Stem Separation?

[Ken Morgan]

Please educate me on these things, Looks like a really popular 'feature' in DAWs and as standalone applications, in the real world, what use does it have, other than an attempt to undo a final mix some else painstakingly did for whatever reason and reassemble it differently than originally intended.

Put another way, don't these stem separation tools offer some fairly easy ways to sidestep copyrighted materials? Please note I am NOT trying to start an argument, Im trying to understand the actual real world uses for stem separation apps and the ethical responsibilities users have in deploying them

Thanks

 

[TimC340]

Obviously stem separation can have unscrupulous uses, but so can my kitchen knife. I use it (stem separation, not the knife!) for analysis and for breaking down old recordings. I'm a pretty rubbish guitar player, and it's quite helpful to isolate guitar parts so that I can make an attempt at learning them. Actually, scratch 'guitar' - it applies to keyboards and vocals too! Part of my music time is spent creating choral arrangements mockups for local choirs, and getting into other covers' harmonies can be really useful for that. Stem separation can help, and if I can get a clean enough stem I can analyse it further with Melodyne Studio.

 

[SwitchBack]

It can be a very effective tool for cleaning up vocal/bass/... tracks that suffer from recording noise or bleed. That way you use stem separation as a smart filter rather than trying to micro-edit the track yourself. And it only costs seconds so if the result is below par then the painful road is still there to take.