#14 ALL ABOUT STEMS

[@danielpicard3994]

A lot of highly valuable information there. Thank you, Christian, for sharing all of this with us!

[@Ecmusicproductionschannel]

Seeing this in 2020, I’d say you look much healthier now!

[@PaulOBrienComposer]

If you want to bounce from the busses, you select the busses in the mix window, right click, 'create track'. Put the cycle on for the length of cue. In the arrange, they'll likely be altogether now. select all these, file - export - export '7' tracks for example, you can create custom names etc, drag in whether you want bus name etc. Export all. To check my stems, I often make a full mix from these stems. If you need to supply reverbs separately, you can add them to the arrange as well and exporting these will give you a 100 wet audio file. Apologies if you already know this, but seemed just like what you were mentioning can be done in Pro Tools! Loving the vids by the way.

[@spryrecords5418]

Fantastic and very useful as ever. Thanks Christian!

[@jonmeyervids]

I make a point to stop down and watch/listen the very moment I receive notification about a new vlog. Keep 'em coming!

[@kliff10]

Brilliant! Really excellent channel Christian....Keep the goods coming. For composers this has to be one of the best on youtube!

[@FedericoSolazzo]

You are GREAT! Thank you Christian for this! And I love your way of "straight talking"!

[@andersnorddaljendresen8769]

I am loving this! Thanks for being direct and clear!

[@RobertJSedky]

Wonderful video Christian! Thanks for sharing 😀

[@KerwinYoungComposer]

Spitfire University! I'm loving ALL of your vlogs Christian. Thanks to you, I've been able to save a huge amount of time condensing my sessions and getting up to speed with much info I was totally unaware of.

[@WayneHoldenMusic]

Please keep doing these vids... So solid and helpful!

[@olajideparis]

Really great vlog Christian. One of the most informative walkthroughs I've seen on stemming.

[@mchest7000]

Cheers Christian, bloody useful info as always, nice hills too :)

[@edmasters4454]

Great tip to use separate reverbs on each stem. Hadn't considered that before, but makes perfect sense.

[@Mrjononotbono]

Splendiferous. Can't say thanks enough!

[@michaelfbates]

Love the video Christian, love the practical approach to delivering stems! Just to add the sound department perspective (and really for newer composers): If you're not sure on what stems would be best to provide, it's usually worth dropping an email to the re-recording mixer (dubbing mixer) to ask them. As a mixer I'd rather the composer asked than sent me either too many, too few or unhelpfully laid out stems. Obviously, some mixers are, to put it kindly, old fashioned and seem to think composers are some kind of obstacle to be overcome. Personally I love composers and hugely appreciate what you do. There is nothing better than working on a good film with great score, especially if I can have the composer in the final mix to guide how their music is mixed. With my supervising sound editor hat on, I also love to hear music as early as possible so that I can start working out how I'm going to showcase it best and start designing my sound to work with your music. Maybe I'm in the minority of mixers but increased collaboration between music and sound departments seems the only sensible way to work!

[@AdrianEllis]

I totally agree Michael!

[@rdpatterson2682]

Thank you. Really wanted to know about stems.

[@AshtonGleckman]

Great stuff mate!

[@ClefferNotes]

Great stuff! Thanks as always for sharing! :)

[@GprokYB]

Thanks so much for this Christian!!!

[@yuhengyan9007]

That quote " You gotta watch out for those fucker, cuz they change shit up" sounds like something Peter Berg would say.

[@chrisevanz]

The idea of stems isn’t new. Films in the 60s-80s required a ‘3-stripe’* which was a 4 track master of strings, other, percussion and solo. It’s a long time ago for me but I remember that it heavily influenced how the recording was made. * I think the term came from early 3 track, 1 inch tape recorders.

[@jaikumarsivalingam]

Hello Christian, Thank you for taking time and doing these wonderful videos. When you find time, could you please explain the workflow on how to work with XML files or EDL, especially when there is a new video edit? Thank you.

[@bedtimeread]

Christian, when you have a good amount of time and have no idea what video to do... could you please share a session mix, what do you do, how do you mix individual instruments, lows, mids, highs.. what do you look for, what do you want, what do you NOT want.. maybe divide it into 2 videos... mixing orchestration and separation of 5.1 and stereo mix... do you have a mixer engineer? What is his goal in mixing orchestration when it comes out so "almost ready" in libraries? Also blending libraries, etc... all of that good stuff.. Thank you!

[@TomHawkComposer]

Hi Christian, I'm loving your channel so far! I've learned a lot about stems in this video so thank you for that. I'm very new to all of this so it's a massive learning experience for me. Could you perhaps do a video on the basics of all of this technological "stuff" for a young composer? I have good music theory knowledge, I can compose music to a fairly good standard (forever evolving) but what is seriously slowing me down is my lack of expertise in all this technological stuff that a producer/engineer would know. Having said that, I'm fairly confident using Logic Pro X, so using a DAW for basic audio recording and midi recording is not an issue. It's more about knowing all of this "stuff" for composing to picture and mixing/mastering must-knows for composers. I come from a commercial & indie songwriting background so hence my lack of knowledge with all the composing standards of mixing, mastering, etc. Apologies for such a long comment! Lastly, I look forward to learning from your vlogs/films :)

[@JoshKemp]

Beautiful time lapse mate!

[@TheCrowHillCo]

Thanks, woke up, saw the mist, ran up hill with camera and Oscar.

[@JoshKemp]

Good on you, i wouldn't be running anywhere at 4am...

