Have you ever heard a track and knew an instrument in it would make a great sample if you could get rid of the drums? Maybe you’ve just recorded a dawless jam and wish you could lower the drums a bit but all you have is a stereo 2 track? Today we’re going to talk about the crazy world of stem separation and how it can solve issues like these.
What exactly is stem separation? The easiest definition is: a tool that splits and extracts multiple audio files of individual instruments within a song, creating separate tracks, or stems from each. It honestly feels like magic sometimes, but with a free tool like Serato Studio, you can extract the isolated vocals, drums, bass and melody as individual tracks. There is a LOT that can be done with these tools, so below I’m going to share 3 of my favorite methods for using these tools to get you started with them.
Method 1 - Isolate specific samples in a track (1:16 in video) This method is the most basic form of using a stem splitter. You isolate each of the “instruments” that your specific program can do. For example, in the video above, I used Serato Studio to separate the bass, drums and melody of the Kh3rtis track “Reclamation”. From there, I can adjust eq, filter and add effects to each stem. I can also bounce those stems out of serato and bring them into a sampler or DAW to remix, chop up or sample.
Method 2 - Remix old tracks or stereo mixes of dawless jams (3:23 in video)
Sometimes I like to record improvs over my dawless jams. With my previous SP and synth setup, everything was bounced down to a single stereo track in my DAW, so I had no ability to adjust volumes or do additional mixing after recording. This became a massive problem when getting my track “Soundtrack for a Rainy Day” ready for release. The live volca fm part was a little too loud and I really wished I could have side chained the bass to the kick. That’s when Serato Studio entered the picture and I was able to make all of these changes.
After splitting the stems in Serato, I bounced them out and moved them to Logic to mix.
With all the parts separate I was able to add another synth layer with some filtering, side chain the kick to the drums and I even thickened up the low end on the kick drum a little. None of this would have been possible with the stereo track.
Method 3 - build sample one shot libraries (8:06 in video)
A great way to use stem separation for sound design is to isolate drums (or melodic instruments) and chop them up to create massive one shot libraries of sounds. You can even combine sounds together to create new one shots. By chopping up a track you can choose specific hits of the drums and make multiple velocity layers of the same sound, alternate versions and more. If you take a melodic sound and chop up some one shots, you can create completely new synth libraries you can use in your own tracks.
Those are a few of the ways I’ve been incorporating this powerful tool. Have you tried Stem Separation yet? Let me know in the comments how you use it. What we talked about today is just the beginning of what you can do this this useful tool.
Links to the gear I use:
Novation Circuit Tracks: https://amzn.to/41kgtmD
Roland SP404 MKII: https://amzn.to/3SrqlqC
Behringer MS-1: https://amzn.to/3KsYjsS
Korg Minilogue: https://amzn.to/3Zf9adV
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