Preparing Stems for Mixing

Communication

Communicate closely with your mix engineer. Make sure they understand your creative preferences and what you need and expect from the finished mix. What about the tracks and/or rough mix do you like (and want to keep), and what doesn’t work, or what do you feel is missing? Make sure you have clearly identified these aspects and communicate them clearly and explicitly with your engineer, and they understand.

Also make sure you understand what they need from you and how they need it:

• File format (probably .wav)

• Sample Rate

• Bit Depth (probably 24-bit)

• Dry/Wet Stems

• Stems of busses vs. their competent tracks

• Etc.

Communicate with each other, and make sure you spend all the time to prepare your session and stems correctly; this way, you don’t have to waste time doing it over.

Clean Up Your Session

1. Save a Copy
   Before you do anything, save a copy of your project before making any changes. Better safe than sorry in case anything goes wrong!

2. Delete Unused Tracks
   If the tracks is empty, contains an idea that didn’t get utilized, is muted, or otherwise isn’t something that will make it into the final mix, just delete it. You’ve saved a copy of your project so it’s not gone forever, and this will make it easier and faster for you to prepare your stems properly and clearly.

3. Name Your Tracks Appropriately
   Every track should be named in a way so that anyone would know what it is supposed to be without listening to it. Pease don’t leave any tracks named something ambiguous like “Audio 12,” or “Take 6.” If it’s a hard-panned guitar track, name it something descriptive like “Guitar 1 L.” If it’s a vocal double, maybe name it “Vocal Double” (instead of “Vocal 2”).

4. Check Start (and End) Points

5. Check for Clipping

6. Evaluate Grouping

Print (Export) the Stems

1. Highlight the length of the song
   In Logic, this is called the “Cycle Range,” but in any DAW, it’s some sort of selection of a range of time, usually across the top horizontal axis of the project. It may be marked with tick marks, measure counters, and/or minute & second counts.

2. Select the tracks to be exported
   If you’ve already cleaned up the session and deleted unneeded tracks, this step should be unnecessary in most DAWs.

3. Bounce/Render
   Depending on your DAW, this may read “Bounce”, “Render“, or “Export Tracks”
   In Logic, it’s “Export > All Tracks as Audio Files…”
   Whatever your DAW, the exporting function will read very similarly.
   If you’re unsure of what to do, ask for help from your engineer!

4. Choose File Format
   In 99% of scenarios, this should be 24-bit .wav (WAVE). Make sure to check with your engineer if unsure! Almost always, you will want to use the sample rate and bit depth at which you recorded (commonly 44.1 or 48kHz and 24-bit).

5. File Naming
   At this point, your DAW will prompt you to add file naming conventions. All tracks will be named with their track name (so make sure they’re named sensibly), plus suffixes of your choice like date/time or track number.
   Typically, mix engineers will prefer it when the beginning of the filename is the content of the file, not the song to which it belongs (e.g. “Snare Top - Song 2” or “Guitar Left - Song 4”), not the other way around.
   Practical suffixes for the name of the stem could include: artist name, track name, BPM, and the word “Stem”
   An ideal file name might result in something like: Lead vocal_Michael_Song#3_120bpm_STEM.wav

6. Export

Wet/Dry and Take Alternatives

So you’ve exported the stems. Well, you’re almost done.
If you’ve printed the stems with your effects and processing on them, you may also need to print them all without any FX or processing. If you’ve communicated clearly with your engineer, you should know the answer. If you don’t, then chances are you should print the stems both with and without any processing.
Just make sure you label the exported tracks clearly and appropriately!

References

References could be popular songs in your intended genre—a track whose mix you enjoy and whose sonic profile or aesthetic choices you want to emulate.
Or a rough mix with all processing.

References are super helpful for the mix engineer.
They give them an idea of what you were shooting for, and they will likely try to preserve many of your creative decisions if they get a rough mix from you.

Check Your Work

Load all of your exported stems into an empty project/session in your DAW. Does everything line up correctly? Are there clicks and pops?
Now is your chance to fix these errors before sending to your engineer.

If you send it out right the first time, you’ll get the final result faster.
And if you’re easy to work with, there’s a good change your engineer might go the extra mile on your projects!

Conclusion

This process can seem intimidating. Hopefully now it seem more clear. Guaranteed, if it’s perfectly clear, you think this process is boring as hell (because it is).
But your engineer will thank you for your (tedious) work!!

If it’s still not super clear to you, and you’re needing to send stems off, please get in touch with your engineer and they should be able to help you with the process.
At Alchemy Soundworks, we ensure all of our clients are comfortable and confident in the process.

If you’d like to work with us, please, don’t hesitate to reach out, and we will answer any and all questions you may have.
If you’re already working with us and reading this to try and send us stems, Thank You!

Cheers and rock on,

-Alexander