TSRB 174 - Automatic Episode Transcript - Please excuse any errors, not reviewed for accuracy

Benedikt:

Hello and welcome to the Self-Recording Band podcast. I am your host, Benedict Thain. If you're new to the show, welcome. If you're already a listener, welcome back. Glad to have you. Today we're gonna talk about stems, backing tracks, multi-tracks, the different kind of file types you can export from a mixing session. And we're gonna talk about what to use them for, you know, what the differences are, why it might not be a good idea to like ask for some of them. and all these things. And Malcolm, my co-host and friend, is with me today. As always, I'm super stoked that he's back. So hello, welcome, Malcolm. How are you?

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Hey Benny. I'm good, man, I'm good. It's great to see you again. Great to be chatting about audio again. I had a big week in audio, man. I spent like most of my week last week battling with Pro Tools. I'm so angry with it.

Benedikt:

Oh yeah, I totally forgot to ask about that when we chatted before the show. Like, did you make the switch to something else or the Pro Tools program? Ah!

Malcom Owen-Flood:

I suffered through. So long time listeners will know that I'm a Pro Tools guy. Benny is a Cubase guy. And yeah, Pro Tools just started crashing on me constantly. Like I was making it like maybe five minutes and just having to crash. And Pro Tools is already oddly slow to boot up. So it's like I was spending more time waiting on it, launching sessions than actually working. And I was like, this is ridiculous.

Benedikt:

Can I say a quick thing about that? Are you sure it's Pro Tools or is it depending on which plugins are in the session? Because I discovered

something on the podcast interview that I was not aware of. I don't know if you've listened to our episode interview that I did with, oh sorry, we can cut that out. I don't want to be thinking about this name for too long. Ah, what's his name? God. Blanking. What's the Reaper guy? Oh, damn. because that was a very interesting thing he told me. Ah, damn it. Do you remember his name? Do you know who I mean? There you go. Mike Robinson, okay, sorry. Sorry, Wayne. So I'm not sure if you listened to the entire episode that I had with Mike Robinson. He has a YouTube channel on like all things Reaper. I think it's called Let's Talk About Reaper. Awesome dude, I had an interview, done an interview with him on this podcast before and he told me, and I wasn't aware of that, that Plugin Alliance plugins apparently are super slow. I like caused the session to load for super long, like the increased load times. And I just tried it and like deactivated all of them and all of my sessions immediately loaded and when there's plugin alliance plugins in them, it takes forever to load a session. So I'm just wondering if that's the same for you, if it's, or if it's actually Pro Tools.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

I mean that could be part of what's slowing it down, a factor kind of thing, but I think Pro Tools is also kind of slow.

Benedikt:

Ah, okay, okay, okay.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

But also, plugins can also be why something's crashing, compatibility between a plugin and a version of a software.

Benedikt:

Mm.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

So you can't necessarily fully blame Pro Tools, but for how much money I spend on Pro Tools, I do expect it to

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

be able to work, to be able to mix a song. So I uninstalled a lot of plugins and updated my computer OS and went back a version on Pro Tools and finally have something stable enough to keep working. But oh, man, I was so angry. Just so frustrating. Like, literally

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

spent years just giving the money, waiting for M1 support, and now it's here and it like doesn't work. It's like,

Benedikt:

frustrating.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

yeah. And it worked for a little bit, so I don't really know what changed. But it's not working well enough to do the job. So I did download Cubase. But I'm halfway through this EP, so I can't make the swap here. It just doesn't. It's not going to work. So I don't know.

Benedikt:

Yeah, yeah, I feel that. Like switching to, like I will accept a lot of, I will go through a lot of pain before I actually switch anything, just because the, you know, making a switch is so painful in itself, like it takes so long. And so I avoid that whenever I can, but sometimes it just has to happen.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah. My official stance now is that I'm going to wait for more updates on the plugin side, not on Pro Tools because I'm not giving them any more money.

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

And if those updates on the plugins cause for that version of Pro Tools to become stable on my computer, then success. I'll run with that forever. But if six months from now I still can't use it, I'm going to invest some time into Cubase and just make it happen.

Benedikt:

Yeah, yeah,

Malcom Owen-Flood:

It'll be time.

Benedikt:

yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds like a plan.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

But otherwise,

the mix is coming along great.

Benedikt:

Yeah, that's good, that's good. Yeah, it's so frustrating, these tiny little things. You know, it takes you out of the flow and like,

Malcom Owen-Flood:

yeah.

Benedikt:

Nah, yeah, exactly, exactly. But I have had my phases with Cubase 2 where this kind of happened. Not a lot of them, but there was... Few there were a few versions that were not that stable I can't complain for the most part, but a few versions have had problems in the past But for the most

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Right.

Benedikt:

part, I'm very happy. So

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Very good, very good.

Benedikt:

Yeah, I think there's no there's no perfect. Ah, they all have their problems every now and again, but you know

Malcom Owen-Flood:

yeah, if you're listening to this and you're not experiencing crashes all the time that are affecting your ability to do your work, I would stick with what you got.

Benedikt:

Yeah, exactly, exactly, totally.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

That's all we need. Just

Benedikt:

yes, totally. That's yeah, absolutely. That's exactly what we need. Great. Um, other than that, uh, I don't know. Let's just jump into this episode maybe.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, yeah. I think this is a very relevant topic

Benedikt:

Totally.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

for any band that records and tours, I would say.

