Learn what audio stems are, how to create stems from any song, and how to use stems in your own productions.
Whether you’re a music producer, mixing or mastering engineer, you’ve probably worked with audio stems at some point or another, but what are stems in audio? In this article, we’ll define audio stems and explain how to get stems from any song. We’ll also suggest some ways to use our real-time stem separation plugin, PEEL STEMS, in your own creative practice.
What are Stems in Music Production?
Stems refer to audio files that contain processed instruments that are grouped by category. Examples of stems might include drums, vocals, bass, FX, or melodic parts.
What’s the Difference Between Stems and Multitracks?
The term stem is commonly confused with the term multitrack, but these are not the same thing. It’s crucial to understand the difference between stems and multitracks, particularly when working with other artists, labels, or engineers.
While stems refer to grouped instruments that are already processed, a multitrack is an audio file of an individual instrument or recording before any processing is applied. For example, the stems of a song might include four audio files: Drums, bass, vocals, and other. A multitrack might include many more: Kick, hi-hat, snare, lead vocal, backing vocal, sub bass, synth bass, piano, and so on.
Another way to think about the difference between stems and multitracks is to consider how the files will sound when combined. When combining stems, the song should sound identical to the final stereo version. When combining multitracks, the song would still require mixing and mastering.
What are Stems Used for?
So what is the purpose of audio stems? One use for audio stems is to create remixes of a song. Unlike working with a full stereo file, working with stems gives you the option to edit, arrange, and process each group of instruments independently. Stems can also be used for more in-depth mastering. Again, working with stems gives you greater control over the processing of each instrument group.
How to Get the Stems from Any Song
If you’re looking for studio-quality stems, you’ll likely have to source these straight from the record label or artist. Obviously, this isn’t always possible, in which case you’ll need to use a stem separation tool. There are offline stem separation tools that usually work in your browser or a standalone application, or you can separate stems in your DAW using a real-time stem-splitting plugin like PEEL STEMS.
How to Use Stems in Your Own Productions
Now you know how to get stems for any song, let’s take a look at some ways in which you can use stems in your own productions.
Create Remixes and Edits
As we’ve mentioned above, one of the primary uses for stems is creating remixes and edits of other songs with greater control than is possible with only the stereo mix. For example, you can separate a song into stems and then rearrange and recombine them to create entirely new arrangements.
Alternatively, you could go a step further by extracting the acapella from a song and writing an entirely new instrumental underneath it. To do this, load the song you want to sample into your DAW, then place an instance of the plugin on the channel. Solo the stem you want to sample by holding Shift and clicking the On/Off button on the corresponding stem. You can use the Separation slider to adjust the precision of the stem separation being applied. Now, resample the isolated stems onto a new audio channel, ready to reuse however you like.
Sample Individual Elements of a Song
Have you ever wanted to sample a specific part of a song, for example, a kick drum or vocal, but other elements are playing at the same time? Working with stems means you can isolate each type of instrument and sample them without other elements getting in the way.
To sample the individual elements of a song with PEEL STEMS, follow the steps in the section above. But if you want to hone in even further on a particular sound, you can use the inbuilt spectral isolation functionality. Click anywhere in the analysis window to create a Focus Frame, then reshape the frame to isolate the frequency and stereo information that you want to sample. Now resample the channel’s output onto a new channel as explained in the previous section.
Advanced Track Referencing
This last way to use audio stems is often overlooked by producers and engineers using stem separation tools, mostly because it’s an impractical process with most stem separation tools. PEEL STEMS is different, though, because it operates in real time, right within your DAW.
When producing, mixing, or mastering a track, track referencing is a great way to ensure that your own production will match the quality of professionally mixed and mastered songs. While it’s important to reference a fully mastered file against your own stereo bus, you can use stem separation to listen to the individual elements of a finished track in more detail.
Let’s say you can’t get the relationship between your kick and bass right. Use PEEL STEMS to solo the Drums and Bass stems, and then use the inbuilt spectral isolation to hone in on the relevant frequencies. You can now hear what’s really happening in the low end of your reference track, allowing you to make direct comparisons between the reference track and your own.
As you can see, PEEL STEMS serves as both a utilitarian and a creative tool. Check out our article for even more creative ways to use PEEL STEMS.