comparatively recent. All of the other pieces had their starting points sometime in the mid 1990s, as we have been showing in these weekly posts. In the first half o

When we wrote songs together, it was often the case that the words came first. But this was not how we wrote at first. Then, words and music might be written separately, and would be made to fit each other, with often awkward results. ‘Up at Night’ came from an early song from 1995 called ‘Let Me’. The only recording we have is little more than a vocal track and a piano replicating the vocal melody. We forgot about it, and even reused the words in a very different kind of song for guitar in 1997. Looking back though, that early song was something of a breakthrough for us, because it was the first time we used a method of writing that would work well for us: the words would suggest a melody, and the rest would follow from that. In 2009 we tried to finish the original ‘Let Me’ and realized that it would work as well, if not better, without the words. We called this version ‘Up at Night’ and it made us think about creating more instrumentals from songs we were working on. After we had done a few of these we thought they would work well together as a collection. It’s taken us several years to finally put this collection out, and ‘Up at Night’ was the track that always encouraged us to do so when we listened back to it:
https://youtu.be/4j4zM0fEkVg

We decided to finish the album with a sort of epilogue, a reprise of ‘Up at Night’ in an alternate mix with additional sounds that grow in volume, a little like distant noises from outside coming closer and ending on an unsettling note:
https://open.spotify.com/track/7zZJrFzoh5ieYqCoKYPSTX?si=B00cGSZXQkuCqcHvi_SnRg

Up At Night - Doyle & Keogh Taken from the album 'Face To Face' by Irish musicians Matthew Doyle & Graham Keogh, released April 2020. Footage of Earth taken from the International Space...

The penultimate post in our weekly series about the stories behind ‘Face to Face’ has now reached the penultimate track, ’Nowhere to Steer’. This was mostly recorded in 2011, and has three separate sections that take elements from a very old song from 1994. The middle one adapts the original melody of that song for its bass line, while adding a new melody along the top. The first section is built around an envisaged new vocal melody for two lines of the original words, and was largely improvised. The third section, an epilogue based around repetition, was new. The title, once again, comes from those original words.

https://open.spotify.com/track/0zYA9hlFgvhTufRLAExPwX?si=orE2BGyfSS-J1LyThehd8g

Nowhere To Steer Doyle & Keogh · Song · 2020

‘The Third Person’ is not that far off what we sound like when we play together, one on piano, the other on bass guitar. These were our core instruments from the beginning, so it’s an aspect of the recording that we like. As with the others, ‘The Third Person’ developed from an older song, which we had written in early 1996. In May and June 2009 we made a new version, adding a lot of new elements and a big sound. Alongside this we created a more austere instrumental piece, using many of these newer elements, and called it ‘The Third Person’. Here is the video we made for it this year:

https://youtu.be/oiJ1bajaYN4

The Third Person - Doyle & Keogh Taken from the album 'Face To Face' by Irish musicians Matthew Doyle & Graham Keogh, released April 2020. Footage of Dublin City Centre and Quays filmed in 2...

The Art of Self-Promotion’ was recorded in March and April 2009, and the final mix was done just before we released our album in April of this year. But like the rest of the album, it goes back to something older. In 1995 we wrote a song called ‘Propaganda’, and when we recorded it we included a sample from a tv show of the era (it was the mid-90’s after all). Since that recording was very rudimentary, we thought of having a go at it again in 2009. We even kept a little bit of the sample, and we also added a new piano epilogue. But then we felt the epilogue would work well on its own, and gave it the title ‘The Art of Self Promotion’.

https://open.spotify.com/track/15INouEMUSB2z2HhZAaaAZ?si=j1CQcDtrT1-UpXD4LdbBoA

The Art Of Self Promotion Doyle & Keogh · Song · 2020

‘Scattered’ goes right back to the beginning for us, to the first half of 1994. Our favourite song of those early efforts had a chorus with three common chords moving in sequence upwards (F, G, A minor), beginning with the words “whatever way we move” and ending with “scattered tiny raindrops”. Two years later we reworked the song to make the verses more melodic and less repetitive, and then we used this version as the basis of a 2009 recording. This recording had an entirely new arrangement and we called it ‘The Way We Move’. From that version we extracted this piece, which retains the three chord sequence at the beginning, and also the ‘scattered tiny raindrops’ melody (first heard at 1:07).

https://open.spotify.com/track/105cQhjMlLnrKFG0p96nle?si=tlcxO-05SSeweNZqy-RASw

Scattered Doyle & Keogh · Song · 2020

This week, the story behind ‘If They Listen”, track 5. We began a song in 1998 called ‘I Won’t Remember His Name’ which we never finished. In 2009 we came back to it, finished it, and fleshed it out. The bridge of that song was followed by a transitional few bars which we recognized had some potential. So those few bars became the opening, and main idea of ‘If They Listen’. A secondary idea characterized by three repeated notes also plays an important role, later appearing over undulating strings. In the final part of the song, similarly undulating strings play underneath a reappearanace of the main idea. We like this one because of its understated quality, and for its economy of means which felt like something we hadn’t really managed before.

https://open.spotify.com/track/6WukavzG24UDuNj8Ta98gE?si=2DKTogwAQ9CCUH8ZRm4JIQ

If They Listen Doyle & Keogh · Song · 2020

The title track, 'Face to Face' is comparatively recent. All of the other pieces had their starting points sometime in the mid 1990s, as we have been showing in these weekly posts. In the first half of 2004 we wrote four new songs, Face to Face among them. These followed a fallow period of several years, so it was good to be writing again. In all four the words came first (via email), and then the music was a setting of the words. 'Face to Face' was certainly the best of the four, and it took the longest to find music for - it was a matter of waiting until the right melody for the words came along.