Benedikt:

Totally. Yeah, you basically got the idea while we were, or you mentioned it like in the episode even, I think, in last week's

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah.

Benedikt:

episode where we talked about like the audio terms that we explained, and then you were like, you know what, the whole stems, multitracks conversation, this could be its own episode for various reasons. And I think the main reason was that You know, we all know that the one thing everyone needs is the final mix and master of a song, of course. But then, you know, sometimes people ask for stems, which are, as we explained, like groups of tracks. Sometimes they ask for instrumental versions or the full multitracks. And while it's in theory, it's possible to do any of these and give them to people. It's sometimes not as easy as people think. And sometimes it's not even a good idea. to request those things, or there's nothing really you could do with it, or they're not as useful as you think they are probably. And so I think we need to talk about, again, really quickly what the differences between stems and multitracks and what kind of different files you could theoretically export out of your mixing session. And then maybe you could walk people through what they actually need versus what they think they'll need and why it's a problem, or it's not as easy as they think, maybe.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Right, yeah. Okay, so here is the scenario. You have just got your songs back from being mixed and you've approved, you're done the project. And actually, probably a few months have gone by in my experience. So your song, your album's mixed, it's all done. And then you're gonna start touring. You know what, it would be really great to have the stems of our album so that we could have backing tracks live. Or... maybe there's another reason. Sometimes people want to do like play through videos and be able to take out an element and record, you know, a YouTube video of them playing just the drums or something like that. There's all these different reasons, but you then reach out to your mix engineer and say, hey, can we have the stems for let's just say one song and for the example of this episode will stick to just need a song. Now that sounds very simple and like it should be no problem. but it's kind of infinitely more complicated depending on the exact situation that you need it for. So if you need it for playing live versus that example I just gave of doing some kind of play through YouTube piece, you probably need entirely different files. And yeah, you almost definitely need entirely different files and you probably wouldn't get what you thought you were gonna get if... there was no conversation and like say you asked me and I just sent you files without asking what you actually needed and having the conversation we're gonna have on this podcast, I'm almost positive that what you get back would not be what you were hoping to get. So

Benedikt:

Yes.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

we're gonna try and demystify this whole thing on why there's this disconnect between the mixer and the band always, and

Malcom Owen-Flood:

how we can hopefully find us a way of communicating the way we need to to get this to be something that can happen for you because there's nothing wrong with wanting these files. but it's learning what you actually need and how to communicate it, that would probably make this whole transaction go a lot smoother.

Benedikt:

Yes, and I also think it's relevant for people who mix themselves and don't even work with external engineers because it might affect the, like knowing what you want in the end or what you're going to need in the end might affect how you set up your session and you do your routing and you can make good or bad decisions there and potentially sabotage yourself if you do it the wrong way. So just knowing what you'll actually need in the end, what the deliverables are going to be, it's going to make your life easier even if you do it yourself. Maybe you can just save yourself some time and not go through having to export everything when in fact you just need a few key things.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Absolutely, yeah, yeah, we'll definitely touch on that. But back to what you originally said, Benny, we need to clarify our two main points of terminology, and that is stems versus multitrack. And I know we've mentioned this on previous episodes, but it always bears repeating. Multitracks are all of the individual tracks. So if you say, give me the drum stems, you're actually getting one wave file for all of the drums. And if you say, give me the drum multi-tracks, you're gonna get a kick in, a kick out, a snare. Any mic that was on that drum kit will be its own wave file. And that would be the multi-tracks, you know? So when you say, give me the multi-tracks of this song, you're asking for all of the tracks that were used to make the mix. When you say, give me the stems of the song, you're really asking for, give me the outputs of the buses that you used for each instrument group, usually.

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

And that varies. depending on how the mix was approached and

on the mixer's preference and just their organization structure as well.

Benedikt:

Totally. That's one thing we definitely need to talk about, because here's where the problem starts. It's not that every mixer uses the same sort of setup and routing, and there could be mixers who just have drums, music, and a mix bus or something, and then there could be people who have drums, rhythm guitars, bass, lead guitars, and everything sort of separate.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yep.

Benedikt:

Another mixer might throw in all the guitars leads and rhythms into you know There's all these different routing options and yes, you can still export it differently by just muting and soloing certain tracks and stuff But people need to know what you actually need Because otherwise you get something randomly and it probably doesn't help you and then you know The different ways you're gonna use it also are important to know because as you said using, you know, if you need something for live backing tracks, you're going to need different things compared to stems you might need for a collab or remix or some youtube video, you know, it's totally totally different. So yeah, we definitely need to talk about all of this. I want to say real quick, or I want to tell people what I export or send to people always, like what my default is based on the routing template that I have and what most people ask for. So I kind of have my default that I sent out if I don't get any other info. And that is just, and I'm going to explain to you real quick why I do this. So my routing in my sessions is, allows me. to give people pretty specific, like, separate stems. So I have a drum bus, I have a bass bus, I have a rhythm bus, a lead bus, a vocal bus, and then one that I call additional production, like all synths and keys and stuff like that go to that. There's the exception, though. Sometimes, you know, like a keyboard or an organ or something could end up being in the rhythm bus, depending on its function in the mix. But usually, they are in the additional production bus. So what I do by default is that I, and it's just because I can do it easily with one click, basically. mix and master. So they get a mastered version and an unmastered version. They get an instrumental version, a mastered one and an unmastered one, just so they can use it and go to a different mastering engineer if they want to or do a remaster or something after the fact. So I give them those and then they get the stems which are the buses that I happen to have in my session. So that's what everyone gets. Sometimes if and I always try to have a conversation with bands before we start the project to figure out all the things that we Just talked about but sometimes people just don't give me that info or like yeah for whatever reason I don't have it and then They just get what I just said, but then we sometimes run into problems because then people will come to me after the fact, like you said in the beginning, and they will be like, hey, we need this for live, so could you please remove those, this one guitar from the lead bus and just send us this other guitar that we don't use live because we need that for the backing track, or could you add the, could you put the drum samples? could you take those

Benedikt:

or these like sub drops or whatever, could you take those out of the drum bus into the production bus

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yep.

