JOHN MAYER
HIDDEN HILLS, CALIFORNIA
John Mayer wanted to record his album “Battle Studies” in a home environment. Chad Franscoviak brought Jay Kaufman & Associates in to transform this 10,000 sq ft leased home into a high end recording environment. One of the significant challenges was that the house had lots of stone and faux painted surfaces. The owner of the house requested that the house be left completely intact, which dramatically limited many options for isolation and acoustic treatment. Jay ended up using lots of drapes with mass loaded vinyl lining to produce a decent amount of isolation where required. Custom acoustic treatment was judiciously applied in a number of spaces that produced excellent sounding rooms.
Kaufman & Associates created a really comfortable control room that had two large picture windows facing the backyard, and was large enough for the freestanding UREI 813, Neve console, and tons of outboard equipment. A number of other rooms were treated specifically for drums, John’s vocals and acoustic guitars, and bass amp room. The tracks ended up sounding great.