NI Stems

[surface]

Apologies cos I didn't read the last few posts but this is utter bollix. A dead duck. Bullshit. Marketing. In time it will come down to sharing channels from a track but this is just some premature cash-in hype ..

[quest]

Agreed. I'm talking about the sharing channels from a track part. Discrete rhythm and harmony, melody and FX tracks that are more to work with than a stereo master. I'm sure there'd be benefits to working with tracks at that level of control.

[Lost to the Void]

To answer your question about vitality to the scene, do I think stems will do it?
Not at all, we already have DJ`s pretending they are more than they are, and offering a pretend, premade live pa is not the way forward.

This whole thing has arisen because the illusion of DJing as something unreachable, some terribly difficult thing, has been blown up. Look at all the celebrities suddenly becoming DJ`s.

The problem is DJing, it has been blown up and elevated beyond what it is. It`s just some person playing records. It`s like madonna miming to a her own records, there is an element of falsity, or performance or facade over reality. You won`t revitalise anything by continuing focus around it, as always at the centre will be a middle man of the music process. A delivery man.

Stems are just a way for a DJ to look like they are doing more, but without the actual effort of really playing live, like a real musician. More musicians playing their music live I think would add more vitality.
Well it IS already, the only benefit I can see to the 2nd wave "analog" explosion (it`s certainly not the music, which is going backwards as a consequence) is that more artists, and more artist-DJ`s are really now being able to visualise how they can play live. It seems less impossible now, because there is more technology to facilitate live performance, there is more gear designed around playing live as opposed to just being a studio tool. And this is like a snowball, more people are doing it, and more people are getting inspired to do it because there are so many varieties of setup now (not like the old days when it was an mpc, 909 etc setup or variation), so it seems more managable.

This is exciting, and the more people doing it, the more competition and that leads to better quality music, better live performances, and that leads to better technology and so on.
The scene really needs more musicians performing their music. Live music should be played live.

No one goes to see radiohead play records of other rock bands.....
I see the DJ phenominon as something slowly falling away from this point in history, it has finally reached it`s apex.
Less DJ`s and more musicians is a good thing for the music and the scene. Not I might add NO DJ`s, just less of them.

And I see this as a good thing, even though I make records, and master records.


Stems though......... like some runny shit on the side of the techno toilet bowl. NI didn`t even shit IN the bowl with this idea, they missed, dropped their pants too early, and shit all down the side of the bowl.


Dirty fuckers.

[winston]

producers need to export stuff in stems first. Not sure if this is gonna happen. It complicates the process a lot.

How would mastering work for a start? Will stems be raw, unmastered channels? How is that going to work in all our EDM sets?

it's an interesting question about the mastering of the stems. the stem file is basically 5 AAC files in an mp4 container: the 4 stems and a copy of the whole track that is able to be played on a non-stem supporting platform. it stands to reason that the whole track version would be a mastered copy that one would have available to put on beatport etc. but as to how the 4 individual stems would be processed i haven't read anything about it.

maybe the new version of traktor coming out will have some sort of solution to process the 'stem deck' as it's being played, like some sort of limiter or a magic 'mastering' setting like you see on the roland aira-mx1.

in response to the Lag quote above, i don't think it would be that much effort: instead of rendering a 2 channel mix, you could just send your final mix to a further 4 (unprocessed) busses, one for each stem and then bounce or render them.

whether it catches on on or, or whether this is just the first version that will be refined further down the road will be interesting. i reckon it's a good way to grab some samples, but i'd much rather get the separate stems and chop them up and remix the tracks on a remix deck (or in ableton) rather than just mixing the channels as it plays.

[Wiu]

I agree with The Void here totally. DJing has become this totally overblown thing and has been for ages. The rise of the whole superstar DJ thing should of started alarm bells ringing. DJ's being idolized like some kind of huge pop star/celebrity is just fucking cringe worthy. If any DJ's actually deserve that kind of attention it should be the turntablists. That shit still amazes me as it takes so much skill. Cunty overpaid DJ's just beatmatching shit together (or just syncing) and then just prancing about behind the decks pretending to push buttons and turn dials is barely a skill in my book. Vinyl, CD or software, it doesn't matter, it's only someone playing fucking music. It shouldn't be something that is a hugely paid job. The money should be channeled to the people that fucking make it! Some cunt getting paid fuck knows how much when the artists that made the music that were played and had the crowd going mad got paid more or less nothing.

I've said it before and I'll say it again now, put up a curtain in a club infront of the DJ booth and have big name cunty DJ play an hour or 2 and then a total unknown. I'm guessing the crowd wouldn't tell the fucking difference.

Oh and I hate NI.

[Planar]

I think what you're saying about your experience is that you never learned to do it well enough to do it well, so you stopped. I would think it would be much harder than regular DJing, so it would have a steeper learning curve (especially without any reference point). I'm willing to try because I realized that it wasn't the vinyl-CD transition that turned me off DJing, it was the lack of control in the mix.

Lots of assumptions there. I'll just say that when I was younger I was pretty obsessed with mixing and putting sets together. It was my hobby and I secretly hoped it would pay my bills ones day. I spent a lot of time over those Ableton sets, chopping tracks up, playing around and practicing. I ran with that setup for just under a year and knew what I was doing with it.

Mixing like that is super, super easy. I was using a uc33e midi controller and had no issue with tactility. Making it something someone would want to listen to is much, much harder. Lots of people jumped on the Ableton bandwagon back then and I'm willing to bet hardly anyone DJ's like that anymore.

