My pet hate...

Cirrus

Out of nowhere, in the last 6 months everyone has started calling tracks "stems". I need them to stop, but I'm not sure of the best way to subjugate all of humanity and bend them to my will.

Does anyone have any good ideas?

guitarfishbay

Wait - individual tracks? I thought stems were groups of tracks

Cirrus

They are, that's what "stems" means - submixes (eg, drum group, all guitars, vocals, bass) for assembly into the finished song but with some scope for surgical editing of an individual stem by whoever (usually a mastering engineer) is doing the final stereo bounce.

But I'm seeing on facebook, forums and reddit that "stems" is starting to be used to refer to individual tracks in a project. Don't get me wrong, it's not making my blood boil and I'm happy for language to change, but I think it's because "stems" has a specific and useful meaning just now.

For example, if a mastering engineer prefers to receive stems, I know not to use them. 

Snap

saying tracking instead of recording bugs me. Why?

Cirrus

Calling yourself a "producer" when you're 14 years old and your parents have just bought you a behringer mixer and a fruity loops license makes my intestines curl up in knots.

AvalonAndy

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AvalonAndy

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PolarityMan

I thought stems could be individual tracks but implied rendered with processing.

wave100

AvalonAndy said:

Cirrus said:

Out of nowhere, in the last 6 months everyone has started calling tracks "stems". I need them to stop, but I'm not sure of the best way to subjugate all of humanity and bend them to my will.

Does anyone have any good ideas?

Do you mean that professional artists are releasing these?

Native Instruments recently released some software called Stems - I believe the point is that DJs can use it for remixing etc. You get individual tracks for vocals, drums, synths, and bass (or something similar). You buy the "stems" so I suppose it's another revenue stream for some producers. Perhaps these are the stems which are being referred to?

mrleon83

Haha, I'd call them stems ... oops

octatonic

Cirrus said:

They are, that's what "stems" means - submixes (eg, drum group, all guitars, vocals, bass) for assembly into the finished song but with some scope for surgical editing of an individual stem by whoever (usually a mastering engineer) is doing the final stereo bounce.

But I'm seeing on facebook, forums and reddit that "stems" is starting to be used to refer to individual tracks in a project. Don't get me wrong, it's not making my blood boil and I'm happy for language to change, but I think it's because "stems" has a specific and useful meaning just now.

For example, if a mastering engineer prefers to receive stems, I know not to use them. 

Stem mixing is useful for people who work in less than optimal rooms, which seems to be almost everyone these days.

I haven't heard anyone calling individual tracks 'stems'.
It is a slap-worthy mistake to make.

octatonic

PolarityMan said:

I thought stems could be individual tracks but implied rendered with processing.

Nope.

A stem mix would be something like this:

Take the individual track for some drums.
Kick
Snare
Hihats
Toms
Overheads
Room mic

All subbed into a group called 'Drums' and bounced in place.
In Logic you can mute and hide the original tracks and then just have the stem of the drums visible and audible in the arrange window but leaving the option to go back later and make changes)

You might do the same with half a dozen tracks of guitars, then the bass, vocals, electronic bits.

Then you take the stems maybe called Drums, Guitars, Bass, Vocals, Electronics and you have a very simple arrange page showing just 5 stereo tracks.
You can deliver that to a mastering engineer and they can make changes to the individual stereo tracks more easily than they can to a final stereo master.

I don't use stems myself- I learned to mix in commercial studios and it was never really used back then.
If I was mixing in a poorly treated room with prosumer gear then it would be advantageous to at least consider.

octatonic

Cirrus said:

Calling yourself a "producer" when you're 14 years old and your parents have just bought you a behringer mixer and a fruity loops license makes my intestines curl up in knots.

I've stopped using the term as it is largely meaningless now.
A Macbook Pro and a cracked copy of Protools does not make one a producer.

Whenever I meet anyone who calls themselves a producer I ask them how many commercial releases they've had.
Usually the response is 'None'.

stratman3142

octatonic said:

PolarityMan said:

I thought stems could be individual tracks but implied rendered with processing.

Nope.

A stem mix would be something like this:

Take the individual track for some drums.
Kick
Snare
Hihats
Toms
Overheads
Room mic

All subbed into a group called 'Drums' and bounced in place.
In Logic you can mute and hide the original tracks and then just have the stem of the drums visible and audible in the arrange window but leaving the option to go back later and make changes)

You might do the same with half a dozen tracks of guitars, then the bass, vocals, electronic bits.

Then you take the stems maybe called Drums, Guitars, Bass, Vocals, Electronics and you have a very simple arrange page showing just 5 stereo tracks.
You can deliver that to a mastering engineer and they can make changes to the individual stereo tracks more easily than they can to a final stereo master.

I don't use stems myself- I learned to mix in commercial studios and it was never really used back then.
If I was mixing in a poorly treated room with prosumer gear then it would be advantageous to at least consider.

