Three minute reads for artists and producers
who want to make better records

By Thomas Dulin

Hello Reader!

I wasn't able to send last week's email while on tour, but I'm home this week working in the studio and glad to send this one out to you.

Here's this week's Take Three email.

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TAKE ONE: QUICK LINKS 🔗

• Universal Audio has a new LA-2A plugin which is free (for a limited time) on their website, no hardware required.
• Bandcamp has been sold for the second time in two years, from video game company "Epic" to music licensing service "Songtradr." Article in Vulture.​
• I offer personalized and professional mix feedback as well as 1:1 coaching calls for anyone interested.

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TAKE TWO: RECENT RELEASES

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If This Is The End • Noah Gu... If This Is the End • Noah Gu... PREVIEW   ​

Noah Gundersen - If This Is The End

While I didn't work on this record at all, I have mixed Noah a few times on tour and I'm a lifelong fan. This record came out about a month ago, and I'm sad it took me a month to listen. Quite possibly his best yet.

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TAKE THREE: WHAT ARE STEMS?

If you've been around audio for a while, you've probably sent or received "stems."

In recent years, I've noticed that younger artists and engineers use the word stems to refer to something that is actually sort of the opposite of stems.

Traditionally, we have used the word stem to refer to a group of mixed tracks printed to a single stereo audio file.

Typically, you'd have at least one stem for drums, one for bass, one for guitars, one for vocals, maybe one for keys, or background vocals, or effects, etc.

When you combine the stems of a mix, you get the mix! This allows you to archive a mix in a way that still allows you to edit it later -- without having to recall the session.

For example, I "re-mixed" the song "Family" by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors for this Tyson ad in my studio. The ad agency had a specific edit in mind that required more than just chopping up the mastered file. I edited the 8 or 9 stereo stems and was able to maintain the original mix without opening the actual session.

Another reason we send stems is for remote recording sessions. Today I sent the stems for a few songs I'm working to a guitarist who's going to add some parts. He may want to turn down the drums while he's recording, but he doesn't need 12 drum tracks for his purposes.

On the other hand, there are certain situations where you need to send the multitrack for a song.

A multitrack is every single track in a session. This is what you'd send to a mix engineer in order for them to mix your song.

Labels are often requiring mix engineers to print their multitracks now, both for archival purposes as well as doing Atmos versions of mixes. This means every track in the mix session gets committed to a file, and all the files add up to recreate the mix.

This mixup is so common that now, if anyone asks me for "the stems," I ask them to clarify what they mean! Especially since printing stems can be very time-consuming.

I'm curious - is this news to you, or did you already know this? Do you have another name for stems / multitracks? Hit reply and let me know.

Until next week, happy music making, Reader.

Thomas Dulin Producer / Engineer / Mixer