WHAT ARE YOUR TIPS FOR PRODUCING STEREO STEMS???

[michaux]

I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about mastering engineers working from stereo stems. What is your take on this technique? How is it best used and why? How many stems should you produce? What are your preferred voice or instrument groupings to BTD together? What are your preferred methods of producing stereo stems? Any ideas? [email protected]

[Steve MacMillan]

I don't know what a mastering engineer might ask for, but I make stems for editing and remixes. Stereo stems are usually by instrument type, and sometimes devided into sonics. It might look like this...

full mix
TV mix
instru mix
lead vocal w/efx
(lead vocal dry)
(lead vocal efx only)
bgv w/efx
(harm or xtra vocals)
drums
perc
bass
guitars
(acous. guitars)
keys
strings
horns
solos

you could break it down further like

kick
snr
stereo drums

hard keys
pads


It depends on the song and what might need to be adjusted. The most important thing I have found, is that if you are using processing on the final stereo buss is to print the stems without it and then route the stems through the processing, otherwise the processing will track the stems different to a full mix and the end result will be a mess.

sm

[PTUser NYC]

Excellent answer, Steve.

I want to help clarify something. I find a lot of people don't know what the term "TV mix" means.

A "TV mix" or "TV Track" is a full mix without lead vocal. It's called that because it would be the version an artist would need if they were doing a television show, and wanted to sing live to a recorded backing track.

Everyone understands the value of a complete mix without lead vocal, but fewer (I find) know the term. Now hopefully a few more do!