Benedikt:

or something like that? I don't know what they need for live and what they, so if they don't tell me, they get whatever I do and then I have to go in a second time, open up the session again, export it to whatever specs they give me and do it again. And that's annoying and it also costs money if I have to do it again, so.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yes, yeah. Yeah, we're going to probably have to approach this from a few different scenarios to really paint the picture. But yeah, I think sticking with we need stems for multi track for sorry, we need we need we need stems for backing tracks playing live. Let's go with that scenario. And again, yeah, just like like you, Benny, if somebody just asked me for stems and didn't give me any direction, I would go I would print off my main. which is going to be drums, bass, guitar, vocals, keys, and my special effects. That's my six, I guess I have. Oh, and there's an instrument one mixed in there. So there's also an instrumental bus, but that's not going to help you in a live situation. And that seems sweet, right? You've got six audio files that cover the entire mix. But like you said, if they're using backing tracks, they're not using all the backing tracks. And often... very often guitars are something that are used in backing tracks because there's all these little overdubbed things and that's what they're looking for. They want these little ambient like background guitars or something. And if I send you the guitar stem, well guess what? The rhythm guitars are in there too. The ripping guitar solo that you're obviously going to play live is in there too. So this whole backing track stem is useless to you because it has all these things that would just be playing the stuff you're already playing. So the reality is, is you need a new custom mix of that instrument group. And that is kinda as infinitely complicated as you want. You might want it mixed differently for live use because

Benedikt:

Hmm.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

things can be put together to sound pretty weird in the context of a mix. You also might want the volumes to change very dramatically differently than they do on the album versus using them live. So there's no limit. And depending on your playback system, you also might need other instruments on that same file. Right? You might need keys and these guitar ambiences to exist on the same file. Just because you can only play back one file at a time or something with your playback system. So it is way more complicated than people think. It's not just having a guitar file. You need a custom guitar file that suits your individual needs for that specific song, kind of for your specific like. Ideally for a live show could be a different mix in a different venue really, but that's way too much work that nobody would ever do

Benedikt:

Yeah, totally. And the same is true for other tracks too, like the additional production or special effects bus, for example. Sometimes you even have to rehearse those things to know what you really need, because maybe, you know, I give you all the, you know, the post-production effects and synths and stuff that you don't, you're not going to play live. And if I give them to the way I have it in my mix, it might work. But maybe the sub drops are way too loud or too quiet. You know,

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yep.

Benedikt:

a live PA sounds different to like a normal stereo setup at home. And as soon as you have all the big woofers there and stuff, maybe the sub drops are way too loud. And if you turn it down, you don't hear the synths anymore or you know things like that so you might actually have to rehearse that or to get like two or three different files with different things on it so you can do a custom mix every time you do it live so chances are that what's on the record is not working exactly the same way live and

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah.

Benedikt:

and yeah

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah. And live tracks, like backing tracks, they're a hard thing to just throw at a mixing engineer that doesn't

Benedikt:

Mm-hmm.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

know your band. So, and that's the reality for most bands until you hit a certain level, you're probably not touring with your own sound guy or sound person. So you're just asking a stranger to be able to predict what's gonna come out of this one channel without having a visual cue. They can't see somebody approaching the mic to start singing a backup harmony that's way too loud. You know?

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

So it's like... You also have to mix them across all the songs very consistently to give them a fighting chance, I think. But yeah, so it really is so complicated and really to do it, you almost like, I think the best way to get it done is to book a day in the studio and go there and design it with your mix engineer.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

you can do that over Zoom, I'm sure as well.

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

There's different ways to do it. You don't have to be there in person, but you kind of do need the to do it together to get what you need. Or, and this I think is a really good option for our audience because you are all DAW proficient people and you probably also have these tracks individually because you probably self-recorded them, you could ask for printed multi-tracks from the session and then build your own stems, which is definitely what I think you should do. And that's how my band did it and it worked really well for us. but it requires you to have the knowledge of how to do that. And should we maybe jump into what that would look like, Benny?

Benedikt:

Yeah, and also, I don't know if I, I mean, I agree that then you could make your own custom mix and create different versions of it, experiment without like causing like a lot of extra costs and everything. But there's other problems that come with it. I'm not a big fan of printing multi-treks and giving them to artists for various reasons. And so we have, if we talk about that, we have to talk about that side of things too, because

Malcom Owen-Flood:

We do.

