It starts with Dialog, Music and Effects, often shortened to DME. The most common stems to come out of a post mix.
For instance they’ll be able to control the levels of the brass against the strings, or the guitars against the drums, but not the individual instruments such as violins against the violas, or the kick drum against the snare drum. Crucially, stems are groups of elements that make up the final mix, not the individual elements themselves.Īs such, anybody given the stems can alter the relative balance of these sections. An orchestral mix might be stemmed into strings, brass, woodwind and percussion, or a rock band into drums, guitars, keys and vocals. Typically, this will mean dividing larger ensembles, whether recorded naturally or artificially, into smaller subsections.
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Stems are sub mixes of a larger mix, that when played together at equal volume will exactly recreate the full mix. Stems are now commonplace in music, and indeed many other areas of audio production, but not just as a delivery requirement: creating stems in your own projects can make for convenient and time-saving workflows, both when working with others and when making music on your own.Īs such, we really must all be on the same page when we’re discussing them.
I would like to clear up a few misconceptions about stems because a lot of people, including A&Rs, music supervisors and post-production supervisors use the term incorrectly. We’ve all heard of stems but what are they?