What is Stems (in Music)?
Music stems are the individual isolated audio components of a complete track, typically separated into drums, bass, vocals, melody, lead instruments, and sound effects. Each stem is a standalone audio file that, when played together, recreates the original mix. Stems give producers the ability to adjust individual elements without affecting others.
What Stems Are (and What They Are Not)
In music production, stems are submixes of related tracks. A drum stem contains all the drum elements (kick, snare, hi hats, cymbals) mixed together. A vocal stem contains all vocal parts. A bass stem is the bass line. Together, every stem sums to the full track.
Stems are not the same as multitracks. Multitracks are the raw individual recordings, every microphone, every instrument input. Stems are grouped and processed versions of those recordings. For most video editing purposes, stems are what you want: manageable groups that give you control without overwhelming complexity.
Why Creators Need Stems
If you are editing a video with a voiceover, you might want to reduce or mute the melody stem so it does not fight your narration. If you are making a transition, you might want to solo the drum stem for impact. If a client asks for the instrumental version of a track, you can simply mute the vocal stem.
Tonr's Pro plan includes 6 stem separation for AI generated tracks and uploaded audio: drums, bass, melody, vocals, leads, and SFX. Each stem is a separate downloadable WAV file.
stems / music production / stem separation / audio editing / remix