Guide To Making Stems
Aug 15, 2022
In this tutorial, we will go over how to extract stems from any song using Fadr.
What is a Stem?
An audio stem is an individual track from a song consisting of an instrument or collection of instruments. Commonly, songs are broken down into 4 component stems: vocals, melodics (commonly referred to as “other”), drums, and bass. Using Fadr, you can break any song down into your choice of just vocals and instrumental or vocals, melodics, drums, and bass.
Why Are Stems Useful?
A stem can be used for many different purposes. You may want to break a song into stems so that you can remove a stem and replace it with your own audio. For example, you could remove the vocals and sing over it to create a cover of a song. Another use for stems is to create totally new music. You might want to use a stem as a sample for a new song. Sampling is a staple principle in many genres of music.
How To Make Stems?
Fadr makes breaking a song down into its stems simple. To get started, you will need an audio file of the song you want to stem. Once you have your audio file, you just have to follow these steps:
Upload your file to the Stems Page, either by clicking on the + symbol or by dragging and dropping it onto the page.
Wait for the file to upload…
Click on ‘Convert’! (Note that we only support converting songs less than 8 minutes long)
Wait for the song to be processed…
Click on ‘Download Stems’ and wait for the download
Unzip your stems! Inside of the zip, you will find 5 files: the vocals and instrumental as well as the drums, bass, and other (melodics)
Additional Options:
You can preview your stems in the browser by clicking on either ‘2 stems’ or ‘4 stems’, clicking on play, and muting or soloing individual tracks.
You can also download the midi from this same screen once it finishes processing. For more information on midi, please see our Midi Tutorial.
Underneath ‘Saved’ you can find your past stem requests along with information about the song such as its tempo and key. Click on the + symbol on a past stem to load it on the page.
