Before anything, if you’d like to learn more about mixing, here’s a great book I’d like to recommend. It’ll explain what different tools actually do to the sound and will help you make better mixing decisions. Check out the preview here: The Art of Mixing: A Visual Guide to Recording, Engineering, and Production
The first thing you need to do is make sure each track in your song is connected to a separate channel in the mixer.
This is the most important part of exporting stems in FL Studio and you should do this slowly and carefully.
In the image below, you can see we’ve connected this track named “Lex808_1” with channel 9 in the mixer.
To do this all you need to do is click on the track and on the box on the right labeled FX, change the number to a free channel on the mixer.
Now you just have to connect every track to a different channel in the mixer.
Pro-Tip
A good idea is to give each track its own channel in the mixer and don’t send two tracks to the same channel unless you’re consolidating them (for example the vocals), which we’ll explain how to do next.
Don’t worry it’s really easy.
How to Consolidate Vocals For Export in Fl Studio
When I say consolidate the vocals what I mean is separate the main vocals, ad-libs, doubles, chorus lead, chorus backing, and chorus ad-libs into their own tracks.
So when it’s all said and done, you’ll have these tracks all in separate WAV forms.
Main Vocals
Ad Libs
Doubles
Chorus Lead
Chorus Backing
Chorus Ad Lib
For example, you can send the main vocal for verses 1, 2, and 3 to the same channel in the mixer.
You can then do the same for the other vocal tracks as well (send them to their own channel in the mixer).
This way when you export them there will be one track with all your main vocals in it, one track with all the backing vocals in it, one track with all the main chorus vocals in it, you get the idea.
Another good thing to do is name each track correctly.
For example, if you have a main vocal track, name it “main vocal” in the mixer by right-clicking on the channel and going to rename it.
This way it’ll be easier for you to assign tracks to the correct channel and when the file exports it’ll be called “main vocals”.
Also, your audio engineer will love you because you saved him time from organizing your stems.
Export Stems
Now you go to File > Export > Wav file
Next, a dialog window will pop up asking you to name it and save it.
The beat I’m exporting is called “Tropical Trap” (don’t ask me why I named it that).
This is where you’ll want to create a new folder and name it your songs name.
You can right-click and go to “Create new folder” and then you can name it accordingly.
I will usually title the folder the song’s name and put (stems) beside it.
For example, if the song is called “Tropical Trap”, I’d have a folder called “Tropical Trap (stems)” and it would contain all the exported stems from Fl Studio in it.
Don’t forget to select this folder and click “save” as this is where you’re telling FL Studio to export your stems.
The Final Part
Finally, this window will pop up, all you need to is select “Split mixer tracks”.
You can also copy the same settings I have used here as well.
Once you’ve done that, click “Start” and let the magic happen.
If you’ve done everything correctly, you’ll have a folder with all the tracks from your song separated.
Exporting Stems Mistake: Don’t Worry Everyone Does This
A common problem, I still do even to this day, is forgetting to link one track to its own mixer channel, so it’ll be missing from the folder! Ouch.
Remember up above I said to do it slowly and carefully.
You can double-check to make sure every track from your song is in the folder by exporting your tracks back into your recording program and making sure they’re all there and lined up correctly.
If you are looking to send files to any mixing engineer, most likely they are going to ask you to send them what are called “Stems” or “Track-outs”. Too many people complicate this very simple process, but you’ll have everything you need in less than 5 minutes reading this blog post. Lets get started:
Step 1: Export a Rough Mix or Demo Before you do anything else, it’s important to save a version of how you have everything at the present moment. That’ll give your mix engineer the opportunity to hear what you have so far and get a better idea of your vision for the track.
Step 2. Decide what effects or plugins you want to keep This is probably the most important step because whatever you decide will be staying, is going to forever be on the song. If you have any doubts at all, remove everything.
*Sometimes the plugins or effects are an important part of the sound.
Ex.1 You may have a synth bass that’s too crazy so you shaped it with some EQ and then decided you wanted it to be even crazier and added a bit of distortion.
Ex.2 You have an autotune effect on the vocals for a certain “flair”.
Most of the time, your mix engineer will be able to replicate what you have done to the sound. Only keep those plugins if you are 100% sure that you want to commit to that sound. If you want to get really fancy, you can export 2 versions: one without any effects (dry version), and one with the effects you want to keep (wet version). Keep in mind that some mix engineers charge by track count, so that might eat into your budget. If you have a million background vocals, you might want to consolidate those too.
Step 3: Remove Everything Else Bypass every plugin and aux send in the DAW. Yes, everything. Reverb, Delays, EQ, Compression, and any other cool plugin you have.
Step 4: Make A Selection You’ll need to select the length of the entire song in your timeline/edit window. Make sure that when you hit “play” it starts and ENDS where you want.
This is important because all the tracks need to start and end at the same spot. Your mix engineer will import everything and throw it at the start of the session. When he does that, everything will line up exactly the way you had it.
Step 5: Export Every platform has different ways of making this part faster. The old school way of doing it is literally hitting SOLO (yes the little “S”) and bouncing a .wav file of every single element on your session.
If you have offline bouncing, congratulations! If not, you’ll be sitting there for a couple hours.
Now that you have exported your tracks, you can send them to us through our handy upload form.
Have an idea for future blog posts? Let us know in the comments.