Benedikt:

people, as you said, like people have to know what they're asking for and how to deal with it. and know what they're doing basically, because you will be surprised otherwise what will happen when you, or what might happen when you import the printed multitracks into a new session, because it's not guaranteed that they will sound like your mix, and there's various reasons for that, and you might have to do some tweaking, some adjustments. And this is a very important thing actually, because people always assume it's very easy to just give people the multitracks of the mixed session, and it's not like that.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

No,

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

names for different DAWs, but you essentially print the effects of every plugin on every track, and then you load all of those individual multi-tracks into a new session and click play, it will not sound like your mix. Because there's all of this bus processing that's been removed from the equation. And honestly, if I did that, you would also have all of those buses printed and you'd have twice. of everything, like it would be a disaster,

Benedikt:

Yeah,

Malcom Owen-Flood:

honestly, unless

Benedikt:

and

Malcom Owen-Flood:

you

Benedikt:

parallel

Malcom Owen-Flood:

knew how to organize

Benedikt:

things.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

it.

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, yeah, there's so many things that would go wrong. But that's actually why I think this is, again, a pro for our audience, is

Benedikt:

Mm.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

because you'll kind of realize that it's never going to really sound like the mix. It just has to sound like the part and be good. And

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

you don't necessarily want it to sound like the mix through

Benedikt:

Yep.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

a live PA either. So

Benedikt:

Yep.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

again, you might be able to just do this with the tracks you already have. from your recording session and not need the mixer to give you anything. Unless it's like a certain guitar sound that they crafted or the sub drops and explosions and special effects are all done on the post mixing side, then you kind of need that stuff. But you might be able to do a lot of it just on your own and you just kind of do your own mix for it. Like that's totally realistic.

Benedikt:

Yeah, so it can be a big waste of time and money to ask for like the full multi tracks from a mixer if you can do it yourself. What might be worth it though is asking for like knowing what exactly you need and then asking for those specific tracks and then you still need to know how to you know how to adjust and create your own sort of custom stem from that in your DAW but It's much more efficient to just say to the mixer. Hey, we need this guitar and this these post pro effects And these are the things we're going to play live anyway So we don't need that and then you you know, we can give you whatever you need and also if you do it yourself before you start like just Just focus on the things you really need and think it through, like what are the final deliverables and set up your routing that way. And what we mean with like bus processing and parallel stuff, that's important too. It might not be important if it's just a subtle thing and it's not necessary for the live backing tracks thing, but it also might. I don't know. If you have, for example, if there is a backing track with synths that is pumping to the groove of the song because you side chained a kick to a synth or something, you know, things like that happen in a mix. That's going to be removed. if I just give you the individual tracks, because the tracks interact in the session, but they don't if I export them separately, or I have to find workarounds for it. And those are the things you need to be aware of. It's that all the tracks go through groups and are processed there together, so that changes the sound, and then some things might run in parallel, and so that changes the sound too, and all of that is gone when you just export the multi-track. So even if you do it yourself, If you know you're going to need certain things, maybe you set up the routing and choose your processing and whole mixing approach based on that. Like knowing that what you're about to do is not going to work for the backing tracks and you just have to think it through and be clever about it. That's what I'm saying.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, what are just, got a point I think I can make here. What are the

Benedikt:

Hmm.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

most common backing tracks you experience? Is it guitar

Benedikt:

Definitely.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

parts or is it vocals or what do you think?

Benedikt:

Um... Get- Definitely guitar layers that are more than the two guitars that they can typically play live But the most important thing from most bands that I work with are actually the synth So the layers and post-production samples sort of stuff because most bands I work with have like drums bass guitarists vocals live

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Mm. Yeah.

Benedikt:

And everything that's like a synth thing or like the post-pro effects like bass drops risers Snare bombs the types of if they want to run that live they need that so it's mostly post-production and synth then additional guitar layers sometimes. Sometimes backing vocal layers, choirs, or like big vocal stacks that you can't do live.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Right, yeah.

Benedikt:

That type of thing, yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah,

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

I think for us it was mostly vocals because really there was like two good singers in the band and then two mediocre, one myself included.

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

And so we were like, if we could reinforce that, that would be good. So we just kind of played to that, which was nice. But sorry, one thing I wanted to kind of touch on that I think a lot of people maybe haven't considered about backing tracks is if you're putting like sub drops and then a high octave harmony, on the same track that you're sending in front of house, that's a hard thing for them to mix. Like, again, they don't know what's gonna come out of there. And if they think it's some big moment that's meant to be loud, and then the next thing's meant to be quiet, like how are they gonna really do that, right? In a

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

perfect world, you'd wanna have them labeled, like track one's gonna be sub drops, track two is gonna be organs, track three is gonna be backing vocals kind of thing. And they

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

can mix some instruments. But that's, again, getting into a much more expensive setup that's more complicated to put together. And you're going to

Benedikt:

I, yeah,

Malcom Owen-Flood:

have to have different mixes for each of those tracks then, right?

Benedikt:

yeah, totally. I remember many shows when I was mixing live still. I mixed a lot of live shows, and small club shows mostly. And I remember many shows where the band would have, usually the drummer would have some sort of, sometimes just like an MP3 player or something, and maybe a small mixing desk or whatever, and they would just plug a mono feed, or like a mono cable into an empty, you know, free channel on the multi-track, and then. on the multi-core. And then they would be like, yeah, we have some backing tracks that we're running, just put them on a free fader and then let's do a quick line check if it works and then we're good. And those shows are often absolute nightmares for exactly what you just described because I have no idea as a mixer what's gonna come at me there. And if everything's on that one track and then also mono and all of that, like, you know, one moment there's a bass drop, then followed by some choir, followed by a synth pad and you have to make all of that work,

Malcom Owen-Flood:

how do you really do that, right? It's kind of an impossible task. And then I'm glad you said a mono jack because that's a huge mistake. You get sent stems, they're stereo wave files. So say you wanted like rhythm guitars for under your solo. So you do a solo and the rhythm guitars come in. Most front of house systems are mono. So if you use that file, you're actually sending them to stereo files that are in sum to mono. It'll probably sound kind of weird.

