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.

 

[tpittman]

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

I had one of my songs recorded years ago on an Tascam 388. Only had 8 tracks and drum sync took up 1 track.
I accidentally bounced the Bass and Guitar onto one track and did not realize it.
With Stem separation I was finally able to Isolate the Bass on it own Track

 

[Larry Jones]

Kind of a specialized use of separation, but . . .

In 1972 I recorded a song of mine on a TEAC quarter-track deck, bouncing left channel to right several times to add all the instruments and vocals Needless to say the end result was horrible, more noise than music. But I kept the recording for the next 50 years, and one day I uploaded the bad recording to Suno, prompting it to "cover" the song, enhancing the sound but no other changes. In about two minutes I had a lovely version of my song with a full orchestra. But the AI "singer" couldn't get the lyrics right, and here's where stem separation enters.

I broke the recording into stems, deleted the AI voice, and sang my song over the Suno-created backing track. Back in '72 I could not have produced such a slick track. Sadly, 50 years on, my voice is not up to the task, but at least I have a listenable recording of the song with all the correct words.

 

[Craig Anderton]

I have a recording my band did in the late 60s. The singer was sick, so his voice ran out of gas at the end of phrases and he had some pitch issues. The song was released anyway on the album Puzzle, but it always bothered me that his voice didn't sound anything like it did live. He died many years ago, so there was no way to ever cut a new version and make it right.

With stem separation, I extracted the vocal and made a copy. One extract was flipped out of phase to cancel the original vocal. That was key to making this process work (AKA Karaoke, LOL). Then, I processed the other vocal with a little bit of gain envelope action and some judicious pitch correction. I mixed that with the stereo track where the vocal had been removed, and the song ended up sounding like what it sounded like live, with him at full strength.

Stem separation basically revived him long enough to do the vocal right, over half-a-century later.

 

[Larry Jones]

With stem separation, I extracted the vocal and made a copy.

You win this Battle of Reincarnated Recordings. Mine was only 54 years old.

 

[Craig Anderton]

You win this Battle of Reincarnated Recordings. Mine was only 54 years old

LOL!

This recording was done at one of those Big Studios, so I tried hunting down the multitracks. Of course, they're long gone. At least you kept yours! I had to work with the stereo version that hade been remastered years later for a CD re-release, so it would not have been possible to fix it without stem extraction.