News

Archive

FAQ

Photos

Interview

DVD

Other

Links

Discussion

Chat

Contact

John Neff Official Website

Dugpa: How did you become involved in the music industry?

John Neff: I started playing in bands in the Detroit area in 1963; I made my first record in ?65, another one in ?67, my first album in ?69 and ?70. I made about 125 non Motown R&B records as a session guitarist between ?70 and ?73, toured for many, years with lots of different bands. I moved to Toronto, then Phoenix, then Hawaii for almost 14 years, built a studio there with Walter Becker from Steely Dan, we did the ?Kamakiriad? album for Donald Fagen and Walter?s Solo album. Walter bought me out in ?92, and I moved to Phoenix, built a great big studio over there and it didn't do too well, cause there?s no business in Phoenix. It?s too close to LA. I moved here and started designing studios.

Dugpa: So tell me, what were the circumstances for you meeting with Lynch?

John Neff: In 1996, I started a studio supply firm with an architectural firm in Los Angeles that designs world-class studios all over the world. When my studio wasn?t going well in Arizona, one of the partners of the architectural firm suggested that I move to Los Angeles, and we get real official for equipment for studios. One of their clients was David. He owns three houses in the Hollywood Hills, one of which he lives in, and the other two are workshops of the sort. The third one became the studio, which was the one that was used as a set in Lost Highway. Most of that house was demolished, as much as the cities zoning would allow, and then rebuilt as a studio. The design complies to the THX specification for a mixing theater and it has three 35mm projectors with full music recording facilities.

Dugpa: What type of recording gear do you use there? Is it mostly digital? Any analog?

John Neff: We have two massive Protools systems. We also have 24-track analog, DA-88? We use the 24-track a lot as sort of a pitch shifter. On Jocelyn?s record, there was a song where she played a crystal bowl? like a big wine glass. And it had a very beautiful specific note, and we recorded it in Protools and ran it over to the 24 track, and with a guitar tuner, tuned it to I think 11 different notes. Using the vari-speed of the 24 track because that doesn?t introduce digital, artificial glitches. So we built up tracks back in Protools of these various pitches and then using faders on the board, I could play it like draw bars of an organ and change the note that followed her singing. So we use analog and digital interchangeably. Neither one is better, neither one is perfect.

Dugpa: So back to your initial meeting with Lynch?

John Neff: See how we got sidetracked? The studio was already roughed in, but not finished. Not even the final floors were in there yet. We had our first technical meeting in April of ?97. We sat at the edge of the cable trough on cold cement on a Winter night, and had the first meeting about the technical design. During the meeting, we fleshed it out and really started designing how the room would work. Initially it was going to be used in a very limited manner as a production room; that was mostly a screening room. Because he already owned a Euphonix console, it was going to house the console and a few little goodies to be able to perhaps do some contributory work toward a film, but never originally intended to mix a film. As we went through the design process, every week, David would say? ?Oh it has to do this, oh it has to do that? and the board went from this little tiny 48 channel, series two, to a full blown 64-channel CS2000 with film formatter, and the whole bit. I mean the console got much much bigger. Much more gear got involved. There are three isolation rooms in the studio plus a main floor, plus the screening area. It?s a one-room studio essentially, but it had the functionality of five different specific functions in a normal studio complex. Each of which are somewhat interdependent, but they are also independent, and the room has to be configured differently. The console is sort of a non- standard console. It does not come up knowing what it is. It is essentially a soft desk. You have to program it and tell it what it is for each session, and for each type of work, and you have to build templates and all kinds of other stuff. In the course of installing the equipment in August of 1997, I said to David, ?I have to start meeting with your engineer? this is an extremely complex room, and we have to basically write a manual on how this thing is gonna work?, and he goes ?I don?t have an engineer. I?m gonna use freelancers.? I started laughing and said ?Well, this room is so far outside the scope of an ordinary studio, there?s no way a freelancer is gonna come in here and know how it works. They?ll have to come in two, three weeks ahead of time, figure out the room, test some stuff, and then go to work. And then you are still going to have a slow ramp up in your work because they?re not gonna know what to do.? And he goes ?Well, it looks like you are gonna have to be the Engineer then.? I laughed and said I couldn?t afford the pay cut? which I couldn?t. So the installation happened, and time went on. He had shot a commercial for Honda, and it turned out to be a very tremendous commercial for the Passport in ?97. It ran the whole model year, as a matter of fact, and it didn?t have a single word of narration in it. Very unique spot. Before the room was finished, he wanted to mix that in his room, so he hired me to mix it, and we did. And at that point, he told me that he had an album booked, which turned out to be Jocelyn?s. I told him ?I had been thinking about what you said, and life is like a hallway with doors and windows, and you?re moving down that hallway, an if a window opens, you can take advantage of it, or if a door opens, you can walk through it, but THAT window and THAT door will never open again. So I?d like to take the gamble and jump in.? So we started working together.