Matthew McCabe joined the Columbus State University music faculty in the Fall of 2009 as Visiting Assistant Professor of Audio Technology and is currently at the Assistant Professor rank.  Dr. McCabe holds degrees in music from the University of Richmond, Bowling Green State University, and the University of Florida.

Trained as a composer, he has focused on electroacoustic music and the creative use of music technology throughout his career. He worked as the music technology specialist at the University of Richmond for two years following graduation, and has served as the technical director for both the Florida and Third Practice Electroacoustic Music Festivals as well as working as a recording engineer and producer.  He serves on the board of the Society of Composers, Inc. as a system administrator and web designer and regularly consults with Columbus-area live music venues and churches about amplification techniques.

As the coordinator of the Schwob School of Music‘s technology area, Dr. McCabe teaches courses in recording arts, music technology, and electroacoustic and computer music.  He also works one-on-one with students completing independent studies, internships, and creative projects using technology, including composition and electroacoustic performance practice.

The Schwob School’s recording studio is also under his direction.  The studio produces more than 250 live concert recordings per year and has worked on many commercially-available recordings by CSU music faculty and many other musicians who come to Columbus to record with Dr. McCabe, his students, and make use of top-tier facilities in the RiverCenter for the Performing Arts.

In 2010, Dr. McCabe founded the CSU Popular Music Ensemble, which has explored a variety of popular and vernacular music and mounted performances on and off-campus.  Most notably, PME explored the blues and had the opportunity to do field work with the Music Maker Relief Foundation, visiting blues artists in Mississippi to explore their way of life and music.  Other topic areas in the ensemble have included Talking Heads, Prince, Led Zeppelin, Vietnam-era protest music, and Irish traditional music, a topic near and dear to Dr. McCabe’s heart as a member of Wolf & Clover, an award-winning ensemble based in Columbus that explores music with Celtic roots.

Dr. McCabe has also studied cognitive neuroscience and music psychology and has presented research at conferences hosted by the International Neuropsychological Society and the Society for Music Perception and Cognition. Most recently, he and his collaborators published a paper on semantic-motor integration which appeared in the journal PLoS ONE. His compositions can be found on the Centaur, Ravello, and Everglade labels, and his writings have appeared in Computer Music Journal, the New Grove Dictionary of American Music, PLoS ONE, and publications from the Society of Composers, Inc.  He has also toured with a number of ensembles as an audio engineer and technology collaborator, including eighth blackbird and Unexpected Outcomes.

Dr. McCabe is also a student of the Irish language and has earned A1 and A2 certifications in that language from the University of Maynooth.  He has attended immersion programs in County Donegal at Oideas Gael, and has completed courses at the University of Fairfield and Let’s Learn Irish, a language school in Washington, DC.