Stem mixing

WhiteWater Ramble is a band I tracked and mixed a few months ago with producer Tim Carbone. It's a fusion of bluegrass and rock. Very cool in and of itself. Last week I received an email from the band requesting the audio files for a DJ friend of theirs (from here out shall be known as simply "DJ") who would like to do a remix of a couple of songs. I'm thinking this is gonna be fun. I'm anxious to hear the final results.

DJ does not use Pro Tools ™ (the DAW program I used to record the band), nor is his system capable of spotting the audio files to a time stamp. So, I was asked to provide him stems. No problem, right?

I mixed the band through an analog summing mixer and used various analog outboard gear. Thankfully, I kept notes on the settings (another blog for another day). The dilemma I was faced with was how to deal with effects and how discrete to make the stems. For example, do I include reverb and delay? Do I mix the kick and snare separately? Or do I mix them in with toms and cymbals?

Here's what I decided: Firstly, I left out all reverb and delay except for the delay that was used as a special effect. Secondly, I chose to bounce each instrument separately to its own stereo track; drums, cymbals, bass, guitar, fiddle, mandolin, lead vocals, and background vocals. The drums and cymbals were mixed that way per the request of DJ. Sometimes they prefer kick and snare separate from everything else.

In order to save DJ some time, each bounced file is precisely the same length from precisely the same start point. This way, DJ can align all the files to the beginning of his project and they will all line up.

Some other considerations to think about: What format does DJ want? What sample rate and bit depth? Thankfully, DJ asked for WAV files at my sample rate and bit depth of 88.2/24. Larger files sizes, but better resolution. Now, how do I get DJ the files?

The total size for the stems of two songs was 3.9GB. It will fit on a DVD-r. It will also fit on a flash/thumb drive. It's possible to send it over the internet, but that would take some time depending on upload speed. I could put it on an external hard disk if it were large enough. For this project, we chose to send a DVD-r via snail mail.

I'm excited to hear what DJ is going to do with the songs.

For next time, I'd like to open up the discussion to marketing in the music business. Is it possible to still make a living when the general public wants everything for free? Email me your thoughts and ideas. I'd love to hear them.