Benedikt:

Yeah, and sometimes people don't even do that. Sometimes people, I've had it where, oftentimes actually, where people have this like small mixer, they plug their player or phone or whatever into the mixer in stereo, and then they give me just one of the outputs.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Right, yeah.

Benedikt:

So I only have the left side, not even a sum, but like only the left side. So it could

could go wrong.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

It's all, again, decisions that need to be made specifically for what's happening. You can have stereo PA sound. That's an achievable thing if you want it.

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

And you can have a mono sum, or you could just, with the case of double guitars, you just delete one of the guitars and just have the one guitar come in. It's all part by part, track by track decisions that have to be made for multi-track backing tracks. So yeah, I think this is painting a pretty good picture that it is infinitely complicated.

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

And again, to recap, best case scenario, you get to design it with an engineer, like your mix engineer, and like really best case scenario, they're literally bringing a rig to your jam space to figure it out and build a set with you. Like that's the dream.

Benedikt:

Yes.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Very unrealistic, but that's the dream. Second would be you figure out how to do it yourself and either get multi tracks bounce to you. or you just craft them from your existing recording production.

Benedikt:

Yeah, honestly, I think that in most cases, just the raw tracks that you recorded would do and you just give them some slight processing or whatever and to create a custom mix, you don't need the finished final mixes for the backing track purposes. It's usually just for the stuff to be heard, unless it's like some crazy effect or whatever. But for most bands I work with, if the guitar tone that they tracked worked and if they have like programmed some synth and stuff, like the way it is in their session would. would work for the live multitracks.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Definitely.

Benedikt:

So.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

I've got opinions on this actually, particularly because there's there's times where you would want like the mix sound.

Benedikt:

Mm-hmm.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

But like, for example, distorted vocals can be really great. But when you're playing live, your lead vocals not going to be distorted 90% of the time,

Benedikt:

Yes.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

99% of the time. So if you have these distorted backing tracks come in, it's like out of context.

Benedikt:

Yes.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Everything sounds wrong because it's not going to match the vibe of like your drums aren't going to be distorted live either,

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

you know. So like you don't you have to build your mix to suit that kind of thing. So you might be better off not having the mix sessions, honestly.

Benedikt:

Same with the guitars, actually, if you play something similar to what you use to track the record, if you use similar amps and instruments live, your raw sounds arrive at the board and the mixer adjusts it to whatever fits the location and the PA system and all of that. And so if you give them the... the raw recordings of the guitar layers that you want live, they can mix and match that, and it just sounds like this wall of guitars that just fits together. But if your guitars on the record have been heavily processed and they're way brighter than what comes from the stage, or they have crazy effects on them, they're also gonna sound disconnected. So it could even be better to just have a bunch of guitars that are raw and you mix it for that situation, versus trying to fit something pre-mixed in a completely different context, together with what comes from the stage in the venue.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

And of course, the real kicker to remember is that all live sound scenarios, there's usually like a pretty aggressive EQ going on to battle the environment that that mixer has to work within for the scenario and for their PA system. So no matter what you do to make it sound like the record, it's gonna not sound like the record by the time it comes out of those

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

speakers and people hear it in that room.

Benedikt:

Yeah. Oh, yeah, totally. And also, especially with small clubs. you are just reinforcing what already comes off the stage if you're using like caps and all of that. And so what you know, yeah, very radical EQ decisions can be made there because there might be just some top end missing but the rest is there. So that's also the reason like it's kind of unrelated, but that's also the reason why it doesn't work usually to just grab the output of the live mixing desk and record that. People often ask for that too when I did live shows whether you know, they would ask me to if they could record board basically

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Right.

Benedikt:

and I always try to tell them that like you can but what you're gonna hear at home is gonna be pretty disappointing

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Like

Benedikt:

yeah

Malcom Owen-Flood:

very bad because it's missing the live band.

Benedikt:

yeah yeah you're gonna hear a kick drum and vocals and you know.

Benedikt:

yeah yeah the tiny bit of guitars maybe and so maybe no snare drum at all depending on how

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yep.

Benedikt:

loud it is in the room so and you know so yeah

Malcom Owen-Flood:

That's funny.

Benedikt:

totally makes sense to just mix it for the context in the context of the situation

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Definitely.

Benedikt:

now Maybe, well, we should explain real quick because we've mentioned it but not really explained it, I think. Why? I mean, we have a whole episode on the bus processing thing, but still why, when you put multitracks or even like stems together, why they don't sound like the finished mix.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Just the last thing I would say is, I would say for most people, and of course, there's exceptions in people that make this work, but if you don't tour with a sound person, I would suggest you don't do backing tracks. That's my opinion, and

Benedikt:

Mm.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

again, people do make it work, but if you really want backing tracks to sound awesome and not distract, or even take away from your performance, I think you should wait until you have a mixer that tours with you.

Benedikt:

Oh yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

I really, really recommend that. You don't

Benedikt:

Agreed.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

have to do that, but it's just, that's my two cents. It's a

Benedikt:

Agreed.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

rule of thumb to start with.

