Recording a Red Hot Chili Peppers style band

[AntonioPetrole]

So i'm driving down to West Virginia to record my friends band. They have a Chili Peppers style of music with a female singer. My question is how different is this compared to tracking a death metal band?

They want a sound similar to Stadium Arcadium and to me it sounds like the guitar is right down the center? I was gonna double track it. There is only 1 guitarist. The bass we will be doing DI and the signal will also split into his sansamp pedal. For her vocals I'm gonna have to use my AKG perception 220 because thats the only thing I have available currently.

I told them I don't feel confident in mixing them but they have insisted a million time (the last studio they went to had lots of nice gear but the engineer recorded everything to tape and I really hate how their mixes came out of there.

Here is the band for reference, any tips would be awesome. I'm kinda lost on this but I figure it will be a fun experience so I'm just gonna go for it

http://www.facebook.com/HB.Morgantown

Edit: Gear I will be using

Slate (or superior) programmed
Countryman Type 85 into my Profire 610 (guitars and bass)
Split signal to Samsamp (bass)
AKG Perception 220 (for vocals)

Its gonna be a very limited gear traveling situation.

 

[crillemannen]

Red hot chili peppers is all about groove ad i don't now how you gonna achieve that with midi drums. And the bass would really benefit from a real bass rig with this kind of music.

I would probably dubble track i the choruses. This kind of music can have all sort of crazy things going on in the sound field. Guitar to the left, bass to the right etc. Experiment

 

[StefTD]

do whatever you like, but I would use a complete different approach than recording a death metal band.
I wouldn't program the drums, even if you only have 2 mics for example I would record them, try to get
a decent sound out of it, the live feel and groove is way more important for stuff like that than the
"perfect" sound if you get what I mean.
some saturation on the drumbus could help you there, if you dual track the guitars, I wouldn't hard pan
them, more like 50-70% per side, a bit different sounds, like a les paul for one side, strat for the other
or whatever.
Work with automation to change the volumes during the different parts of the songs-try to get the best
out of the vocals, harmonies and so on can help because the main audience listens to the melody, the
groove and the vocals, 95% of the people aren't interested if the guitar sounds like a marshall stack or
like an old solid state radio as long as the song has a catchy vocal line that sounds cool.
Using some saturation on the masterbus to glue everything, get some punch and so on helps, too.

Edit:
About the bass: most of the modern metal stuff uses bass as a lower guitar, mids removed, a bit distorted
and so on-for stuff like that it's way different and there's a huge difference if the bass player plays tight
with the drums, a bit behind them or a bit before the beat.
soundwise there are loads of different things that might work, listen to older groove and bass orientated
stuff like chili peppers, rage against the machine and so on, sometimes the bass is a bit distorted, sometimes
just lo mids, almost no highs but still upfront and so on, really depends on the song.

 

[AntonioPetrole]

thanks for the extensive information guys. Unfortunately I really don't have the option of recording live drums. This is starting to seem like more trouble than its worth. Any other opinions?

 

[StefTD]

really no option? sucks, that would be really cool, even if you sit in the same room as the drummer and just use
two mics, if you have to programm the drums I would really work on the groove and the velocities, really, really
work on this.
and I would use a reverb and loads of saturation on it, trying to make it sound more real, I really like to use the
same reverb on the masterbus that I used on the drums (just a bit more quiet) and saturate everything so it
glues well, doing this with my accoustic pop rock stuff and so on very often where I have to program the drums.