Will Putney’s Crushing Knocked Loose Drum Mix Techniques

The drums on a Knocked Loose record are a force of nature. They’re aggressive, they’re punchy, and they hit with the weight of a collapsing building. That sonic assault isn’t an accident; it’s the result of meticulous engineering and a powerful mixing philosophy from producer Will Putney.

Ever wondered how to get that level of impact and clarity in your own heavy drum mixes? We’re diving deep into the methods Will Putney used while mixing Knocked Loose, breaking down his specific techniques for gating, EQ, and sample blending. This isn’t about just slapping on presets; it’s about a deliberate, step-by-step process that you can apply to your own sessions. If you want to see Will build the entire mix from scratch, you can check out his full Nail The Mix session.

The Foundation: Flawless Gating & Pre-Processing

Before a single EQ knob is turned, Will focuses on getting the raw tracks clean and balanced. This foundational work is crucial for ensuring the rest of the mix process goes smoothly.

Finding the Initial Balance

The first thing Will does is listen to all the raw drum tracks together. He’s not reaching for plugins yet; he’s just adjusting faders. The goal is to get the close mics, overheads, and room mics sitting well with each other from the start.

His philosophy is simple: the better the balance is before processing, the less processing you’ll have to do later. This preserves the integrity of the original audio and leads to a more natural, powerful sound—capturing that “band in the room” vibe instead of a sound that feels overly manipulated.

Hyper-Accurate Gating with Key Spikes

Next up is cleaning up the drum shells with noise gates. But instead of relying on the drum hits themselves to trigger the gate—which can be inconsistent with bleed from cymbals and other drums—Will uses a “set and forget” technique: sidechaining with key spikes.

Key spikes are short, printed blips of audio that are perfectly aligned with every single MIDI drum hit. By using these spikes as the sidechain input for a noise gate, the gate’s behavior is flawless.

Here’s the basic setup:

1. Insert a Gate: Will drops the stock Logic Noise Gate on his kick, snare, and tom tracks.
2. Set the Sidechain: For the snare track, he sets the gate’s sidechain input to the audio track containing the snare key spikes. He does the same for the kick and toms, each with their own respective spike tracks.
3. Dial in the Time: A great starting point is zero attack, with around 500-600ms of hold/release time. This allows the full transient and natural decay of the drum to pass through before the gate clamps shut.

Now, the gate only “listens” to the perfectly timed spike, not the messy source audio. It opens precisely when the drum is hit and closes cleanly afterward, completely ignoring cymbal bleed. This means no more fiddling with thresholds to catch ghost notes or dealing with chattering gates during fast passages.

Sculpting the Core Tone with EQ and Blending

With the tracks clean and controlled, it’s time to start shaping the sound. This involves a combination of broad EQ cleanup and intricate sample blending to build a drum sound that’s larger than life, yet still feels real.

Global Clean-Up Filters

To start, Will applies some broad, global high-pass filters to get rid of unnecessary low-end mud across the drum kit. Using an SSL-style EQ, he sets some safe starting points:

• Snare & Toms: High-pass filter around 60 Hz.
• Cymbals & Overheads: High-pass filter around 125 Hz.
• Room Mics: High-pass filter around 60 Hz to kill unwanted sub-bass rumble.

These moves instantly clean up the mix, creating more headroom and preventing frequency buildup before any boosting even begins. For more in-depth strategies on using filters and EQs in metal, check out our guide on EQ strategies for mixing modern metal.

Crafting the Kick Drum Punch

Will’s approach to the kick drum is all about finding the perfect marriage between the real microphone signal and carefully selected samples.

The Art of the Sample Blend

The goal is to find a blend that works across the entire song—from slow, heavy grooves to frantic double-bass sections. This minimizes the need for a ton of automation later. If he can find a balance that feels good most of the time, he maintains a more consistent, cohesive drum sound.

He listens to a busy section of the song to identify issues, noting that one of his “boomer” kick samples is a bit too loud and long for the faster parts. He adjusts the levels of his various samples against the real kick until the relationship feels right, creating an average sound that’s consistent and powerful.

Targeted Kick EQ

The original kick was recorded intentionally dark, with the plan to add brightness and attack with samples and EQ. To bring out the presence he needs, Will patches in his hardware Heritage Audio EQ and makes a few key moves:

• Presence Boost: A significant boost at 3.2 kHz to add the click and attack needed to cut through the mix.
• High-End Air: A high shelf at 10 kHz to add brightness and clarity.
• Sub-Bass Weight: A low shelf at 60 Hz to add low-end fatness and power.

These EQ adjustments allow him to bring the real kick forward in the blend, relying less on the samples and re-introducing more of the drummer’s natural dynamics.

Building a Monstrous Snare Sound

The snare drum follows a similar hybrid philosophy. The initial snare was tuned high to get a sharp, ringy attack. That real snare provides the organic impact, while samples are blended in to create the body and decay.

Will uses a few different layers:

• A Reinforcing Sample: A one-shot that sounds very similar to the real snare, used to add consistency and a slightly more “hi-fi” attack.
• A “Body” Sample: A fatter, longer sample that wouldn’t sound great on its own, but when blended in quietly, it extends the decay of the real snare beautifully.
• A Dynamic Sample: A multi-layered sample from Superior Drummer, complete with its own overhead and room mic options. This gives him the ability to blend in different ambient textures to change the snare’s character.

By carefully blending these real and sampled elements, he builds a single snare sound that is dynamic, massive, and perfectly tailored to the track.

Bringing it All Together with Bussing

To manage all these layers, Will uses a smart bus structure. He has separate busses for his “real” elements (the live-miked drums) and his “fake” elements (the samples). This means there’s a “Real Kick” bus, a “Fake Kick” bus, “Real Snare,” “Fake Snare,” and so on.

This gives him incredible control. Critically, he also has a separate bus that controls how much of the real drums versus the sampled drums are feeding into the main room mics. By adjusting this blend, he can change the overall ambience and sense of space, making the kit sound believably live while benefiting from the power of samples. This detailed gain staging is essential for getting the drum bus to hit his compressors just right, gluing everything together for that final, crushing impact.

Learn from the Pros, Mix with the Pros

These techniques are just the tip of the iceberg, covering the initial setup of a world-class drum mix. Seeing how a pro like Will Putney makes these decisions—and then takes them through compression, saturation, and final automation—is where the real learning happens.

With a Nail The Mix membership, you can do more than just read about it. You get the actual multi-tracks from bands like Knocked Loose and watch the original producer mix the song from scratch, explaining every single move. It’s time to move beyond presets and learn the philosophies that create truly massive-sounding records.

Ready to see how the rest of this devastating Knocked Loose track comes together? Dive into the full Will Putney mixing session on Nail The Mix.