Benedikt:

Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. Totally makes sense. And you have to rehearse that type of stuff and then...

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, yeah,

Benedikt:

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

requires a certain amount of gear, time and skill and practice. And then that there's this whole step of learning to play the tracks and metronome in years and stuff like that that has to happen beforehand. You have to play to a click to do backing tracks. Right. So unless you have a, an in your system figured out and click track system figured out already backing tracks are like a future consideration.

Benedikt:

Yeah, I also think people overestimate the importance of this. Like when you think of it, about it from the audience perspective, nobody really cares usually because they, you can just create an awesome experience without those backing tracks. And nobody will be like, Hey, I think there's this extra layer on the record that they didn't

Malcom Owen-Flood:

when producing bands was always, well, how are we going to do this live? Nobody cares, man. Like, there's no... Your drums won't sound like this live. I made you sound like you're twice the drummer you are.

Benedikt:

Yeah, yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

If I'm brutally honest. You also can't as in tune as this.

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

You did this vocal take over eight hours instead of one take, so

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

it's going to sound different. Don't worry

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

about it.

Benedikt:

Yeah, totally. My opinion here is that you want to create the best possible listening experience on the record and you want to do the same live, but they don't have to be the same.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, because

it can't be. Yeah,

Benedikt:

be exactly.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

That's such a great way to put it. You just want to do as good as you can in both scenarios.

Benedikt:

Yeah, totally. And it's much better to do less live, but do that properly, versus trying to do it all and then screw it up, because that's what people will remember. If you try

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yes.

Benedikt:

to do it, but it's awful because samples are way too loud, or you're losing the click and then everything's out of time or whatever, that's going to be way worse because people are going to remember those mistakes. But if it's not even there to begin with, nobody will care. So,

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Absolutely. Heck yeah.

Benedikt:

Just real quick, I just wanted to say about the whole stems thing. Even if you don't have a complicated setup, even if you just have a few groups and a Mixbus, the reason why, I'm just saying this because I have to explain this a couple of times in the past. The reason why those stems or multitracks don't sound the same when you import them is that when you, if you apply EQ, for example, on a Mixbus, yes, that will not change things. too drastically, I mean a little bit, but that's kind of okay. But for example, if you compress the mix as a whole, then the compressor will react to the loudest parts of the mix, for example, and then turn, you know, and then for example, when there's a kick drum and a snare drum, the compressor would react to that and turn down the mix in that moment, like it will pump with the groove of the song, and that will affect how the guitars and the vocals and everything else feels, and it will glue everything together. And... If you just export the stems before they go through this bus compression, things will be different. There will be no interaction between the tracks. There will be no pumping. That's the main reason for that. And

Benedikt:

not the end of the world. It's not a very big difference, but if you do the AB, you will notice things will probably, what happens is It will probably sound a little less bright, a little less present. It will be not as dense as the actual mix. There will be like transient sticking out a bit more. So

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Mm-hmm.

Benedikt:

it will just not sound as finished compared to like the final mix when you just put the stems together. And it's

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Now.

Benedikt:

still, you know, you can still do, achieve the same thing. You can do a remaster. You can absolutely recreate that, but just know that by default. things will sound different. And our mixing decisions have been usually made while listening to the bus processing. So we're not applying this at the end, we're mixing into this. So we never heard it the way you will hear it. We never heard it without the bus processing. So it's kind of, we can't even predict what it's gonna sound like because we're mixing into this and make decisions based on that behavior on our mix bus.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Absolutely. Yeah, like, like you mixing into a limiter, something I do sometimes, and that's like hugely reactive to being hit by all of the instruments. So if I mute all of the other instruments and just have the drums going through my master bus and print that it doesn't do the same thing it does if I add more stuff to it. Like it reacts entirely different. So, and that was one of the questions I had myself when trying to figure this stuff out was like, well, if I commit these buses before the mastering. chain they sound different but what if I just send them through the mastering chain one at a time won't that then give me the same result as the final mix but it still doesn't because that mastering chain is going to react differently because it's not being fed everything all at once

Benedikt:

Yeah.There's workarounds for that. You could send the entire mix like to a side chain and then, you know, like there's workarounds where you could run

Yeah, but like not quite the same.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

same and yet the again going for all the reasons we just talked about earlier in this episode that you seem worth the squeeze

Benedikt:

Exactly, exactly, exactly. And yeah, again, you're right, it's not worth it, and you're going to be better off just getting the raw tracks and doing it yourself, or just know what to expect, and then... live with the with the sems the way they are.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yep.

Benedikt:

Also, like if you have a good example is also probably if I have a bunch of like Harmony vocals or like a vocal stack or backing vocals I often send them to a group and process them together on the group versus processing every individual vocal there. If you then ask me to give you just like two of the eight that I have

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yep.

Benedikt:

and remove the rest maybe they are way too dynamic now because in my mix all eight go through my chain for those harmony vocals. of them I'm hitting my group entirely differently and the compressor might not do anything or you know they might sound very raw and weird compared to like the full stack going through that that chain like all kinds of things could happen and so you might as well just do it yourself with the raw tracks and you'll be fine

Malcom Owen-Flood:

told it, okay, you brought up a great point I wanted to touch on. That same scenario that Benny just described, but go to guitars. Say there's a couple guitars happening and you just want one of them, not the group of them. And I've bus processed these guitars, so I've thrown an amp sim on the bus, and that's where the guitar tone comes forward. There are actually DIs on the individual tracks. If I were to just... bounce out to that track before the bus, you would literally get a guitar TI back. It wouldn't sound like the album at all. So that's why when you want specific multi-tracks, it costs money because it actually is going in and modifying things inside the mix to give you the result you want. So it takes time is essentially what happens and, and conscious thought and decision making. So it's, uh, it's never as simple as just give me that file. It's like, okay, well, I'll have to take everything else out of that bus. to give you just that file that sounds kind of close to what it does in the mix.

