Stems for a remix

Take a finished record apart into parts you can rebuild something else from.

Drop your song here

or click to choose · mp3, wav, flac, m4a · up to 50 MB

What do you want?

VocalsTake the singing out, or keep only the singing.You get 2 files:VocalsSong without vocalsDrumsGet the drums alone, or play along without them.You get 2 files:DrumsSong without drumsBassGet the bassline alone, or play along without it.You get 2 files:BassSong without bassEverythingEvery part on its own, and the song minus each part.You get 8 files:VocalsDrumsBassOther (guitars, keys, synths)Song without vocalsSong without drumsSong without bassSong without the rest

Official remix packs go to a small number of commissioned remixers. Everyone else has historically worked from whatever they could find — an official acapella if one leaked, a phase-cancelled instrumental if the mix happened to allow it, or nothing.

Separation changes the starting position: any record becomes a set of parts. What you do with them is the same craft as always, but the raw material is no longer the bottleneck.

Choosing what to keep

The instinct is to take the vocal and throw everything else away. It is often the wrong call. The 'other' stem frequently contains a hook, a pad or a guitar figure that is more recognisable than the vocal line, and keeping a fragment of it is what makes a remix read as a remix rather than a new song with a borrowed voice.

The minus-one mixes are worth auditioning too. 'Song without drums' hands you the entire original production as a bed to program new drums under, which is a faster route to a club edit than rebuilding the arrangement from four isolated parts.

Getting them into a session

All eight files share the source's length and start point, so they drop onto parallel tracks and line up with no nudging.
Work out the tempo before you stretch anything. Artefacts that are inaudible at the original speed become obvious once a stem is pulled ten BPM away from where it was recorded.
Separated stems are already compressed and limited from the original mastering. Treat them as finished audio rather than raw session tracks, and go easy on further processing.
If a stem sounds hollow soloed but fine in context, leave it in context. Artefacts are far more audible in isolation than they are underneath a new arrangement.

Questions

›Are these good enough to release a remix from?

Technically, often yes — plenty of released work is built on separated stems. Legally is the harder half: you need permission from whoever owns the recording, and the fact that the stems were easy to obtain has no bearing on that.

›What tempo and key are the stems in?

Exactly the original's. Nothing is pitched or stretched during separation, so any tempo matching is yours to do in the DAW.

›Should I use the isolated stems or the minus-one mixes?

Both, usually. Isolated stems for the elements you want to feature, minus-one mixes for the bed you want to build on. Starting from a minus-one mix preserves the original production quality better than reassembling isolated parts.

Where it struggles

Soloed stems from a separation will not stand up to the scrutiny you would give a session file. Expect to build arrangements where the artefacts sit underneath something else, and expect heavily limited modern masters to give you less headroom to work with than an older, more dynamic recording would.