Mixing A Day To Remember’s Punchy Pop-Punk Toms with Andrew Wade

Let’s be honest, the drums in A Day To Remember’s tracks are a massive part of their sound. They’re punchy, they’re clear, and they drive the energy of the song. Ever wonder how they get that tight, powerful tom sound that cuts through a wall of guitars?

We got a look inside a mix session with producer Andrew Wade as he broke down his no-nonsense approach to mixing the toms for a classic ADTR track. His methods are surgical, opinionated, and maybe a little unconventional, but they produce killer results. Forget what you’ve heard about gates and bleed—this is about getting your hands dirty in the DAW for ultimate control.

The Great Debate: To Bleed or Not To Bleed?

Tom bleed is one of those topics that splits producers down the middle. Some love the realism and “glue” it adds, believing you can’t get a natural drum sound without it. Andrew Wade is not one of those people.

His philosophy is simple: get rid of it. All of it. He’s not a fan of the cymbal wash and snare rattle that tom mics pick up between hits. And he doesn’t trust drum gates to do the job cleanly. Instead, he goes in by hand and manually cuts out every single section of audio between the tom hits. He doesn’t just lower the volume—he mutes it completely. This gives him absolute control over what you hear and when you hear it, ensuring that when the toms hit, they’re the only thing you hear from those tracks.

Surgical Editing for Maximum Impact

Once you’ve committed to cleaning up your tom tracks, the real magic is in how you edit them. It’s not just about removing noise; it’s about shaping the performance to hit even harder.

The “Pre-Cymbal” Cut: A Psychoacoustic Trick

This is a game-changer. Picture a classic tom fill that ends with a big cymbal crash. The conventional wisdom might be to let the tom ring out as long as possible. Andrew does the exact opposite.

Why does this work? It’s a clever psychoacoustic trick. Andrew compares it to playing the original Super Mario Bros.—when you collected a coin, the “cha-ching” sound would actually cut off a piece of the background music, but you never noticed because your brain was focused on the new, more important sound.

The same logic applies here. The listener’s attention instantly shifts to the cymbal crash, so they don’t perceive the abrupt end of the tom’s sustain. The massive benefit is that you prevent the loud cymbal bleed in the tom mic from suddenly jumping out in the mix. If you let that tom track run through the cymbal hit, any compression or volume you add will make that cymbal wash unbearably loud and uncontrolled. By cutting it, the tom delivers its punch and gets out of the way.

When to Break the Rules: Using Bleed to Your Advantage

Of course, there are exceptions. Andrew points out a scenario where you might want to keep the “bleed.” Imagine a drummer hits a ride bell that’s positioned right over a rack tom, but you don’t have a dedicated ride mic.

In that case, the tom mic effectively becomes a great spot mic for the bell. If it’s a distinct, one-off accent, you can leave that section of audio in and use it to your advantage, giving the ride bell its own space and clarity in the mix. It’s all about making intentional decisions, not letting the bleed dictate your sound.

Creating Consistent Tom Dynamics by Hand

Cleaning up the bleed is only half the battle. A real drum performance is never perfectly consistent; some hits will be harder than others. While a compressor can help, Andrew prefers a more manual, precise approach first.

Ditch the Compressor (For Now): Manual Volume Balancing

Before even thinking about processing, Andrew goes through the song hit by hit and manually adjusts the clip gain of each tom. If one hit is quieter than the others, he simply turns it up until it matches the rest.

This creates a perfectly even and powerful tom performance at the source level. It ensures that whether he adds samples or just uses the raw audio, the tom sound is consistent throughout the entire song. This meticulous groundwork means any subsequent EQ and compression will work more effectively, as they aren’t constantly fighting wildly different input levels.

Rebuilding Weak Hits with Transient Surgery

What do you do with a hit that’s not just quiet, but weak and lacking attack? Andrew has a trick for that, too. He’ll zoom in on the weak tom hit, make a cut right after the initial attack (he mentions a length of just 316 samples), and separate that tiny transient slice from the rest of the note.

Then, he simply turns up the volume of that transient. This restores the sharp, punchy “crack” of the stick hitting the drumhead without making the entire tom sound boomy or unnatural. It’s a surgical way to add punch back into a performance, ensuring every single tom hit cuts through the mix with the same aggression.

Bringing It All Together for That ADTR Sound

Andrew Wade’s process for A Day To Remember’s toms is a masterclass in control and intentionality. It’s built on:

• Aggressive manual editing to eliminate all unwanted bleed.
• Psychoacoustic cutting before cymbal hits to maintain clarity and punch.
• Meticulous dynamic control by adjusting clip gain on a hit-by-hit basis.
• Surgical transient enhancement to rebuild weak hits.

These techniques prove that a killer drum sound often starts long before you load up your first plugin. It’s about building a flawless foundation from the raw audio.

Seeing these concepts in action is one thing, but watching a pro like Andrew Wade actually implement them, blend them with the rest of the kit, and make them sit in a dense pop-punk mix is another level. On Nail The Mix, you get to be a fly on the wall for exactly that. It’s where you move beyond reading about techniques and start understanding the context and decisions behind them. Learning these fundamentals is key, and our Unlock Your Sound course can help you master the basics so you can apply advanced tricks like these.

If you really want to see how these punchy toms fit into the final, crushing mix, you can. Grab the original multitracks and watch the entire 8-hour mixing session with Andrew Wade in the A Day To Remember Nail The Mix session.

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