[@TheCrowHillCo]

now that's just semantics.

[@JoshKemp]

Touchè, loving these vids, really helpful to a noobie like myself!

[@LBAW]

JunkieXL has said that he delivered around 60 stems for Mad Max: Fury Road. That's insane!

[@BenjaminSymonsMusic]

Hey Christian, Loving the videos. I have a video request. As someone who has scored multiple short films I have just landed my first feature and I have no idea what to do. Can you make a basics video. Transitioning from Short film to features. How to set up sessions, how to label and organise your files how to deliver your progress, how to organise and set up stems well. A more basic overview of the whole basic set up.. nothing about the actual composing part just the logistical bits!

[@arthurchanson5345]

Thank you so much ! One question : can you export the stems with the reverb directly into them? I have two reverb for every stem, one short and one long for strings, one short and one long for brass... etc. Can I bounce my string stem with its reverbs inside? Or is it really important to have a separated reverb track for each stem? Cheers

[@vleevision7787]

Thank YOU

[@simenhaugepaulsen4166]

This is gold, accompanied by the three part "Bible" written by you, Paul and James Bellamy, it´s a masterclass on its own. Also, how important is 5.1 for starting composers? Cheers.

[@HenrykIwan]

Hi Christian, could you share how much time (more or less) are TV composers usually given to score each episode, and are they coming in without much of a break (one right after another)?

[@iainmac462]

Just a wee suggestion Christia, it would be good if you played some of the music in these more technical videos? Keep up the great work

[@GprokYB]

I am wondering why you're not using track stack which already is a stem by itself??

[@Simeon_Harris]

i'm not sure i understand this. christian seems to be creating the stems by recording them into the session (in real time?). presumably he's then exporting them for delivery. why do a bounce and an export? and why use a separate reverb for each stem? if you mute the tracks you're not using in the stem, you'd only need one reverb. and why record into the session? surely bouncing them out straight away would be so much quicker? can someone enlighten me? (i'm assuming christian won't see this). thanks in advance!

[@danield2000]

How do you tracklay in Protools from a Logic session?

[@tiscover]

Thanks Christian! Really like your vlogs. But there are two thing's I find quite frustrating when working with stems: 1. No Mastering! 2. The Reverb sounds different if you use it on every stem, rather then sending all the groups to one reverb Instance.

[@TheCrowHillCo]

I agree, however I have tried applying a limiter across each stem sidechained to the full mix... but there are very few software limiters that offer this functionality.

[@MarkPetrieMusic]

You could master them but make the settings a little lower than you would for the full mix, then load all the stems into an empty session, play them back, lower the levels until there's no clipping, then export them all again.

[@shundawallace8932]

I’m sorry but to do a presentation on the science of mono, reverb etc in music without no actual music for audio perception, interpretation is quite perplexing to me as a 30 year musician veteran! Gheesh! That’s like doing a lecture in music class without actually playing music in a music school (just lecturing)!

[@MePeterNicholls]

Checkerboard ?

[@musicbydavidsmith]

Here's my issue: Working on a 50 minute film and I'm wondering if there's a time-savvy way of creating stems for Dialogue, Score, Background Music, and SFX that all start at 00m 00s 00f so that there are no timing issues? I notice when zooming right into the Logic Project, you can drag the stem a reasonable way left and right within the same frame count which can put the dialogue out if it's not spot on, so I'm trying to prevent any syncing issues by sending all four stems that start at 00m 00s 00f. Is it just a case of it taking an age to bounce each file or is there a quicker way? I'm running a 2015 iMac, 4GHz i7 16GB ram. Thanks, Christian, or anyone else who can advise.

[@TheCrowHillCo]

Hmmm not sure that it will take THAT long but am also confused as to why you need to do it that way. If you print everything as a WAV it will be time stamped so easy to spot into the dub with tick accuracy?

[@musicbydavidsmith]

Fair enough, I THINK I understand, but I also think I'm not explaining myself properly - I can almost hear you groan from here (Arkansas, but originally from Edinburgh). When I import an audio file into a master Project (to condense from separate Logic Projects for each cue), the audio file always jumps to the next grid line which sometimes puts it out by around 4 frames which messes with the timing. What am I getting wrong with bouncing and/or importing the audio into exact times? I'm not working with any tempo track. Sorry for the amateur question.

[@TheCrowHillCo]

Ok, well there's three ways to spot in so it is frame accurate: 1. If its a WAV select region then EDIT > PASTE AT ORIGINAL POSITION 2. Select your region > Go to your event list > In event list hit VIEW > EVENT POSITION AND LENGTH AS TIME and then type in the TC you need to spot it to on the highlighted event. 3. Go to main VIEW dropdown > CUSTOMIZE CONTROL BAR AND DISPLAY > Under LCD Select BEATS AND TIME LARGE, Cut you region (Apple Key X), double click on SMPTE display in control bar and type the desired TC > PASTE (apple key V). What you're describing is called snapping, this can be changed in the control bar above the timline, simply click on the snap dropdown (if you don't see it try collapsing the lists pane) and select your desired snap type. Hope this is helpful.

[@musicbydavidsmith]

If I could buy you a pint at the Canny Man’s, I would. Genuinely appreciate your time, thanks so much.

[@bsrobinson]

I had a big problem when sending stems out to mix on a movie. It took me almost the same time to stem as it did to write the cues. I found the 'command click' method of stemming recently. I put the instruments I want to stem into a summing stack then bounce them out. I don't fully understand all the info about busses at the moment.