It's easy to get caught up in the act of DJing and thinking you need to be busy and offering a new paradigm to the audience. I applaud your enthusiasm and wish you well if you're going balls deep with this stem stuff. Ultimately you'll find that your audience doesn't give 2 shits about you being clever, they want good music played in a good order. Anyone who does care won't be dancing anyway.

I've said it before and I'll say it again now, put up a curtain in a club infront of the DJ booth and have big name cunty DJ play an hour or 2 and then a total unknown. I'm guessing the crowd wouldn't tell the fucking difference.

DJ's should be heard and not seen anyway. The whole first wave of superstar DJs was what, 20 years ago now? The messiah complex surrounding the whole thing is a poor reflection on dance music as a whole.

[Lost to the Void]

I've said it before and I'll say it again now, put up a curtain in a club infront of the DJ booth and have big name cunty DJ play an hour or 2 and then a total unknown. I'm guessing the crowd wouldn't tell the fucking difference.

Oh and I hate NI.

I love you
Let's get married.

[quest]

God damn it, I agree with all of you.

Not here to perpetuate endless debates on an internet forum (funny how some things never change, I didn't use the internet aside for research or research a related discussion from 04-14, but in the early days people were still learning about what flame wars are...), I'm definitely just trying to see the way forward.


Hey, anyone remember DJ Keoki?

Maybe that was foreshadowing the whole Paris Hilton et al. wanting to be a DJ thing.

After hearing all the drama around Ibiza I at some point snapped and vowed to try to do something about it.

Maybe there's a better way for my set. I was at one point trying to rig a system that would have two separate laptops each running Ableton with a full set of original project files on each laptop.

The projects would have groups assigned similarly to stems, 4 faders per side, but I'd still have control over individual channels if I wanted to tweak them.

I could load tracks on the fly and independently control the transport on each machine, but thanks to the Max4Live patch running on each side, playback would be delayed until the track playing on the other side reached a major beat subdivision (either 1, 5, 9, etc or even 1, 9, 17, etc), then fall into perfect sync with the other track.

If I loaded a track, then all of the MIDI mappings for that track for the dancers and other live elements would also be loaded in.

Maybe that's the way to go? Maybe I shouldn't bother investing time and energy into mixing down to stems if all I'm doing is sacrificing individual channel control?

Maybe getting this free to download M4L system out is doing a better service to the scene than being an early adopter of Stems?

[quest]

OK you've convinced me, I agree with all of you.

Hey, anyone remember DJ Keoki?

Maybe that was foreshadowing the whole Paris Hilton et al. wanting to be a DJ thing.

After hearing all the drama around Ibiza I at some point snapped and vowed to try to do something about it.

Maybe there's a better way for my set. I was at one point trying to rig a system that would have two separate laptops each running Ableton with a full set of original project files on each laptop.

The projects would have groups assigned similarly to stems, 4 faders per side, but I'd still have control over individual channels if I wanted to tweak them.

I could load tracks on the fly and independently control the transport on each machine, but thanks to the Max4Live patch running on each side, playback would be delayed until the track playing on the other side reached a major beat subdivision (either 1, 5, 9, etc or even 1, 9, 17, etc), then fall into perfect sync with the other track.

If I loaded a track, then all of the MIDI mappings for that track for the dancers and other live elements would also be loaded in.

Maybe that's the way to go? Maybe I shouldn't bother investing time and energy into mixing down to stems if all I'm doing is sacrificing individual channel control?

Maybe getting this free to download M4L system out is doing a better service to the scene than being an early adopter of Stems?

[1nfinitezer0]

I really like the idea of stems. It may not catch on, but I'm likely to render my stuff to it for a while. There's something about the DJ interface that's a lot more conducive to performance for me. Looping, cue points and library management is great in Traktor, and having the ability to set midi modifiers and incremental actions in the mapping allows for a lot of control. Getting tired of the effects, which is why I run Ableton & Maschine alongside.
Stems doesn't potentially offer anything new, but it does bring those existing concepts to another interface. Everyone's got their own way of playing. DJing is easier than ever, and hopefully the masters will always be at the top. But the whole boundary between live and DJ is already blurred.

[ashley BORG]

Seems to be gathering support...

http://www.residentadvisor.net/news.aspx?id=30220

[Monreal]

"hundreds"

[Lost to the Void]

Seems to be gathering support...

http://www.residentadvisor.net/news.aspx?id=30220

Mostly bullshit labels that just try to sell shit though. Mostly.

[bergertron]

Why would you bother wanting to mix some one elses stems.

Grand doing your own.
you might aswell just mix with loop packs

[Lost to the Void]

It`s like being in covers band in my eyes.
Worse, at least in a covers band you still need to be a competent musician.

[PixelKind]

So stem packs gonna be the new loop packs?

[A.M.Smith]

This is all pretty interesting to me because I've been thinking of putting together a DJ set--I'm hesitant to call it much else--when I have enough original material and perhaps trying to play out at a few regular, local events. I don't want to haul my gear around to do a live PA. Despite the NI dislike in this thread, I'll admit I was throwing around the idea of using Maschine to do a "stems" style DJ set, though I wasn't even going to do anything fancy, just load maybe 4 song length stems per track that would let me mute things and unmute things to do transitions.

The other option was to buy some kind of basic controller and just do a two virtual-deck set. Which feels less appealing to me given that I prefer making my tracks with hardware and doing long takes which I edit down in my DAW to something reasonably long and that makes sense.

Personally, I agree that I think that this isn't going to catch on and will just be a way for NI to sell more product via the Top 10 Beatport Kru to privileged teenagers with their parents credit cards. I don't totally hate NI personally, Maschine in particular really changed how I do things when I make a track ITB and I love Absynth, Monark, and many Kontakt instruments...but much about what they do feels dirty.