How to mix A Day To Remember drums with Andrew Wade

Pop-punk drums need to hit hard. They’re the driving force, the energetic backbone that makes you want to jump around. And when you think of massive pop-punk drums, A Day To Remember often comes to mind. Getting that tight, punchy tom sound is crucial, but it's often plagued by one major enemy: bleed. We dove into how producer Andrew Wade tackles this head-on, especially when cleaning up tom tracks for ADTR. Forget overly complex signal chains; Wade’s approach is refreshingly direct and effective.

Taming the Toms: Why Bleed Can Wreck Your Pop-Punk Mix

Let's be honest, unwanted tom bleed is a nightmare. You get your kick and snare sounding killer, then the toms come in, and suddenly there's a wash of cymbal spill and resonant ringing clouding up your mix. In a genre like pop-punk where clarity and punch are king, excessive tom bleed from cymbals, snare, or even other toms can turn your drum bus into a muddy mess. Some folks love that "natural" sound, but for a polished, hard-hitting A Day To Remember style track, cleaning it up is non-negotiable.

Andrew Wade's "Cut-First" Philosophy for Toms

Andrew Wade isn't a fan of tom bleed. At all. While some producers might reach for a gate, Wade prefers a more surgical approach to get the precise sound he’s after. His method is all about manual editing, ensuring every tom hit is clean and impactful.

Ditch the Gates: Precision Manual Editing

Gates can be finicky. They can chatter, mis-trigger, or cut off tails unnaturally. Wade bypasses these potential headaches by going straight to the source: the audio regions themselves. He meticulously goes through each tom track, identifies the actual tom hits, and simply cuts away everything else. Not just turning it down – completely muting or deleting the unwanted sections between hits. This gives him ultimate control over what you hear and, more importantly, what you don't hear. This might seem time-consuming, but the level of precision is unmatched for achieving super clean tom tracks.

The "Super Mario" Rule: Let Your Cymbals Shine

Here’s a cool concept Wade uses, inspired by an unexpected source: the original Super Mario Bros. game. He noticed that when Mario collected a coin, the coin sound effect would momentarily cut out another audio track, like the hi-hat. You wouldn't really notice the hi-hat disappearing because your attention was drawn to the prominent coin sound.

Applying this to drums: if a tom fill ends with a cymbal crash, Wade will cut the tom's decay right before the cymbal hit. His logic? The listener's focus instantly shifts to the cymbal accent. By removing the tom tail (and any cymbal bleed within it) just before the crash, the cymbal hits cleaner and with more impact, without being muddied by the tom's lingering decay or the cymbal spill in the tom mic. The cymbal becomes the star of that moment, just like Mario's coin. This technique is brilliant for ensuring your accents, like cymbal crashes or china hits, really cut through and have their intended impact, a key element in energetic pop-punk.

When Bleed Isn't Bad: The Accidental Ride Mic

There's an exception to every rule, right? Wade points out that sometimes, bleed can be your friend. Specifically, if a ride bell is positioned close to a tom, the tom mic might capture a really clear, usable ride bell hit. If you don't have a dedicated ride mic, or if the ride mic isn't cutting it for a specific accent, the bleed in the tom mic can actually be a valuable tool. You could potentially use that isolated bell hit from the tom track to emphasize an accent in your mix. However, for the aggressive, clean A Day To Remember sound Wade is usually crafting, he'd typically still opt to clean this up unless it's a very specific, isolated accent that benefits the mix. For the most part, especially in the context of the A Day To Remember Nail The Mix session, the goal is clean, distinct tom hits.

Beyond the Cuts: Crafting Consistent Tom Impact

Once the bleed is gone, the next step is ensuring every tom hit lands with consistent power and presence. This isn't just about volume; it's about the percussive attack of each hit.

Level Up Your Hits: Manual Gain Adjustments

Drummers, even the best ones, don't hit with machine-like consistency every single time. Some tom hits will naturally be louder or softer than others. Instead of just slapping a compressor on and hoping for the best (though compression definitely has its place), Wade takes the time to manually adjust the gain of individual tom hits. He’ll go through clip by clip, turning quieter hits up and potentially taming overly loud ones. This ensures that whether it's a slow fill or a rapid-fire roll, each tom speaks clearly and evenly. This is especially vital if you plan on blending samples with your live toms, as inconsistent live tom levels will lead to an unbalanced blend with your samples.

The Micro-Boost: Rescuing Wimpy Transients

Sometimes, a tom hit might be generally loud enough, but the initial attack—the "thwack" of the stick hitting the drum head—is a bit weak. For these situations, Wade has a neat trick: he'll make a very short selection right at the beginning of the tom hit (he mentions around 316 samples long, which is incredibly short, just the initial snap) and boost the gain of just that tiny slice. This brings out the transient, making the tom hit cut through more aggressively without significantly increasing the overall level or sustain of the note. It’s a subtle move that can make a big difference in perceived punch and articulation, helping the toms find their space even in a dense mix, much like careful EQ strategies can carve out space.

The Golden Rule: Great Raw Sounds First

Wade is quick to point out that while these editing and mixing techniques are powerful, the ultimate solution for great drum sounds is a great performance and well-tuned drums from the get-go. He even gives a shout-out to drum tech guru Matt Brown (who, by the way, has an extensive drum production course on Nail The Mix), emphasizing that learning from the best on how to capture killer sounds at the source is invaluable. These mixing tricks are fantastic for polishing and problem-solving, but they work best when applied to well-recorded material.

Putting It All Together (And Getting Hands-On)

Achieving that tight, punchy, and clean A Day To Remember tom sound, as demonstrated by Andrew Wade, boils down to:

• Aggressive manual editing to eliminate all unwanted bleed between hits.
• Prioritizing accents by cutting tom tails before cymbal hits.
• Meticulous gain automation for consistent hit-to-hit volume.
• Strategic transient enhancement for weak hits.

These are practical, actionable techniques you can apply to your own pop-punk (or any heavy genre) mixes right now.

Want to see exactly how pros like Andrew Wade dial in these sounds, make critical EQ decisions, and balance everything in a real-world session? On Nail The Mix, you get to be a fly on the wall. Each month, you get the actual multi-tracks from huge songs and watch the original producers mix them from scratch, explaining every plugin, every fader move, and every creative choice. If you're serious about taking your mixes beyond presets and learning how modern metal and rock records really get their sound, check out our comprehensive guide: Unlock Your Sound: Mixing Modern Metal Beyond Presets. And, of course, you can dive deep into the very session these tom techniques were showcased in with the A Day To Remember Nail The Mix experience.