Noise Gates: How to Get Cleaner, Tighter Metal Guitars & Drums

High-gain metal. It's a beautiful, chaotic thing. But all that glorious distortion comes with a price: noise. Hiss, hum, fret buzz, sympathetic string noise, cymbal bleed in your drum mics – it all conspires to turn your potentially crushing mix into a muddy mess. This is where the humble noise gate steps in. Forget thinking of it as just a simple on/off switch; for metal, a well-dialed noise gate is an absolute game-changer for achieving that tight, punchy, and professional sound. Let's dive into how you can wield noise gates like a seasoned pro to clean up your tracks and make your metal mixes hit harder.

What is a Noise Gate, Really? (Beyond the Basics)

Alright, so you probably know the basics: a noise gate attenuates (that's a fancy word for 'turns down') a signal once it drops below a certain level, the Threshold. When the signal pops back above the threshold, the gate opens. Simple, right? But the magic for metal lies in mastering the other controls:

• Attack: How quickly the gate opens. Too slow, and you'll chop off the start of your notes.
• Release: How quickly the gate closes. Too fast, and your sound cuts off unnaturally; too slow, and you're letting noise sneak back in.
• Hold: Keeps the gate open for a minimum duration after the signal dips below the threshold, preventing that annoying 'chattering' on decaying notes.
• Range (or Reduction): How much the signal is turned down when the gate is closed. It doesn't always have to be complete silence.

Most DAWs come with perfectly capable stock gates – think Pro Tools' Expander/Gate, Logic Pro's Noise Gate, or Reaper's ReaGate. And of course, there are killer third-party options like the FabFilter Pro-G, Waves C1 Gate, the SSL X-Gate, or even specialized ones like the Kilohearts Gate. The specific plugin isn't as important as knowing how to use it.

Noise Gates on Metal Guitars: The Chug Life

This is ground zero for noise gates in metal, a technique that’s essential for clarity and precision in modern metal mixes. Those percussive, stop-start djent riffs or lightning-fast palm-muted passages? They need aggressive gating to sound defined and avoid a wall of fizz between notes. Think of bands like Meshuggah or Periphery – that surgical tightness is often thanks to careful gating. It’s also your first line of defense against unwanted feedback from cranked amps like your Peavey 6505 or Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier.

Setting the Threshold: Finding the Sweet Spot

This is crucial. Set your threshold too low, and the gate won't close on the noise. Set it too high, and you'll start cutting off the tail end of your sustained notes or, even worse, the initial pick attack. Start with the threshold fairly high while the loudest part of your guitar track is playing, then gradually lower it until the gate only closes on the noise and unwanted gaps, letting all the good stuff through. Listen carefully to the beginnings and ends of notes.

Attack & Release: Shaping the Gate's Character

For those tight, staccato metal riffs, you'll generally want a pretty fast Attack – often as fast as it can go, like 0-1ms, to let the full transient of the pick attack punch through. If it's too fast and you hear clicking, ease it back a tiny bit.
The Release is where you really sculpt the feel. For super-tight modern metal, a faster release (say, 50-150ms) will chop the tail off sharply. For slightly more breathing room or for lead parts, a slower release (200-500ms, or even more) can sound more natural. Adjust this to the tempo and rhythm of the part. The Hold control can be a lifesaver here. If your release is fast and the gate is 'chattering' (opening and closing rapidly on a fading note), try increasing the hold time (e.g., 20-50ms) to keep it open just a bit longer after the signal dips below threshold before the release phase kicks in.

Range/Reduction: How Much Silence?

You don't always need to obliterate the signal completely when the gate closes. Sometimes, just reducing the noise by -20dB or -30dB (using the Range control) is enough to clean things up without sounding overly artificial. For ultra-tight rhythm guitars, though, you might go for more extreme reduction, like -60dB or even full attenuation (often labeled '∞'). Experiment with what sounds best for the part. For example, on a ReaGate, you might set the Range to -INF for max silence on chugs.

