Andrew Wade’s A Day To Remember ‘Dream Gate’ for Perfect Metal Drums

Let’s face it, getting metal drums to sit right can be a battle. You want power, punch, and clarity, but bleed, inconsistent hits, and finicky gates often turn your drum mixing session into a frustrating slog. What if there was a way to get virtually perfect drum transients every time, ensuring every ghost note is audible and every flam is distinct?

Enter Andrew Wade, the legendary producer behind iconic A Day To Remember records. He’s developed a killer technique he calls the “Dream Gate,” and it’s a game-changer for making any halfway decent drum performance absolutely shine. This isn’t your standard noise gate that chops off your sustain or misses subtle hits; it’s a detailed, surgical approach in Pro Tools to ensure every single drum hit is pristine, clean, and perfectly consistent. If you’ve ever struggled with messy drum tracks, this method is for you.

Ready to transform your drum tracks from problematic to powerful? Let’s dive into how Andrew Wade crafts these flawless drum sounds, a process he showcased during his deep dive into mixing A Day To Remember on Nail The Mix.

The Age-Old Problem: Why Traditional Drum Gating Falls Short

We’ve all been there. You slap a gate on your snare, and it either chatters, cuts off the tail, or worse, the threshold is a constant battle between catching soft hits and letting in cymbal bleed. Traditional gates, while useful, often aren’t quick or accurate enough for the demands of modern metal. And manually editing every single hit? Chopping out bleed, fading, and adjusting levels by hand is incredibly time-consuming and, let’s be honest, soul-crushing, especially on a fast or complex performance. This is where the need for a more robust, yet efficient, solution comes in.

Introducing the “Dream Gate”: A New Standard for Drum Clarity

Andrew Wade’s “Dream Gate” method is an automated (well, semi-automated) process designed to create the absolute perfect gate. The core idea is to make any well-played drum take totally usable by:

1. Slicing precisely at the transients of each drum hit.
2. Making all these individual regions the same length.
3. Applying a special “protective” fade during the shortening process.
4. Normalizing each hit individually for ultimate dynamic consistency.

The result? The clearest, most defined drum performance you can get, ready to punch through the densest mix.

The “Dream Gate” Workflow: Step-by-Step with Andrew Wade

This method is primarily demonstrated in Pro Tools, utilizing tools like Beat Detective and the Object Tool. Let’s break down how Andrew achieves this.

H3: Prep Work: Setting the Stage in Pro Tools

Before diving into the heavy editing, a little organization goes a long way:

1. Duplicate Your Tracks: Work on copies. Select your drum shell tracks (kick, snare, all toms) and duplicate them, choosing “active playlist only.” This way, your original audio remains untouched if you need to revert.
2. Organize: Group these new working tracks. Andrew often changes their color to visually distinguish them from the originals, preventing accidental edits on the source audio.

H3: Surgical Slicing: Beat Detective Deep Dive

Beat Detective is your best friend for this stage. The goal is to accurately separate each hit onto its own clip.

• Initial Setup:
  • Open Beat Detective (Command+8 on Mac numpad, or Ctrl+8 on Windows numpad).
  • Ensure your session tempo is correctly set (e.g., 120 bpm in the demo).
  • For detection, Andrew selects both 16th notes and triplets to catch various rhythmic figures.
  • Mode: Select “Clip Separation.”

H4: Kick Drum Precision

This is where things get a bit counterintuitive but yield fantastic results:

• Analysis Mode: For the kick drum, select High Emphasis. Andrew found this setting surprisingly helps Beat Detective focus on the kick transient itself rather than picking up excessive snare bleed, which can happen with Low Emphasis.
• Threshold: Adjust the sensitivity (threshold) so Beat Detective accurately identifies all kick drum transients. You might need to scroll through and manually adjust a few trigger points that are slightly off, especially if the kick pattern is very fast or dynamic.

