Video: Red Hot Chili Peppers' LA Mansion Drums | What's That Sound?

Red Hot Chili Peppers, Chad Smith (2007). Photo by: Kristian Dowling, Getty Images.
Red Hot Chili Peppers, Flea (2007). Photo by: Gareth Cattermole, Getty Images.

If you have to ask, you'll never know: for this week's episode of our What's That Sound series, Noam and Jessica tackle the aggressive, amped-up, and undeniably 90s drum sound of Red Hot Chili Peppers' 1991 magnum opus Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Buckle up, because this episode is perhaps our most maximalist yet: there are a whole lot of microphones—14 to be exact!—and plenty of processing.


Drums in the Style of RHCP's "Give It Away"
By Reverb
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The story goes that shortly after signing with Warner Brothers, the Peppers decided to spice things up and record their next album in an unconventional setting. Producer Rick Rubin proposed a mansion in Los Angeles that allegedly belonged to Harry Houdini, and the tracking process that ensued there turned out to be a stunt performance in and of itself.

Jessica used a '70s Gretsch kit for this session—after a bit of experimentation, it only figures we ended up using Chad Smith's signature Pearl snare tuned up high with minimal damping. For the cymbals, we went for a pair of Zildjan 14" K Sweet Hats and a Zildjan 18" Dark Crash.

As far as microphone placement and processing is concerned, Noam made choices based on photographs from the sessions and footage from the band's VH1 "making-of" documentary. The kick received both 'in' and 'out' microphones—a Beyerdynamic M88 and a Neumann 47 respectively—while the hats were miked with a Neumann KM84.

The top of the snare was captured by two mics—the mid-range smack of a Shure SM57 and the body from an AKG 451—precisely placed so that the capsules are equidistant to dodge phasing issues and create a well-rounded punch (we also threw in a AKG C414 on the snare bottom for some extra sizzle). Considering the size of the kit, three overheads were used for the original recording—for this we used a pair of Schoeps V4s and a vintage Neumann U87.

The most central ingredient to this recreation are the room mics, as the band used the space of the mansion to their advantage. As such, we spread a pair of bidirectional Coles 4038s as far and wide as possible before opting for dark EQ and duplicating the take. The first stereo pair was then thrown through a limiter (a Chandler TG-1), while the other was gated and sidechained to the snare drum so that each hit draws out the room. We placed a Mic Shop MS47 three feet directly in front of the kit, which was squashed with heavy compression for a little extra energy. To top it off, we added two reverbs—courtesy of Valhalla's Room plugin and an AMS RMX16 set to non-linear—to add some extra length to the room sound.

How close did we get to the original? We don't want to give it away—check out the full video above and see how we did.


Learn more about how your favorite artists created their signature sounds in our ongoing What's That Sound? series.

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