Lookahead: The "Cheat Code"

Some gates, like the FabFilter Pro-G, offer a Lookahead feature. This allows the gate to 'see' the audio a few milliseconds before it happens, giving it time to open smoothly right on the transient without ever clipping the very start. If your gate has it, try enabling a small amount (1-5ms) for guitars. It can make a noticeable difference in preserving those initial pick attacks.

Sidechaining/Key Input: The Smarter Gate

This is a seriously powerful trick for guitars. Instead of letting the noisy, distorted amp signal trigger the gate (which can be unreliable), you can use a clean DI signal from the same performance to trigger it. Route your clean DI track to the Sidechain (or Key Input) of the gate plugin on your amped track. Now, the gate on the amp track opens and closes based on the clean, dynamic DI signal. This is killer for complex riffs or when the noise floor is high, as the DI provides a much clearer picture of when the guitar is actually being played. Many amp sims like those from Neural DSP also have excellent built-in gates that sometimes even have a DI-tracking mode.

Taming the Beast: Noise Gates on Metal Drums

Drums in metal are all about punch and clarity. Gates help you get there by minimizing bleed between mics, tightening up individual hits, and giving you more control over the overall drum sound.

Kick & Snare: Punch and Isolation

Your kick and snare are the backbone. You want them to hit hard and be distinct, and knowing how to properly gate a snare without bleed is a core skill for this. Gates can help clean up cymbal spill in the snare mic or hi-hat bleed in the kick mic.

• Threshold: Set it so only direct hits trigger the gate.
• Attack: Usually very fast (0-1ms) to let the crack of the snare or the thud of the kick through.
• Release: This is key for shaping. A short release (50-150ms) can give you a tight, punchy snare. A slightly longer one might let more of the shell's tone through. For kicks, you might want a release that lets the note sustain a bit but closes before the next hit or unwanted rumble.
• Hold: Can be useful to ensure the full body of the hit comes through before the release starts.

Plugins like the SSL X-Gate or the Oxford Drum Gate (which is specifically designed for this) are fantastic here, offering frequency-dependent gating which can be even more precise.

Toms: Cleaning Up the Kit

Toms are notorious for picking up tons of cymbal wash and snare rattle. Gating them aggressively is standard practice in metal. You want them to pop out for fills and then disappear.

• Settings: Similar to kick/snare – fast attack, then adjust hold and release so the full tom hit sounds natural but closes quickly before the next cymbal crash.
• Challenge: Fast tom rolls can be tricky. If your gate settings are too aggressive, you might chop off notes in a roll. This is where automation or a more specialized gate like the aforementioned Oxford Drum Gate (which can intelligently detect different drum articulations) can be a lifesaver. Sometimes, manually editing out the bleed between tom hits (using strip silence or fades) is still the most reliable way for critical sections, or you can use the gate as a starting point and automate its bypass during rolls.

Gating Cymbals? (When and Why)

Generally, you want your cymbals to ring out naturally, so gating overheads or room mics is less common and should be approached with extreme caution. However, if you have a particularly obnoxious cymbal ring that's masking other elements, or excessive room noise that only appears during loud cymbal sections, a very gentle gate or expander with a high threshold might subtly tame it. But be super careful not to kill the natural decay and air of your cymbals. Often, targeted EQ is a better solution here.

Noise Gates on Metal Vocals: Clarity and Aggression

Whether it’s guttural lows, piercing screams, or melodic singing, metal vocals benefit from clean, focused presentation. Gates can help, but finesse is key. Of course, the less noise you have to gate in the first place, the better, which makes proper mic placement when recording vocals a critical first step.

Cleaning Up Screams and Growls

High-gain vocal processing can amplify everything – breath noise between phrases, headphone bleed, lip smacks. A gate can clean this up.

• Threshold: Carefully set to cut out the noise but not the quietest parts of the vocal delivery.
• Attack: Usually a bit slower than for drums or guitars (e.g., 5-15ms) to avoid chopping off the start of words or making plosives sound weird.
• Release: Again, slower and more natural (100-300ms, or even longer depending on the phrasing) to avoid abrupt cutoffs.
• Range: You might not want full silence. A 10-20dB reduction can often be enough to push the noise down without sounding artificial.

