Recording Stems confused

[bryced87]

My local band that performs has been explaining to me their workflow to help me out with recording my owns songs and they are saying that if they can't have the band in the same room they record drums or guitar scratch tracks which they for some reason call a stem track and they email the wav file to the next band member and that member opens the wav file and records their next stem part. I thought Stems were a mix of individual tracks put together? They even showed me their pro tools session and they have a song they are working on now and the project is called "Falling over stems" They then plan to add all the effects etc into this session and then import these tracks into a whole new session and add final vocals etc. Doesn't this waste more time? Why wouldn't they just record everything in one session? I don't understand this at all. Does anyone else do it this way? I could see a band possibly using reason and creating a sound or loop and exporting it for Pro Tools so they don't have to have Reason open the whole time they are mixing and recording but for every track it seems like a waste of time.

[bryced87]

Another things that confuses me that I forgot to mention is that the band had multiple mixdowns before they have even finished the song. For example they have "Vocal Mix" Instrument Mix" Why mixdown all the vocals or instruments when you haven't even finished the song? Isn't this basically ruining your overall mix? The band says it's best to mix multiple instruments or multiple vocals such as background lead etc into one file then when everything is mixed you mix again. Seems pretty silly.

[nst7]

You are correct. Both their workflow and their terminology is very odd.

[groundcontrol]

Many people think that complex/convoluted = better/evolved...

For most experienced pros it's more a case of streamlined = refined = focused = fast

[mesaone]

Originally Posted by bryced87

Another things that confuses me that I forgot to mention is that the band had multiple mixdowns before they have even finished the song. For example they have "Vocal Mix" Instrument Mix" Why mixdown all the vocals or instruments when you haven't even finished the song?

There's nothing wrong with their workflow... But what they call "stems" should really be called "tracks", and what they call "mixes" should really be called "stems". There's no inherent benefit to printing stems before or during mixing, unless you're working with a machine that has a limited track count, or just to cut down on transfer time when sending the session between band members. For example, if I record drums and I want to email that to the guitarist to play over, I'll bounce to a stereo "drum stem" and send him the WAV file.