Combining Stems

Another common technique you might need to use when working with music is the recrafting of instrumentation. To be clear, it’s pretty much impossible to remove an instrument or remove a vocal from a song. Instead you need to search for the “Instrumental” version of a song or, better yet, find the original “stems”. Stems are the original, individual tracks that make up a song. What we listen to is the mixed down version of the stems. Many royalty free music sights allow you to download the stems so that you can create your own mixes.

1. Start by adding all the files from Mikey Geiger’s “Not Gonna Let You Go”.
   
2. Once they’re added, select all the files and insert them into a new multitrack session.
   
3. The blocks should each be dropped into their own track, all lined up in time. Ideally, tracks are all identical in time and length. An instrument that doesn’t want to play until a certain time will simply have silence until the appropriate moment. You might need to drag the blocks to the beginning of the session or move things around, but everything should automatically be synced up.
   
4. Go ahead and label each track (like in the image above) to help describe each block / track / instrument.
5. You can now switch over to the Mixer panel at the top of the session screen and see a typical mixing board model where you can adjust volumes, mute and solo tracks, as well as add effects and other tools.
   
6. Try adjusting volumes and remove a few tracks, such as the vocals and percussion, in order to make a thinner, more minimal version of the song. One finished, mix down the session.