After high school, Neumann landed at the University of Michigan. “It took me two years at U-M to realize that I wasn’t going to be a graphic designer,” he says. But the university’s inability to ignite that portion of Neumann’s creativity was, in hindsight, a gift both to the nascent composer and to millions of future fans of the animated arts. 

Neumann outgrew the Roland 100 and was able to trade up to that Arp Odyssey during the summer between school years at U-M.

The Disneyland reference gains traction in relation to Walt Disney’s support for the California Institute for the Arts, a private arts college in Santa Clarita, California, Neumann’s next education locale. Mr. Disney had been an early benefactor and guiding force in the development of CalArts, and a proponent of the Wagnerian ethos of Gesamtkunstwerk (‘total art’). A central goal of the college was to encourage creation which engaged multiple art forms and media, and a cooperation of many contributors; Disney had used the same principle when developing the Walt Disney studio environment.

“I got into CalArts after proposing to the Film Graphics and Experimental Animation Department my plan to create projects using completely abstract visuals with electronic music behind them,” Neumann says. “It was very much like what we’re doing with I Promise 2 Be You.” Neumann set out to earn a degree in experimental animation and video effects with a minor in electronic music.

At CalArts he befriended fellow student Peter Chung, now renowned for his angular characters and unique animation style on Liquid Television’s ‘Æon Flux,’ and on multiple other projects to come. Neumann says, “Peter did his first hand-drawn animated student film with a moving camera technique, different perspectives, all amazing stuff, and I thought, ‘This guy is a first-year student, just out of high school?’”

Later in his career, Chung was the lead character designer for the animated series ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,’ ‘C.O.P.S.,’ ‘Phantom 2040,’ and ‘Reign: The Conqueror.’ He co-designed the characters in the popular Nickelodeon series ‘Rugrats,’ and co-directed both its pilot, ‘Tommy Pickles and The Great White Thing’ and ‘Rugrats’ opening sequence.

Neumann’s technical expertise increased through access to CalArt’s 100- and 200-Series Buchla synthesizers (“a fantastic learning experience,” he says); he traded up his Arp Odyssey for a Sequential Circuits Pro One.

In a blindingly bright bit of luck, Jerry Moseley, a representative for DeltaLab, walked past an open door in CalArts studio E105 when Neumann was working on music for his own film project. Moseley liked what he heard; he and Neumann created a demo recording together to promote the DL-2 Acousticomputer, an early digital delay and reverb effects box.

Moseley later became director of Fairlight US (distributor of the groundbreaking Fairlight CMI synthesizer, sampler and digital audio workstation) and eventually arranged for a Fairlight CMI to be housed in Neumann’s dorm room for a month. 

With it, Neumann learned, among other fundamental audio design lessons, a waveform–drawing approach to sound creation which has benefited his ability to recognize detailed audio components of any sound and use that knowledge to accurately recreate or enhance it.

Anyway, a $32k Fairlight CMI.

In his dorm room.

Other future animators and filmmakers developed their craft during those years at CalArts, and Neumann was tapped to score Wesley Archer’s ‘Jac Mac and Rad Boy Go!,’ Bill Kopp’s ‘Observational Hazard,’ (which garnered a Student Academy Award), and David Daniel’s maximalist strata-cut film ‘Buzz Box.’ All three of these early collaborators continued to serious success: Daniels’ later work included the animation on Peter Gabriel’s ’Big Time’ music video and segments of Pee-wee Herman’s ‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse;’ Archer directed dozens of episodes of ‘The Simpsons,’ ’Rick and Morty,’ and ‘King of the Hill,’ among others; Kopp’s resume includes credits for producer, director, writer, animator, voice director, and voice actor, variously, on seven feature films and more than two dozen television series.

In 1987, Neumann’s score for ‘Buzz Box’ got a spin on Los Angeles public radio station KCRW, and, in another click of the wheel of fate, Jim Kosub, the chief editor of Movietime, (which would later become E! Entertainment Television) heard the show and contacted Neumann for a chat. Neumann was out of work at the time, so he successfully pitched a job as a video editor there.

A job that he did.

For a while.

That is, until Neumann was invited to be a guest composer at the Centre International de Recherche Musicale in Nice, France.

For a year.

There, housed in the languid and legendary French Riviera, Neumann nurtured his composition skills and co-created, among other projects, “ … a ballet for 4 dancers and a robot” with Michel Redolfi and Michel Pascal. 

Back in the states, Neumann returned to Movietime and was there for the 1989 switchover to E!. Neumann says, “My job there was a foot in the door for scoring show opens, bumpers, teasers and trailers.”

Neumann had also been busy building sound effects for ‘Roller Coaster Rabbit’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ for Disney, and for fellow Michigan native Sam Raimi’s ‘Evil Dead 2.’ For that film, Neumann and Bruce Campbell (who played the lead character Ash Williams in the film) spent a month in a room in Eagle Rock, California just cranking out sound effects.

In the film’s infamous ‘Sammy-Cam’scene, in which Ash is being dragged through the woods, they captured Neumann’s voice through the AKAI S612 sampler to build a long scream, and used a pitch bender to modulate the effect over an octave.