Original Music Production & Edinburgh Recording Studio

Producer’s Biography

Iain McKinna has been a freelance  professional session guitarist, bass player, drummer, composer, singer, arranger, audio engineer, musical director and Edinburgh-based music producer for over 30 years, working in all areas of the music business. He started out at Edinburgh’s Southside Studios in 1976 working with Punk and New wave bands, The Scars, TV21, The Valves and Freeze. He formed the band Flying Colours in 1981 with Jamie Campbell and was signed to Simon Cowell and Ellis Rich’s Publishing Company E&S music and performed regularly at London’s Embassy Club as well as a UK tour supporting Level 42.  After that he worked as a sound engineer and session musician at Edinburgh’s Planet Studios & Palladium Studios.

Live musician, songwriter and recording engineer

After many years as a gigging musician and recording engineer Iain went on to work for most of the major record labels at Edinburgh’s Sonic Studios in the mid to 80s through to 1992 when he started Offbeat.
In broadcasting Iain has worked on “live” shows, pre-recorded specials, series background music and documentaries. Film credits include “Man Dancin’”, “The Story Of Film”. “First Light Movies” etc. In theatre  audio production he has worked for several years with the Edinburgh Kings Theatre and the “Songs Of Sister Act” with MD Rich Anderson. As a professional songwriter and collaborator he has co-written two number 1 hits in Germany, Japan & Australia and two top ten World music hits. He also writes for other artists, most recently achieving a no1 on icompositions.com. His song “Living The Dream” won best song award for the Music In Scotland Trust in 1992.

As a recording engineer at Offbeat he has worked on many recordings for major and independent record labels, most recently for Universal Records. Two albums reached no1 in the Classic FM charts and one achieved a Classical Brit Award for best album in 2009.

As a gigging musician, he has performed with The Talitha Mackenzie band and Pipedreams at the famous Melk Weg (Milky Way), three consecutive years at T In the Park, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Barrowlands, Brampton Festival, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Beijing Festival, Terschelling Island Holland, The Waterfront Toronto, Womad UK and Womex, Berlin. He has also toured in Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Canada and throughout the UK.

Freelance music producer

As a freelance record and  music producer Iain’s work ranges in style from Pop, Rock, Blues and Soul through to Classical, Jazz and World music.
He has recorded albums, EPs and singles for many artists and labels (including a recent 2012 No.1 album on Celtic Radio USA), a number three album in the US World Music charts, a number twelve in the European music charts. He has worked on music production projects with many well known singers and songwriters from Scotland, the wider UK and abroad, and brings his experience as a musician and session player to many of the recordings he works on making him a popular choice of producer for solo artists and songer/songwriters. He is connected to a wide range of great session musicians worldwide. He has produced recordings for BBC TV – BBC Radio1, Channel 4, More 4, STV + BBC World Service.

Iain is currently working on an album of compositions for his project Offbeat Rhythm Section with Electric Violinist Offbeat Kirsty  You can see other examples of Iain’s work in Offbeat Projects