I've just checked and your definition matches the description given in Mike Senior's Mixing Secrets book. 

It's a bit confusing because the section on Stem Rendering in the Reaper (DAW) manual refers to stem rendering of a track in which the Fx are added in rendering to an individual track as an audio file (e.g. WAV). The original track remains but the Fx are muted to ease CPU load. This suggests stems could be individual audio (e.g. WAV) tracks with processing added.

AvalonAndy

octatonic said:*

Cirrus

Oh my god

octatonic

AvalonAndy said:

octatonic said:

Cirrus said:

Calling yourself a "producer" when you're 14 years old and your parents have just bought you a behringer mixer and a fruity loops license makes my intestines curl up in knots.

I've stopped using the term as it is largely meaningless now.
A Macbook Pro and a cracked copy of Protools does not make one a producer.

Whenever I meet anyone who calls themselves a producer I ask them how many commercial releases they've had.
Usually the response is 'None'.

You don't have to have had a "commercial release" to be a producer.  That's complete snobbery.  Hope you enjoy sneering at people working for the love of it.

I'm not sneering at all and it isn't snobbery- it is just reality.
I like driving a car but I don't call myself a racing driver.
I do a few motorcycle track days but I don't call myself a motorcycle racer.

People with no track record or no released tracks are simply not producers.

Snap

AvalonAndy said:

Snap said:

saying tracking instead of recording bugs me. Why?

Recording just refers to the whole process and is a relatively broad term, whereas tracking refers to the recording of individual instruments, and in my experience, infers an overdubbing approach rather than a 'live' recording.

Thank you for that distinction, but it just reinforces my gall! its bollocks!!! gah!

Snap

octatonic said:

AvalonAndy said:

octatonic said:

Cirrus said:

Calling yourself a "producer" when you're 14 years old and your parents have just bought you a behringer mixer and a fruity loops license makes my intestines curl up in knots.

I've stopped using the term as it is largely meaningless now.
A Macbook Pro and a cracked copy of Protools does not make one a producer.

Whenever I meet anyone who calls themselves a producer I ask them how many commercial releases they've had.
Usually the response is 'None'.

You don't have to have had a "commercial release" to be a producer.  That's complete snobbery.  Hope you enjoy sneering at people working for the love of it.

I'm not sneering at all and it isn't snobbery- it is just reality.
I like driving a car but I don't call myself a racing driver.
I do a few motorcycle track days but I don't call myself a motorcycle racer.

People with no track record or no released tracks are simply not producers.

I agree. That's bollocks.

Having said that........

I play guitar, therefore I am a guitarist. I am not however a professional guitarist. Similarly I am a pianist. So, if you produce music, are you a producer, even though you are not a professional producer?
Is this semantics or twattishness??? That is the question for me.....lol

Cirrus

I think the beauty of language, and I know this kind of nulls my own opening post, is that meaning can be fluid. If you want to call yourself a producer, that's fine. If Octatonic wants to reserve the term "Producer" for someone who actually works as a producer, that's fine too. Both parties can go about their lives and the world will keep turning.

The reason "Stems" annoys me is, and this might (read: Will be a terrible rant which) reflect(s) badly on me...

... the willy-nilly way people use the term is symptomatic of a whole culture of ignorance on the internet regarding audio production. We're now 20 years into the collapse of the industry as a professional and serious calling, and it's finally, over the last couple of years, got to the point where it's the blind leading the blind online. I'm not a pro, I know I'm not. But all this century, I've been able to go online and get nuggets of wisdom from people who actually made music professionally and have real, hard earned experience to pass on. Gearslutz, the Tape Op forums, ProRecordingWeb, TheWombForums, all fantastic resources where people who actually knew their shit passed on their knowledge. Not just the hows, but the whys. And the best bit was, you actually knew who they were - you could go and hear their discography and decide how much weight to attach to their wisdom. The greatest lesson I ever got about mixing was when I posted up a mix and got a very detailed critique complete with suggestions from a genuinely good Swedish producer who's work I liked. My mind was blown.

Now, Gearslutz is just about talking about the awesome expensive hardware you've bought and dick waving arguments. Tape Op and The Womb Forums have one new post every six months, and ProRecordingWeb closed and reopened as a shade of its former glory. Instead, if you want to learn about recording you can go to Reddit where anonymous tits all shout their received "internet wisdom" at you, you can go on Youtube and learn from a 20 year old the wrong 3 to 1 rule of miking, and  a ridiculous misunderstanding of phase and polarity. Or if you want something more interactive, you can go on a facebook group where any interesting conversation immediately vanishes into the ether once you stop getting notifications about it. In all these places, there are great teachers who we'd do well to learn from, but it's increasingly hard to identify who they are.

It's the wild west.

AvalonAndy

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