Benedikt:

Yeah, which brings me to our last point on the outline here, why it is a good idea to talk about all of this in advance. So because if I know that in the end you're going to need this file and this vocal track and this guitar, I can set up the session in a way that will easily allow me to do that at the end. And I don't have to undo things or redo things or recreate things. Or we can have at least we can at least have a conversation about whether or not. the trade-off is going to be worth it because it might mean I might be able to easily do it and it's not going to change the way the mix is going to sound but it might be a trade-off not really worth it So I might still prefer to mix it the way I would mix it And then we can have a conversation about like do you really need this and do I have to do it the other way? Is it worth that trade-off? Or you know, but just talk about that. And sometimes it's very easy. If I know that, then I can maybe send those two vocals to a different bus and do the rest in the group, and you'll be good, and I can just export those. Or I can put the ampsims directly on those two tracks, and all the rest can go through a group. I just have to know. And if you

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah.

Benedikt:

do it yourself, just put some thought into it before you set up your session, because otherwise you'll have to remove all your plugins and rearrange the session and everything to make it work.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah. Now let's talk about other reasons people want stems. And we touched about this at the beginning a little bit, but generally people ask, hey, just send me the stems. And they kind of are hoping to get like a one-size-fits-all solution where I'll send them some tracks back and they'll work for their backing tracks, but they'll also be able to do play-through videos.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

And unfortunately that's, as you've probably predicted by now, not the case

Malcom Owen-Flood:

at all. What I give you will probably work for nothing you want to do instead of any, all of it. But if you think about what you actually need, I think you're probably better off asking for a specific mix that replicates what you need. So instead of asking for stems for a playthrough, say you're doing a lead guitar playthrough and you just need the song, sans lead guitar, in that case, you do want it to sound like the song, right? Because it's going to go on

Malcom Owen-Flood:

YouTube and...

Malcom Owen-Flood:

kind of represent the album. So I think in that case, you want to contact your mix engineer and be like, hey, would you mind bouncing me the mix without this guitar track? So it's one file and then you record the new guitar part over top of it for the video, rather than stems. And then you're trying to put something together. Because yeah, the same thing's gonna happen. Drummer's gonna see it and be like, I wanna do a drum playthrough. And then you do, but you need that lead guitar back in now. So you need a new stem bounced or new mix bounced really. sans drums, but everything else back in. You know, all of these scenarios, I think it's just better off to go that road rather than trying to figure out a combination of stem groupings that will allow you to mix and match.

Benedikt:

Yes, completely agree. It all depends on what you're trying to do and why. Same thing, if you already know, for example, you're going to do a call, I've had that too, where you know you're going to do a collaboration with an artist in a completely different genre. I had rock bands who do some sort of hip-hop or electronic remix of their song.

Benedikt:

And if you know that's going to happen and all the other person needs is maybe the vocals or certain parts of it, you know, then just tell me and same thing. We're going to create stems that give you exactly what you need for that remix, because you might want them to sound the same, but you don't need certain elements of it. Or, you know, if you're going for, if you want to do like a mastering shootout, then your mixer doesn't do it by default like I do, you want to ask for an unmastered mix in addition to the master mix, so you can send it to other mastering engineers. Or, you know, all kinds of things.

Benedikt:

Yeah, that's basically it. That's... Yeah, and sometimes you don't know. That's why I do it by default, because sometimes people want to put their song on, or they get a request for a compilation or something, and then they ask for an unmasked master thing because they want to fit it in with the rest of the songs. So that's why I do some of those things by default. But the best scenario is that you know what you're going to be doing and what you're going to need for that, and then have a conversation with your mixing engineer and just get

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Definitely,

Benedikt:

always create it for the medium, like if it's, whether it's a live show or a YouTube video or a remix, just knowing what it is for, even if you don't know what you need for this, because it's not your job to know all this, but if you know what you're going to do, then your mixing engineer will know what to do and what to give you.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, there is a skill to mixing these tracks as well for the medium.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Like mixing it for YouTube is more or less trying to keep it like the album, right? But mixing it for live as we've touched on is different. And there's, I think, what's this called? Like the Munson Fletcher curve or something? Is that,

Benedikt:

Fletcher Manson, yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

is that like the relative listening volume into how we perceive

frequencies thing?

Benedikt:

Yes, it is.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

So live is a lot louder. than how we listen to it in the studio.

Benedikt:

True.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

And that means the frequency response of what you're hearing is gonna be perceived by you very differently. So

Benedikt:

Yes.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

what might sound fine in the studio might tear your head off when you crank it up in a PA system.

Benedikt:

Oh yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

So a live, like somebody with experience making backing tracks and mixing them live is gonna have a much better ability to do a good job of that. And again, a good reason to do it in a jam space with a PA system, with an engineer there, is so that you can actually mix it for that medium because yeah you could definitely end up with some unpleasant sounding tracks.

