Get Attack Attack’s Insane Drum Punch with Track Spacer Blips

Ever cranked an Attack Attack track and wondered how those drums hit SO damn hard? We're talking about that next-level, chest-thumping punch that cuts through even the densest metal mix. Well, Joey Sturgis and Nick let us in on a killer technique they used to achieve exactly that, taking traditional sidechaining and ducking to a new extreme with a plugin called Track Spacer. If you want drums that are "more punchier than any other thing," this is for you.

Let's dive into how they create these "Track Spacer blips" to make kicks and snares explode out of the speakers.

The Quest for Next-Level Drum Impact

The whole idea behind this technique stemmed from a simple desire: to make the kick and snare ridiculously punchy. Joey Sturgis explained they were trying to figure out how to achieve a new level of impact, drawing some inspiration from Machine's "key spikes" concept but developing their own processed approach. The goal? To give the kick and snare transients an unparalleled moment to shine.

Introducing "Track Spacer Blips": The Core Concept

So, what exactly are these "Track Spacer blips"? Essentially, they're ultra-short, almost inaudible clicks or "ticks" derived from your kick and snare. These blips aren't meant to be heard in the mix themselves. Instead, they act as a super-fast trigger signal for a sidechaining process.

Crafting the Perfect Blip

The key to making this technique work is the brevity of the blip. It needs to be incredibly short – we're talking around one millisecond.
Joey mentioned two ways they’ve approached creating these blips:

1. The Original Method: They used to send the main kick and snare tracks (or their samples) to a bus. On this bus, they’d use a gate set very aggressively to "intelligently collapse" the drum hits into those tiny, 1ms blips.
2. The Current Method (Nick's approach): Now, they often simplify this by just using a single drum shot for the kick and another for the snare. The crucial part is that the sample used must have a very sharp, quick "tick" at the beginning. It doesn't matter much what the sample sounds like beyond that initial transient.

Why so short? If the blip is any longer, it will start to audibly affect the material being ducked in an undesirable way. You only want the Track Spacer plugin to react to the very, very initial instant burst of the kick and snare. The blips themselves are turned down so low in the actual sidechain send that you don't hear them in the final mix; they're purely a control signal.

Track Spacer: The Engine Behind the Punch

Once you have your blip track (or tracks), you feed it into the sidechain input of a Track Spacer plugin. This Track Spacer plugin is placed on your main instrumental bus – basically, everything except your drums and vocals.

Here’s the magic:

• The blip track is sent to Track Spacer but its audio output is turned all the way down or routed so it’s not heard in the main mix. It’s only informing Track Spacer.
• Every time a kick or snare hits (and thus, a blip occurs), Track Spacer momentarily ducks the entire instrumental bus.
• Because the kick and snare themselves are not being processed by this particular Track Spacer instance, they cut through the momentarily quieter instruments with incredible clarity.

This is far more precise and targeted than traditional bus compression or broader sidechaining. It's about creating instantaneous, momentary space. For an even deeper dive into how the pros make space with equalization, check out these EQ strategies for mixing modern metal.

Why This Technique Hits So Hard

Joey Sturgis provided a fascinating explanation for why this super-fast ducking is so effective. When all your music is playing, you're sending a complex array of information to your speaker coil, telling it to vibrate in intricate ways.

By using the blip technique, for that brief millisecond when the instruments duck, the speaker coil only has to focus on reproducing the initial transient of the kick or snare. Instead of complex vibrations, the speaker cone just gets a clear, focused "push" of air. This results in the kick and snare sounding incredibly defined and standing out, especially on smaller playback systems like a boombox or laptop speakers where low-end definition can easily get lost. It can be the difference between hearing your drums clearly and them getting buried.

Dialing It In: Crucial Track Spacer Settings

Getting this right is all about the settings in Track Spacer.

The "Amount" Knob

This controls how much ducking occurs. Joey and Nick recommend turning the Amount knob all the way to 100% initially. This creates an extreme, obvious effect, making it easy to hear exactly what the blips are doing to the instrumentals.

Once you hear it working drastically, you dial it back. In a full mix, they might use a much subtler setting, like 4-5%. For the Attack Attack track "Conquer Divide," featured in their Nail The Mix session, they landed around 14% during a breakdown section. The key is to find a balance where you get the punch without it sounding overly processed or like a "machine gun" during fast passages. Too much, and it can become fatiguing or sound over-compressed.

Advanced Panel: Non-Negotiable Settings

This is super important! Click on the "Advanced" panel in Track Spacer (often a little gear icon or dot).

• Attack: Set this all the way down (to its fastest setting, e.g., 0.01ms or as low as it goes).
• Release: Also, set this all the way down.

You want Track Spacer to react to the blip input as instantaneously as possible. If the plugin developers could offer a 0.0ms setting, they’d use it!

Filtering the Ducking: Low Cut & High Cut

Within Track Spacer's advanced settings (or sometimes on the main panel, depending on the version), you’ll find sidechain EQ or filtering options.

• Low Cut (HPF): Set this around 80Hz. You don't want to duck the super low-end sub frequencies of your instrumental tracks.
• High Cut (LPF): Set this around 10kHz. This prevents the very high "air" frequencies of the instrumentals from being affected.

These settings ensure the ducking is focused on the midrange and upper midrange where the kick and snare need to cut, without making the whole mix sound unnaturally dull or thin during the ducking.

The Result: Drums That Dominate

By implementing this "Track Spacer blips" technique, Joey Sturgis and Nick create a tiny, almost imperceptible pocket of space for each kick and snare hit. This allows the initial transients to command attention without aggressive EQ or overwhelming compression on the drum bus itself. While this isn't direct drum compression, understanding the nuances of metal compression secrets beyond just making it loud can further enhance the overall power and control of your drum mix.

This subtle yet powerful move is one of those "secret sauce" techniques that can give your drums a competitive edge, making them sound punchier and more defined than ever before.

Want to see Joey Sturgis apply this and many other techniques to mix Attack Attack's "Conquer Divide" from scratch? You can grab the multi-tracks and watch the full session over at Nail The Mix. It’s one thing to read about it, but seeing it in action and hearing the impact is how you truly level up your skills.

If you're serious about taking your metal mixes beyond presets and into pro territory, explore everything Nail The Mix has to offer, including our comprehensive course Unlock Your Sound: Mixing Modern Metal Beyond Presets.