Stems In Music Production — Everything You Need To Know | Production Expert

Stems In Music Production — Everything You Need To Know | Production Expert

The main thing to bear in mind is that you’ll need to duplicate some resources here. On a regular mix you only need one of every effect, say reverb and one delay. But when stemming you need one of these for every stem, routed to the relevant stem bus. Otherwise, you’d have the effects of all the different stems on one stem, and the point is to separate things. So if you’re creating four stems you’ll need four sets of effects busses. You can imagine how quickly this will start to take up system resources if you’re printing a lot of stems, and especially if you’re working in 5.1 or 7.1

Simple enough to create effects tracks for each stem. Just have to remember to do it when mixing the project.

In the Logic Pro X world, if you’re using summing stacks, you might simply want to insert the effects on the stack and use the mix control knob to adjust the levels appropriately. If the recipient of the stems insists on separate effects tracks per stem, well, OK…that’s just not that hard to do.

A good practice would be to create a track for the effects bus (need to do this anyway if you want to bounce the stems) and place it right along with the summing stack in the arrange area.

Show/Hide Audio Effects — Logic Pro X keyboard command of the day

Logic Pro X keyboard command of the day. #LogicProX @StudioIntern1

  Show/Hide Audio Effects

In Mixer views. Show or Hide the Audio FX insert slots.

I guess that would be appropriate in some cases, but I can’t think of any right now.

⇧ SHIFT – ⌃ CONTROL – ⌥ OPTION – ⌘ COMMAND

Ensemble effect — Logic Pro X

Ensemble effect — Logic Pro X

Ensemble can add richness and movement to sounds, particularly when you use a high number of voices. It is useful for thickening parts, but you can also use it for strong pitch variations between voices, resulting in a detuned quality to processed material. Ensemble combines up to eight chorus effects. Two standard LFOs and one random LFO enable you to create complex modulations. The graphic display represents the modulation rate and intensity of all LFOs and lets you directly adjust waveforms.

I was discussing forcing low-end into mono, centered in a mix. Sometimes it works.

I decided to look at modulation effects and noticed ‘Ensemble’. This thing is outstanding. Really wakes things up. I need to do a deep dive into the built-in effects that Logic provides. My little homework MIDI song provides a great test bed. The bass really gets entertaining.