H4: Snare Drum Accuracy

The snare requires slightly different settings:

• Analysis Mode: Switch to Low Emphasis for the snare.
• Trigger Pad: Set this to 1ms. This tiny pad ensures accuracy while still giving a micro-buffer. Andrew experimented with 0ms but found 1ms to be the sweet spot.
• Threshold: Again, set the sensitivity to capture all snare hits. If you have sections with very soft ghost notes or complex rolls (like blast beats) where hits are being missed, select just that problematic section and re-analyze with a more sensitive threshold. Don’t stress about getting it perfect for the entire track in one pass if dynamics vary wildly.

H4: Taming the Toms

Toms are usually more sporadic than kick and snare.

• If your toms are already edited (bleed removed between hits), you might just need to refine existing cuts.
• If not, Andrew’s approach is to highlight only the sections of the song where toms are actually played. Then, use Beat Detective within those selections to separate the tom hits. Trying to detect toms across an entire track filled with bleed is a recipe for frustration. After separating, manually delete the unwanted clips around the tom hits.

Once all your shells are separated, you can close Beat Detective.

H3: The “Protective Fade” & Uniform Region Lengths

This is where the real magic of the “Dream Gate” starts to take shape.

1. The “Protective Fade”: Select all your newly separated drum clips. Apply a 20ms fade-in to the beginning of every single region. This is crucial for the next step.
2. Uniform Shortening:
   • Select all clips again using the Object Tool (this is important, as it allows you to adjust all clip lengths simultaneously from their end points).
   • Set your Pro Tools Nudge value fairly high (e.g., Bars:Beats, 1|0|000).
   • Use the shortcut to shorten regions from the end: Control + Minus (–) on the numeric keypad (for Mac, might be Command + Minus on some systems, verify your Pro Tools shortcuts). You’ll see the longer regions start to shrink.
   • Keep nudging until they stop shortening at that value. Then, decrease your Nudge value (e.g., to 0|0|500, then 0|0|100, then 0|0|020 or even smaller) and continue shortening.
   • Why the “Protective Fade”? That 20ms fade you added at the start prevents the regions from being shortened into oblivion. Pro Tools won’t let you shorten a clip past its fade. This ensures every transient retains at least that 20ms of audio.
3. Remove Fades: Once all clips are as short as they’ll go (and thus all the same length), remove all fades. A quick Pro Tools shortcut for this is often Option+Command+F (Mac) or Alt+Ctrl+F (Windows) to open the Fades dialog, then remove, or use a quicker batch fade removal shortcut if you have one (Andrew mentions Alt+EFD, likely a custom Quickey or similar).
4. Uniform Lengthening: Now, you want to make them all slightly longer. With all clips still selected with the Object Tool, use Control + Plus (+) on the numeric keypad to extend them.
   • CRITICAL: Be extremely careful not to make them so long that they overlap, especially in fast fills or blast beats. If they overlap, you’ll mess up your region boundaries. Undo immediately if this happens.
   • You might need to selectively lengthen clips. For instance, during blast beats, keep the regions super short. For more open sections, you can make them a bit longer.

H3: Crafting the Perfect Attack & Decay: Final Fades

With your regions at their desired lengths, it’s time for the final, precise fades to eliminate any clicks or pops.

• Snare & Toms: Apply a 1ms fade-in with a steep curve (dropping down quickly at the end of the fade-in shape). For the fade-out, use a quick fade that extends to the end of the region, ensuring no abrupt cuts.
• Kick Drum: Similar to the snare, but with a slightly longer 5ms lead-in pad (fade-in). This matches the trigger pad setting used in Beat Detective earlier.

Listen back. You should hear incredibly tight and clean transients, with no annoying clicks.

H3: Ultimate Consistency: Clip-by-Clip Normalization

This is the final step to achieve that super-even sound.