Listen for consonants at the start and end of phrases getting clipped – that's your cue to ease up on the settings.

Creative Gating: The "Choppy" Effect

While not a core metal technique, some subgenres or experimental tracks might use rhythmic gating on vocals (or other instruments) for a stutter/choppy effect. You'd typically sync the gate's open/close times to your DAW's tempo using its sidechain input fed by a rhythmic pulse (like a rimshot pattern). Plugins like Cableguys VolumeShaper or Xfer LFO Tool are often used for this kind of precise rhythmic volume modulation, which is essentially what a tempo-synced gate does.

Advanced Gating Techniques & Pro Tips for Metal

Once you've got the basics down, here are a few more tricks to elevate your gating game.

Serial Gating (Two Gates are Better Than One?)

Sometimes, one gate struggles to do everything perfectly. For example, on a chuggy guitar, you might use one gate with a higher threshold and fast attack/release for the ultra-tight rhythmic stopping, and then another gate after it with a lower threshold and gentler settings to catch any remaining low-level hiss or hum without being overly aggressive on the note tails. This often sounds more transparent than one gate trying to do it all.

Using Expanders as "Softer" Gates

An expander is like a gate's more subtle cousin. Instead of slamming the door shut when the signal drops below the threshold, an expander gently pushes it down. The Ratio control on an expander determines how much it pushes down (e.g., a 1:2 ratio means for every 2dB the signal drops below the threshold, the output drops 1dB further; a 1:4 ratio is more aggressive). This can sound much more natural on things like vocals, room mics, or even guitars if you want to reduce noise without a super abrupt cutoff. Many gate plugins, like FabFilter Pro-G or Waves C1 Compressor/Expander, include an expander mode.

Automation is Your Friend

No matter how good your gate settings are, there will be times when a static setting just doesn't cut it for an entire track. A tom fill might get chopped, or a sustained guitar note might be cut short. Don't be afraid to automate the gate's threshold or even bypass the gate entirely for specific sections. This gives you the best of both worlds: tight gating where you need it, and natural sound where you don't.

Don't Forget EQ Before the Gate!

This is a big one. If your gate is misfiring (e.g., a low rumble from an amp is keeping it open, or hi-hat spill is triggering your snare gate too easily), try putting an EQ before the gate. Use a high-pass filter to cut out subsonic mud that might be fooling the gate on guitars or kick drums. Or, use a carefully placed EQ cut in the sidechain input to reduce the frequencies that are causing false triggers. For more in-depth EQ strategies for metal, check out our guide on carving your core EQ strategies for mixing modern metal.

The Role of Compression with Gating

Be mindful of where your gate sits in relation to your compressor. If you compress before gating, the compressor will raise the noise floor, potentially making the gate harder to set correctly. If you gate before compression, the gate will clean up the signal, and the compressor will then only act on the desired audio. However, compression can also bring up the tail end of gated sounds, which might be desirable or might reveal that your gate settings aren't quite perfect. Experiment with the order. Understanding how metal compression works beyond just making it loud is crucial here.

Nail The Mix: See How The Pros Gate for Massive Metal

Dialing in the perfect gate settings is an art, and while these tips will get you a long way, there's nothing like seeing seasoned pros do it in real-time on actual songs from bands you love. Imagine watching the producer behind a killer Periphery or Gojira track meticulously set up gates on monstrous guitars and thundering drums, explaining every decision.

That's exactly what you get with Nail The Mix. Each month, we hand you the genuine multitracks from huge metal albums and you get to watch the original producer mix it from scratch, live. You'll see exactly how they use gates – and every other tool – to achieve those polished, powerful, and brutally tight mixes. If you're ready to go beyond presets and truly unlock your sound for mixing modern metal, this is where it's at.

Conclusion

Noise gates are way more than just problem solvers; they're creative tools that are absolutely essential for sculpting the aggressive, tight, and defined sound that modern metal demands. From taming wild high-gain guitars to making your drums punch through concrete, mastering the noise gate will fundamentally improve your metal productions. So, load up your favorite gate plugin, start experimenting with these techniques, and listen to how much cleaner and more impactful your tracks become.