We moved in full time to our homestead cabin in the Mojave Desert in May of 2017. I was up and running quickly and in June 2017, I mixed Feel Alright's album, In Bad Faith. It was my first album length project with the new set up. Working without a mixing console was taking some getting used to. I figured out how to use my analog compressors in the mix live without the mixer and I was beginning to enjoy my latest setup, both it's limitations and it's new possibilities. But there was a new factor in the set up that I was still getting used to: the fact that I was my own power station. Our cabin made it's own electricity on an ancient solar set up. It was both outdated and under powered. It was a twelve volt system.
But there were positives. The inverter for the set up was old as well, but it did a pretty good job of mimicking a sine wave. My equipment ran really quiet. There was plentiful sun. If I worked during the day, I had enough electricity to run... most of the time.
I have worked with Craig Fahner on at least four or five projects over the years starting with a Mandates album and some singles, and there was a country band in there somewhere to. I can't recall the name, but that was a fun album to mix. Craig is a talented recording engineer up in Calgary and I had mixed those projects for him in the past. Feel Alright is his baby. It was an honor to be asked to mix this album and I want to formally thank him here on my blog for his extra patience while I "mastered" my off the grid electric situation during the mixing for In Bad Faith. In the end, we only suffered from a slower than expected work flow. We figured it would take about four days to mix the record. I believe we were at it for about a week. This was because I expected to work the eight to ten hour days I was accustomed to before our move to the desert. Due to our energy situation, the days were shortened to around 6 hours. Those were good hours though!
Mixing is my favorite part of the recording process. Feel Alright had excellent songs and recordings for me to dig my ears into. Craig's sessions were edited and ready to go and I could get through a first pass of a mix in less than three hours. I used real analog delays in the mix; a space echo and an Ibanez AD202. A Distressor, 1176, two Chandler LTD2s and an AMEK/Neve 9098 were all used live in the mix as well. I monitored on ADAM monitors through a 300 watt CROWN amplifier. Not bad for an under powered little twelve volt set up!
Just a few months after mixing this album, we upgraded to a more robust, pure sine wave, 48 volt system. But that's another story I hope to tell you sometime later.
Here's a review for In Bad Faith. The album streams here too.
http://exclaim.ca/music/article/feel_alright-in_bad_faith_album_stream
Feel Alright on Bandcamp
https://feelalright.bandcamp.com/
But there were positives. The inverter for the set up was old as well, but it did a pretty good job of mimicking a sine wave. My equipment ran really quiet. There was plentiful sun. If I worked during the day, I had enough electricity to run... most of the time.
I have worked with Craig Fahner on at least four or five projects over the years starting with a Mandates album and some singles, and there was a country band in there somewhere to. I can't recall the name, but that was a fun album to mix. Craig is a talented recording engineer up in Calgary and I had mixed those projects for him in the past. Feel Alright is his baby. It was an honor to be asked to mix this album and I want to formally thank him here on my blog for his extra patience while I "mastered" my off the grid electric situation during the mixing for In Bad Faith. In the end, we only suffered from a slower than expected work flow. We figured it would take about four days to mix the record. I believe we were at it for about a week. This was because I expected to work the eight to ten hour days I was accustomed to before our move to the desert. Due to our energy situation, the days were shortened to around 6 hours. Those were good hours though!
Mixing is my favorite part of the recording process. Feel Alright had excellent songs and recordings for me to dig my ears into. Craig's sessions were edited and ready to go and I could get through a first pass of a mix in less than three hours. I used real analog delays in the mix; a space echo and an Ibanez AD202. A Distressor, 1176, two Chandler LTD2s and an AMEK/Neve 9098 were all used live in the mix as well. I monitored on ADAM monitors through a 300 watt CROWN amplifier. Not bad for an under powered little twelve volt set up!
Just a few months after mixing this album, we upgraded to a more robust, pure sine wave, 48 volt system. But that's another story I hope to tell you sometime later.
Here's a review for In Bad Faith. The album streams here too.
http://exclaim.ca/music/article/feel_alright-in_bad_faith_album_stream
Feel Alright on Bandcamp
https://feelalright.bandcamp.com/
RSS Feed