We tried to record it in July 2005 in Dublin, but without too much success, and then we did a more complete version in January 2010. This we edited down in February 2012 to create the version on this album. It really did not change much, except that the chorus (the words ‘Face to Face’ repeated twice, and perhaps unnecessarily) was removed.

More to come later this week, including a playlist of some of our favourite instrumental music.
https://open.spotify.com/track/6wdtft9DJlfyjRw4vzYwgL?si=5zaDlU9mTZ6Re8NUxwR6EA

Face To Face Doyle & Keogh · Song · 2020

We were not in the same room, or even the same country for the recording of any of the tracks on the album. The only exception is the first thirty seconds of Renegade, which were recorded to tape in mid-January 1997, on a Yamaha DX7 synth. It was then known as ’The Renegade Flew’, an early attempt at a rock song with jangly guitars which we had written about a year prior. The three recordings we have from that time are desperately unsuccessful. We revisited the song in the first half of 2009, and used the basic chords of the original, overlaid with piano arpeggios, snippets of the original lyrics, and a largely new melody. The only part of the original melody to be retained is a four note motif heard first at 1:04. The track also includes a concluding epilogue, which reflects on what has gone before. Things came somewhat full circle because we recorded the vocal parts in Dublin in July 2009, but those do not form part of this final (can we say definitive?) version.

https://open.spotify.com/track/4lrLgAYPSiuDIzPIdy0TFe?si=LhVN8i8aQ3iHPiFc95EZ_g

Renegade Doyle & Keogh · Song · 2020

This week we’d like to tell you a little more about ‘High Above’, track six on ‘Face to Face’. It began life as a song titled ‘High Above on a Plateau So Far’. The words came first, in Jaunary 1997, and the music was a setting of the words. Places in the Dublin mountains (like Kilmashogue and Ticknock) had a certain part in the music too. The first recording was made in March 1997. In April and May 2010 we revisited and revised the song, adding completely new sections, and edited this version to make ‘High Above’ in September 2016.

The first minute of the track is little changed from the introduction of the original song. It builds to a statement of the ‘High Above on a Plateau So Far’ theme at 0:50. This theme reappears at 1:36, before a rising motif appears at 1:41. When revising the song in 2010, this was to be the backing for part of the second verse, but it had a lot more potential, and it became the basis for the entirely new instrumental section which begins at 2:26. Before that, at 1:54, there is a nostalgic mid-section, a brief moment of calm, perhaps evoking the opening lines of the original song (“I remember back to times I used to think about/ things were different, and always changing/ alive with sounds, and the world was breathing.”) The new section builds to two restatements of the ’High Above’ theme at 2:52 and 3:30 before ending on a note of ambiguity, the final note of the theme (E natural) sounding alongside a lower discordant note (E flat).

https://open.spotify.com/track/0J36XIwelOxD03ByD9dNK7?si=AwiXoWI9TmmlgwWLUC4LKw

High Above Doyle & Keogh · Song · 2020

Here is our new video for 'Up at Night'. It's the first track on the album, and it reappears at the end: a different mix of the latter part. The video features footage of earth taken from the International Space Station.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j4zM0fEkVg

Up At Night - Doyle & Keogh Taken from the album 'Face To Face' by Irish musicians Matthew Doyle & Graham Keogh, released April 2020. Footage of Earth taken from the International Space...

We’d like to introduce ‘Still’, the seventh track on our album, and the shortest. It’s origins lie in a musical idea from 1995 which had the working title 'Green', and which was expanded into a long and somewhat unwieldy song. We recorded it for the first time in September of that year, and again just over a year later. These demos were both over 7 minutes long. In 2009 we tried a reworked and paired back version under the title ‘Hold up the Flag’, and from that we developed ‘Still’. Perhaps it is a response to the song’s long winded past, salvaging the parts we like best: elements of the original ‘green’ idea, and melodies that came out the repeated phrases in the song, ‘we’ll learn’ and ‘none of which we really know’.

https://open.spotify.com/track/08kNHLTDiT9mngN6vpO2V3?si=RUJ-4_z4QYSnwwzzDf5VtA

Each week we’ll try to provide the story of a different track on the album.'

Still Doyle & Keogh · Song · 2020

We are on twitter:
https://twitter.com/doyleandkeogh

Doyle & Keogh (@doyleandkeogh) | Twitter The latest Tweets from Doyle & Keogh (). Official Twitter account of Irish musicians Matthew Doyle & Graham Keogh, debut album 'Face To Face' out now. Toronto and DUblin

We are on bandcamp:
doyleandkeogh.bandcamp.com

We are on soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/doyleandkeogh

Doyle & Keogh Listen to Doyle & Keogh | SoundCloud is an audio platform that lets you listen to what you love and share the sounds you create.

https://youtu.be/oiJ1bajaYN4

The Third Person - Doyle & Keogh Taken from the album 'Face To Face' by Irish musicians Matthew Doyle & Graham Keogh, released April 2020. Footage of Dublin City Centre and Quays filmed in 2...

Listen to our brand new album on Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/album/5C3WwnD7v3TuOJSpe8yyuG?si=TfDaJG-9SmOnHTIOx7RP0g

Face To Face Doyle & Keogh · Album · 2020 · 11 songs.