In EDM especially, one simple synth line can actually be created by seven different instruments. Stems are also great for sending to people looking to remix your song. For example, if they want to boost the drums in their headphones to help them stay in rhythm, they can do that by turning up the “drums” stem.
But, sending stems allows the vocalist to have some flexibility over the track during recording. Since the vocalist won’t be editing or mixing the tracks, they don’t need every separate element of the production. Stems work well if you’re sending the files to a vocalist to record to.
Rather than sending up to 100+ individual instrument tracks, you can simply send a handful of stems-one for each major instrument group-to simplify things ahead of time. Unless your collaborator has specifically requested you send them a multitrack, stems are probably the best way to go. It’s always best practice to export your multitracks as “dry” as possible-meaning you should only include effects that are crucial to the sound of the instrument, but nothing more. For this reason, multitracks typically exclude any use of compressors, delays, or reverbs so that these decisions can be left up to the mix engineer.
For example, in order to get everything to sit well together in a mix, a mix engineer is going to need absolute control over each individual instrument. Multitracks are typically requested when complete flexibility is needed. Whereas the track counts in multitrack sessions range from twenty to a couple hundred, stem sessions may contain only four to twenty tracks.īoth stems and multitracks can be useful, depending on your desired outcome, but sometimes sending multitracks is overkill, and sometimes sending stems just isn’t enough. As you can see, multitrack sessions typically have far more tracks than stem sessions.
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