AES Student Blog

Kirk McNally is a sound engineer who specializes in popular and classical music recording, as well as new music performances using electronics. He has worked with national and international recording artists in studios in Toronto and Vancouver, including REM, Bryan Adams and the National Youth Orchestra of Canada.

Kirk is the assistant professor of Music Technology for the School of Music at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He is the program administrator for the school’s undergraduate combined major program in music and computer science 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, the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).  

His research explores the diverse ways recording engineers and producers communicate with musicians, both verbally and through their use of technology to manipulate sound, to better understand how they create the music we know and love in our everyday lives. In 2018 he was awarded a SSHRC Insight Development Grant for his project, “Creating Capacity for Research into Sound Recording and Music Production.” 

Having built a discography boasting names such as Wiz Khalifa, Donnie McClurkin, The Roots, Open Mike Eagle, Billy Woods, Milo and many more, Paul "Willie Green" Womack has established himself as one of the top record men in independent urban music. Residing in Brooklyn NY, Womack is a graduate of Berklee College of Music's MP&E program and is a freelance producer, engineer and songwriter. 

Piper Payne is a mastering engineer in Oakland, CA, where she works on albums for independent artists and major labels. Piper is the Owner and Chief Mastering Engineer of Neato Mastering and she is a Co-Founder and the Chief Product Officer for Second Line Vinyl, a new Oakland-based vinyl record pressing plant. She recently finished her term as President of the SF Chapter of the Recording Academy and serves on the P&E Wing Steering Committee and the Advisory Council. She is also the Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the Audio Engineering Society’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee and she is on the committee of the AES SF Chapter as well as an active member of Women's Audio Mission. Piper is an audio professor and guest lectures often about mastering and recording. Piper began her career with a BFA in Audio from The University of Michigan, continuing her graduate education in Audio at the University of Stavanger in Norway. She has apprenticed under some of the best-known Mastering and audio mentors in the world, including Bob Katz in Orlando and Michael Romanowski in San Francisco. Piper moved to San Francisco after working at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada as the Senior Audio Associate in a work-study program that had her climbing glaciers for film sound design and recording jazz orchestras in the same day! Her focus is mastering and she lives for quality and equality in audio.

Piper has a diverse background in musical styles. As a drummer, she knows that the best outcome of every project is that it has to feel good. As an engineer, Piper is focused on technical quality and correctness. But, at the end of the day, mastering is about format conversion and quality control so the project gets just what it needs.

Piper has mastered a wide variety of music including nationally renowned artists Third Eye Blind, Madame Gandhi, Geographer, Elettrodomestico (Jane Wiedlin/Go-Go’s), Shamir, Between You & Me, David Messier, and Fritz Montana, as well as Bay Area favorites Kat Robichaud, ANML, Sioux City Kid, The She’s, Emily Afton, Abbot Kinney, Travis Hayes, Kendra McKinley, Van Goat, and Diana Gameros.

Bill Crabtree is a Professor of Recording Industry and the Director of the Masters of Fine Arts program in Recording Arts and Technologies at Middle Tennessee State University. He works as freelance musician, recording engineer, and technical writer. He has engineered a wide scope of studio productions in Boston and Nashville. As a technical writer he recently completed the latest Operator’s Manual for the API Legacy Plus console. He teaches courses in multi-track recording and studio production in MTSU’s B.S. in Recording Industry and M.F.A in Recording Arts and Technologies.

 Margaret is a Mastering Engineer at Chicago Mastering Service. She is a 2005 graduate of Syracuse's Music Industry program (instrument: trombone), and holds a Master’s in Music Technology (2007) from New York University. After completing her Master's, she was an Audio Engineer in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts (2009), then later that year a Recording Engineer at the Aspen Music Festival (the latter of which she repeated in summers 2010 and 2016). 

In 2009 Maggie moved to Norway to attend the year-long post graduate program in Music Production and Recording at the University of Stavanger. After a brief assistantship in 2010 at Galaxy Studios (Belgium), she moved back to Norway, where she was as a Mastering Engineer at Sonovo Mastering and an Audio Archivist at the Norwegian Institute of Recorded Sound until 2016. In addition, during her time in Europe she was involved in acoustic recording projects throughout Western Norway, and a location recordist for a handful of independent films throughout Europe.

In January 2017 she accepted her full-time position at Chicago Mastering Service, where she works with all genres of music and also cuts the lacquer masters used in vinyl record pressing. Labels she’s worked with include Merge, Fat Possum Records, and Super Secret Records. She is an active member of the Audio Engineering Society, enjoys giving workshops on critical listening and mastering to students, and spends a lot of her free time running.

Richard King is an Associate Professor in the Music Research Department at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University in Montreal. He is a 14-time Grammy award winning recording engineer and member of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music, Media, and Technology (CIRMMT). His research interests include small environment acoustics, the process of music mixing, and multichannel recording and reproduction in three dimensions. His book entitled "Recording Orchestra and other classical music ensembles" is now available as part of the Focal Press “AES presents” series.