• Select all your processed clips for one drum (e.g., all snare clips).
• Open the AudioSuite Normalize plugin.
• The Magic Settings:
  • Processing Mode: Clip by Clip. This is VITAL. It ensures each region is normalized independently. If you use “Entire Selection,” it will just turn up the whole track.
  • Output: Create individual files.
  • Ensure “Whole File” is deselected (or the equivalent that ensures it only processes the selected region’s length).
  • Set the normalization level. Andrew often turns the clips down by about -5dBFS (or to taste) before rendering. This provides headroom and ensures no digital clipping.
• Click Render. Repeat for kick and toms.

The Result: Super Even Transients & A Solid Foundation

What you’re left with is an almost unbelievably consistent drum performance. Every hit, from the softest ghost note to the hardest smack, will be at a similar perceived level (though actual peak level might vary slightly if you normalized to RMS, but the goal here is consistent transient impact).

Listen to just your processed shells with some room mics. Even without samples or much else, you’ll hear a remarkably even and powerful drum sound. This consistency is incredibly beneficial. Your EQ strategies for carving your core metal sound become far more effective because you’re treating a consistent source. Similarly, this method provides such incredible dynamic consistency before you even touch a compressor, making your metal compression techniques more about tone and punch, rather than just wrestling levels.

Fine-Tuning: Managing Dynamics with Processed Tracks

“But what if I don’t want my blast beats to be as loud as the main groove?” Good question! The “Dream Gate” gives you ultimate consistency, but sometimes that’s too consistent for certain musical passages.

• Blend the Original: You can simply bring up your original, unprocessed drum track underneath the “Dream Gated” track in those sections to restore some of the natural dynamics.
• Adjust Region Gain: Alternatively, select the “Dream Gated” clips in the blast beat section and simply turn them down using clip gain to your desired level. They’ll still be perfectly even within that section, just at a lower overall volume.

Why This Matters, Even with Samples

Even if you’re planning to heavily reinforce or replace your drums with samples, having an acoustically consistent drum performance underneath is key.

• Better Blend: When your acoustic snare is dynamically all over the place, but your sample is consistent, the blend between them will sound weird and disconnected in sections. With the “Dream Gate” method, your acoustic track provides a solid, even foundation for your samples to sit on.
• Velocity Consistency: Many producers make sample velocities more even anyway. This method essentially does that for your live drums, creating a more cohesive and powerful final drum sound.

Key “Dream Gate” Settings Recap:

Just so you have a quick reference:

• Beat Detective (Kick): High Emphasis analysis.
• Beat Detective (Snare): Low Emphasis analysis, 1ms Trigger Pad.
• Initial “Protective” Fade: 20ms on all separated clips before shortening.
• Region Shortening/Lengthening: Use Object Tool, Nudge values (Ctrl +/-), watch for overlaps.
• Final Fades (Snare/Toms): 1ms fade-in, quick fade-out.
• Final Fades (Kick): 5ms fade-in, quick fade-out.
• Normalization: Clip by Clip, Create Individual Files, normalize to a consistent level (e.g., -5dBFS).

Bringing It All Together (And Learning More!)

Andrew Wade’s “Dream Gate” technique is a testament to how meticulous attention to detail can elevate a good drum recording to a great one. It’s about taking control of every single hit to build an undeniably solid foundation for a powerful metal mix. This is the kind of advanced, real-world technique that separates amateur mixes from pro-level productions.

Want to see how Andrew Wade applies this and other incredible mixing techniques to a full A Day To Remember track? Or how other world-class producers tackle complex mixes for bands like Gojira, Periphery, and Meshuggah? At Nail The Mix, you get to be a fly on the wall. Every month, you get access to real multi-tracks from massive songs and watch the original producers mix them from scratch, explaining every plugin, every fader move, and every decision. It’s more than just tutorials; it’s about unlocking your sound by learning how the pros get their signature tones.

Dive deeper into the A Day To Remember session and many more at Nail The Mix, and start transforming your own mixes today!