Bob Clearmountain, producer to numerous top acts including Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, Toto, Bon Jovi and many more, has something he wants to get off his chest about the term stems.
Bob thinks too many people are using the term stems when they mean the multitrack of the session. In short, the individual audio tracks that go to make up a session in a DAW such as in Pro Tools, Logic Pro or Studio one are the multi-tracks. Stems are a group of tracks sub-mixed together, such as the drums or backing vocals.
You can watch the Instagram video posted by Bob below.
The video was shared on Facebook and a number of other top mixers have joined with Bob in agreement.
Richard Furce (Usher, Prince, Boyz II Men, Macy Gray) said;
“Please everybody listen to this. I talk about this a bunch but Bob actually put it so succinctly and undeniably, just you know. Listen to him.”
Chris Lord-Alge (5-time Grammy Award mixing engineer) joined the call;
“Exactly. We need to set it straight.”
This is not the first time this issue has been raised, it continues to create annoyance and not without good reason. If you are trying to get a project from a client and they think they are sending you the tracks, but then send you the stems, or vice versa - that slows down a project. This is not complaining for the sake of it.
Do DAW Manufacturers Help?
We decided to check what DAW manufacturers call the exporting of audio tracks option to see if they help. It seems they may not;
Pro Tools - Track Bounce ✅
Logic Pro - Export Tracks as Audio Files ✅
Studio One - Export Stems ❎
Reaper - Export Items as Stems ❎
Ableton Live - Individual Tracks ✅
What do you think?