Kirk McNally

Biography

Kirk McNally is a sound engineer who specializes in popular and classical music recording, and new music performances using electronics. His professional resume includes studio work in Toronto and Vancouver, working with numerous national and international recording artists. His work as a balance/electronics engineer for new music performances has been heard in performances across Canada; in Tel Aviv, Israel; Graz, Austria; New York, United States; and as part of the Fromm Concert series at Harvard University. 

He joined the School of Music at the University of Victoria in 2006 to support a new combined program in Music and Computer Science. In 2016, he was appointed as assistant professor of Music Technology for the School, and is the current program administrator for the undergraduate combined major program and the graduate program in Music Technology. His research and creative work has been supported by: the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD), the Canada Council for the Arts, the University of Victoria’s Learning and Teaching Centre, and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. 

His current research explores the multitude of ways that recording engineers and producers communicate with musicians, both verbally and through their use of technology to manipulate sound, in order to better understand how they create the music we know and love in our everyday lives.In 2017 he received an Internal Research/Creative Project Grant from the University of Victoria to support this work and in 2018 he was awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant for his project, “Creating Capacity for Research into Sound Recording and Music Production”. 

• Curriculum vitae

Selected publications 

• McNally, Kirk; Seay, Toby; Thompson, Paul. “What the Masters Teach Us: Multitrack Audio Archives and Higher Education.” The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Education: Perspectives and Practices, Zack Moir, Bryan Powell and Gareth Dylan Smith, editors. Bloomsbury Publishing, UK. In Press. 
• De Man, Brecht, Kirk McNally, and Joshua D. Reiss. "Perceptual evaluation and analysis of reverberation in multitrack music production." Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 65.1/2 (2017): 108-116.
• McNally, Kirk. "What The Masters Teach Us: New Approaches In Audio Engineering And Music Production Education." Proceedings of the 2nd AES Workshop on Intelligent Music Production. Vol. 13. 2016.

Selected discography

• Colin Tilney. Froberger 1649, Recorded June 2010, Music and Arts, 2013, 1 compact disc. (Engineer and digital editing)
• Aventa Ensemble, Le Signe Du Lion - Gilles Tremblay, Recorded 2007, Centrediscs/Centredisques, 2007. 1 compact disc.  (Engineer and digital editing)
• Bryan Adams. Room Service, Recorded 2003-2004, Polydor/Mercury, 2004, 1 compact disc. (Engineer)
• R.E.M. Around the Sun, Recorded 2003-2004, Warner Bros., 2004, 1 compact disc. (Assistant Engineer)