Recording - September 2019 - 60

Continued from page 59
Right, give them the whole ball of wax, rather
than...
Tim: Yeah, because they might find something
else that really works.
Karl: The other thing also is that-Tim makes
a good point-it's the time to do your housekeeping when you are at the end of a session
and you are bouncing out, so you are getting
your full mix that's gonna be mastered. You've
got your instrumental bed; you should probably look at the instruments and background
vocals and see these as another combination,
because that's useful, and then also the main
vocals. You are then bouncing out the individ-

"I spend a lot of time crafting beautiful melodies, and then they hardly
ever use them. It's almost not worth
the effort."
-Steve Barden

ual stems, and amongst all of that make sure
that the production (meaning reverb, FX, etc.)
that you have applied to those stems gets
bounced out with it. So you don't provide the
stems completely dry, you provide them as
they have been in the mix. The thing is it also
keeps you with a little bit of creative control,
too. You've got a sense of how you want to
sound vocally; you've got a sense of how the
drums are meant to be sounding on that track.
It sort of means that through the process,
while you've got the flexibility Michael was
talking about, where we might want to start
with an acoustic and then sort of start bringing
in other elements, and then actually we want to
use a line from the pre-chorus rather than the
chorus. That doesn't really matter; what does
matter is that your vocal and how you'll represent it in the track is how you had imagined it
at the end of that session. You're not going to
have any control on the actual final mix and
the things that are done against picture, but at
least you're providing it as you had imagined
that song to be done.
A lot of times they want a vocal stem just because
they want the vocal down a little bit. You know,
maybe you mixed it for a record, and they don't
like the radio mix because they need it to sound
different for a commercial.
Karl: You can spend two days in a studio making changes that you can't even tell on
broadcasts, but it makes certain people in the
room happy. There's gonna be changes and
then, "What? They spent that long on it? I can't
even tell the difference." But again, it's just that
psychological comfort blanket of letting the
60 RECORDING September 2019

client have their say, and the agency have their
say, and the directors have their say, and you
are enabling that by providing them with that
packet of stems.
Steve, let's talk about the time element. Let's say
that you're working on a project with Kevin Kiner.
Let's say he asked you to write something and
you've got a deadline and you finish it and it's
now 10 o'clock at night, most human beings
would go, "Oh crap, now I've got to bounce stems,
and I've got to do metadata." How to muster the
mental energy to do that non-creative work, and
how long does that take for a cue?
Steve: Let me start by saying that there is kind
of a misnomer in the industry between stems
and alternate mixes. A lot of publishers just
call everything stems when they really mean
alternate mixes. So you really need to clarify
that with the publisher. Most of the publishers
that I have worked with really just want altmixes. I will create stems, meaning individual
tracks. And as sort of a backup, I render all my
MIDI tracks as audio, so I have them for backing up. However, if a client does request actual
stems, I have them available. For alt-mixes,
depending on the style of music... But when I
was doing all the dramedy stuff for Kevin
Kiner, there's a full mix, which is the entire
track, and typically the primary alt-mix is a nomelody mix. The reason for that is melodies
can often conflict with dialogue, and the majority of my placements are the no-melody
versions, because you have no control of where
dialog will be when they use your track. But if
you supply them with a full track, with the
melody and a version without the melody, they
can cross-fade as the need arises. Beyond that,
there are different creative decisions of what
other versions can I give them, and is it musically interesting, and how useful is it to the end
product. So there could be two or three additional alt-mixes in that regard, but also the
other final one that you must have is the
stinger.
So how do you make the determination as to
what is going to be valuable and not get carried
away and send them so many options that it actually ends up coming back to hurt you, because it
feels a little more laborious on their end? How do
you know what the right number of alt-mixes or
the right number of the stems to send?
Steve: Not counting the stinger, maybe three
or four alternate mixes. If there are too many,
then it almost has no meaning. There really has
to be a compelling reason to give them a certain alt-mix.
A compelling reason like what?
Steve: Can I play a few samples? So this is a
dramedy cue, and these are the particular
tracks actually written for [the TV show] The
Little Couple. I'll play the full version, I'll play
the entire track, and any other versions I'll just

play snippets. [music plays]
OK, to give you some point of reference... So
that was an A-B-A format, A section repeated at
the end, and then a middle B section. The
stinger sounds like this. [music plays] So I need
that last beat, then just something musical to
lead into it. It could be four bars, it could be
eight bars, whatever works out, and then the
editor can make it work.
OK, so we gave you the stinger, now I'm gonna
give you the no-melody version. The melody is
the trumpet. [music plays] So that leaves a lot
of space for dialogue. Those are pretty typical
stems that are alt-mixes that you give them. I'm
gonna give you one more alt-mix that's strings
only, because in dramedy, it's all about the
pizzy kind of strings. [music plays] So without
the brass it's very repetitive. It's useful, it's used
a lot. And that becomes very comedic, that
sound.
One last thing about alt-mixes is that drum and
bass mixes are in high demand. I was doing a
lot of dramedy cues, and I was asked for drum
and bass mixes, but it kind of doesn't work for
dramedy. I'm going to give you an example of
what I pulled out of this dramedy cue. Here's
the full mix. [music plays] OK, so you get the
idea, a typical dramedy cue. So here's the drum
and bass mix of that same cue. And I'll just say
that this cue, this mix produced a lot. This is
drum and bass. [music plays] I don't find it
very interesting.
No, but you can hear how it could be useful.
Maybe its job is to not be interesting!
Steve: Maybe. But I typically wouldn't think to
create a drum and bass track for a style like
that. But I would recommend to always try to
create one of those mixes, because they are
used a lot.
Do you get to know your genre and know what
the probable best alt-mixes would be, because
you know the genre and you've seen how they use
your stuff in previous cases?
Steve: Yeah, because it takes a while to see how
they are actually using it. That's why I say that I
spend a lot of time crafting beautiful melodies,
and then they hardly ever use them. It's almost
not worth the effort.
Karl: Come on, Steve, it's OK. [lots of laughter] They like it, but they just want one little
change. [laughter]
Tim, is there anything that we haven't touched
on? We've actually covered more ground than I
anticipated in this amount of time. And I'm going
to the audience Q&A in a moment, so start getting questions ready. But is there anything
metadata-wise that you feel that they should
Continued on page 63

Recording - September 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - September 2019