See Stem Making guidelines below.
Feel free to send a reference bouce of your track with master buss plugins turned on, and a target reference of a 3rd party tune, if you're aiming for a particular sound.
Stem Mix & Mastering
Kick Stem Example
Mute (or disable the outputs of) all tracks except the kick. Record (or bounce) this kick-only stem through your normal stereo buss (including any stereo buss processing as described above). Don’t change any settings. Name the file 1.Kick.wav.
This process is then repeated for all stems.
PLEASE DO NOT MAKE MONO TRACKS for any stems including the kick and bass.
Include all buss processing that is on the stems that you are bouncing.
If making multiple synths stems, you MUST bounce each part out with it’s respective effects on. For example, if your lead sound has been sent with a bus with reverb on it, we want the lead sound WITH the reverb on. A “dry” lead sound, loads of other “dry” sounds and then a bus of “reverb” is wrong.
After making up the stems, open a new DAW session and import these new stems. Listen to be sure you have included everything that’s in your stereo mix.
If you are happy with your mix don’t make lots of stems. These basic 6: kick, drums, bass, synths, vocals & FX are ideal. If however you are unsure about something in the mix then separate it out and run an additional stem.
If you separated the bass as well as the synths, vocals, kicks, FX and drums, you have now recorded 7 files including 6 stems and the stereo mix into [Your Song] folder. All files must be in stereo – each bounced the same way through your stereo buss output.
IMPORTANT! BE SURE YOU LEAVE YOUR COMPUTER AUTOMATION ON FOR EACH STEM SO THAT EVERY SONIC MOVE YOU MAKE IN YOUR STEREO MIX IS RETAINED IN THE STEMS.
Don’t change any aspect of your mix
Start the song at the exact same place at the beginning of the song. All stems should start from 00`00`00`00 irrespective of where the audio starts. So even if you have one stem where a noise plays on the last beat of the song, the file must be the whole song in silence before that point. In other words, all the stems you provide should sync from 00’00’00 and it should sound correct.
Keep a count of all the tracks you are muting/turning off.
Every element in your mix, every plug-in, every automation move, every musical component should go into the stems. When recombined together, they exactly add up to the stereo mix. (Note: if you’ve used stereo buss compression, each stem will be less compressed than the full stereo mix). When recombined in mastering, this compression will be restored. This is not necessarily the case with multiband compressors.
CHECK YOUR STEMS
Load them into a new mix session. The combined separations should sound the same as your stereo mix file, but just more open and less compressed. You may see “overs” in your stereo meters from the stems because the transients come through more. This is normal and not something you should worry about.
The better you like your stereo mix, the fewer stems you need. More concerns about your mix, make a greater number of stems.
Do NOT change the sampling rate from the original mix session! If your system is 48k, make 48k-24 bit files. If your system is 44.1k, make 44.1k-24 bit files, etc.
CHECKLIST
✔ All tracks are in stereo.
✔ All automation has been left on respective tracks.
✔ All buss processing on respective tracks.
✔ All tracks are numbered and titled correctly.
✔ All stems have been checked against the mix you bounced to MAKE SURE NOTHING IS MISSING.
✔ Tracks have been bounced at the same sample rate as the original mix session.
Where necessary, one set of revisions to the Stem Mix is included in the price. If you wish me to make any changes to your finished Stem mixed master, pls inform myself at support@nigelchampion.com asap after delivery.
Thank you.
Typical turn around times of a Stem mix with an average track count is normally between 3-7 working days.