Benedikt:

Oh yeah, for sure, absolutely. This is also why club music is mixed differently and has different targets, sort of frequency that curves, if you wanna call it like that, compared to stuff that's being... played on the radio or on your typical earbuds and stuff. There's certain things you do. If you know it's gonna be for the club, mainly, you're gonna mix it a little differently because a tuned PA system with big subwoofers and the volume in a club is gonna affect how people perceive it, just like you said, Malcolm. And so it's wise to mix that sort of stuff a little differently. It still works in other scenarios, but you always mix for the target medium, basically.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah,

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

yeah, exactly. And then the last thing I'll leave you with is that I'll make it a round number for convenience here. But if I had to guesstimate how many people have asked for tracks and then actually gone on to use them, say 10 people asked me for tracks, I would say one of them used them.

Benedikt:

Yes.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

And that's generous, 10%. I think that's too much.

Benedikt:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, totally. Same here, same here, especially like the full multi-tracks

Malcom Owen-Flood:

it's a weird thing that bands get fixated on because they see another band do it and

Malcom Owen-Flood:

then they realize that there's all of this other stuff to it and then there's like, once they have the tracks, they have to figure out how to get it to the PA's, people and back to their monitoring and how that works. It's like, it's just a, it's way more work than people predict when they first get interested in it. So, yeah, it's a weird thing that bands get fixated on because they see another band do it and then they realize that there's all of this other stuff to it

Benedikt:

Oh yeah, oh yeah. And I also have one final thing. It's not, probably not gonna happen with the multitracks, but there is a risk that comes with delivering a bunch of files versus just delivering the final mix or keeping it simple. And that is that I always, when I send out my sort of deliverables, which are quite a lot, I make sure that I structure it very well, label the tracks properly, and give them, like, do the best I can to explain properly which file is, like, for which purpose, because there's a chance that people confuse it or get it wrong and then they upload the wrong thing to DistroKit and give the wrong thing to the video editor and like, you know, all these kinds of things could go wrong too. If you request a bunch of files from a mix engineer, make sure that everything's really organized well, labeled correctly, and that you use the correct files for the different purposes. I've seen that happen too. Like people have uploaded unmastered mixes to DistroKit and then they sent, you know, like all kinds of things. And

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yep, seen that too. Yeah, it's really sad.

Benedikt:

yeah. Exactly. So that could happen. The more tracks you have to deal with, the more likely you are to make mistakes. Yeah, same is true for if you do it yourself, like always keep a good like folder structure, labeling conventions, and like really stick to that stuff because you can even get your own tracks wrong if you're not careful.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Definitely. Yeah, yeah. It's very important to clearly label what files are for what, because you will not remember down the road.

Benedikt:

Yes, yes. Cool, so yeah, this was, yeah, I think an important topic, even though it's not the most, maybe not the most exciting one, it's a very technical one, but it's super, super important to talk about this, and it will hopefully save you a lot of time and even money when you realize that you probably don't need

Benedikt:

all of this. And you get a better result too, if you do it yourself,

maybe, so,yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

power in that. And again, I think if you can visualize this, you can visualize how a mix works as well,

Benedikt:

Oh yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

and how routing works. So it's good practice for that. If you did enjoy hearing us talk about this, because this was like one of the most live music-orientated topics

Benedikt:

True.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

let us know. Because like, well, we want to definitely mostly talk about recording. If live stuff that's kind of relevant is of interest to you, it's, yeah, Benny and I would love to know that.

Benedikt:

Awesome episode idea there, Malcolm. Maybe we should do one, because that's both live and also self-recording relevant, maybe we should do one on how to, or like approaches to like capture a live show, like do a live recording of your show.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, because I think we did a live off the floor topic

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

way back, but

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

I don't think we've done a concert one I think that's a great idea

Benedikt:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, because there's as we briefly touched on there's challenges to that and I've seen it go wrong so so many times But it's actually not too complicated to do it and there's different approaches depending on the size of the venue and stuff Yeah, that would be a cool episode actually

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Definitely. Love that

Benedikt:

very valuable asset for your band if you do it right, because good live footage of a great evening with a great vibe and energy, if you can capture that well, that can be an awesome piece of content that doesn't require a lot of effort. You know, that could be another music video or social media content. And not many bands do it properly, so yeah, that could be a good idea.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Absolutely.

Benedikt:

Cool. All right. Let us know. Yeah. Reach out. Let us know if you want to hear more on that topic and talk to you next week. Thank

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah,

Benedikt:

you for listening.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

and reminder to head to the Facebook group and look for the Vancouver Island self-recording band, Meetup. I'm pretty sure this album, or this episode comes out before that date will have happened, but I could be wrong on that.

Benedikt:

Probably does, very shortly

Malcom Owen-Flood:

I think before that.

Benedikt:

Yeah, it's gonna be, let me just see, we have the, it's gonna be Wednesday the 14th. So one week before I go to Canada, so yeah. So yeah, I'm gonna go to Canada. I'm gonna go to Canada, I'm gonna go to Canada.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Awesome. Yeah. Okay. Then I think we can even say we're planning July or yep, July 3rd on Vancouver Island. So if you can make that, we'd love to see you.

Benedikt:

Awesome. Also reach out and let us know, or like join the community if you're not in there because there's a thread in there. So

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah.

Benedikt:

like, you know, just request

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yep, and if you can't find

it, message us on Instagram, and we'll get you there.

Benedikt:

Good! Talk to you next week and thank you for listening as always.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Take care, bye.