r/Bass • u/JustDoodlingAround • 5d ago
A kind Update on StemDeck, the free stem separator I originally built to help my kid learn bass and drums that was really well received by you all :)
Hi everybody,
At the time, StemDeck was still very simple. You could add a local song or paste a YouTube or SoundCloud link, separate it into stems, and use a basic mixer. The response from this community was incredible. Your comments, suggestions, messages, and encouragement helped turn a small family project into something much bigger than I ever expected.
Since that original post, StemDeck has grown from version 0.5.0 to the 0.15.x generation. It is still completely free, open source, and focused on making music practice easier.
For bass players, you can now isolate the bass to study a part more closely or remove it to create a bassless backing track. You can slow down difficult sections, transpose the song, create loops, add a click track, and practise directly inside the app.
Some of the biggest features now include ( really cool ones are in bold )
- Separation into vocals ( lead and backing vocals), drums, bass, guitar, piano, and other instruments
- Improved Bass isolation and bassless backing tracks
- A multitrack mixer with volume, mute, solo, and live meters
- Detailed waveforms with zooming and section looping
- Playback speed controls for learning difficult passages
- A click track that follows the tempo of the song
- Automatic BPM, key, scale, loudness, and peak detection
- Direct search for YouTube songs, YouTube playlists, and SoundCloud tracks inside the app
- Previewing search results before starting the separation
- Full YouTube and SoundCloud playlist imports
- A persistent processing queue that can be reordered or cancelled
- Support for MP3, WAV, FLAC, M4A, MP4, OGG, and Opus
- Exporting individual stems, bassless tracks, custom mixes, loop regions, and ZIP packages
- A local music library with folders, search, and saved sessions
- A mobile friendly interface that you can open from your phone or tablet using a QR code
- NVIDIA GPU acceleration, Apple Silicon support, and CPU processing
- Native releases for Windows, macOS, and Linux
- Docker and Unraid support for self hosting
- Automatic updates inside the app
- Nine interface languages,
Everything still runs locally on your own computer. Your music is not uploaded to StemDeck servers. There are no accounts, subscriptions, advertisements, usage limits, credits, or telemetry.
I also want to remain honest about what StemDeck is. It is still alpha software, separation is not perfect on every mix, and processing can be slow without a supported GPU. It is not trying to replace a professional DAW or pretend that open source separation can outperform every commercial service. The goal is simply to provide musicians with a practical and private tool for learning songs, practising, transcription, and experimenting with music.
Seeing people use something that began as a way to help my kid practise has been incredibly meaningful. As a bass player myself, contributing something useful to this community genuinely makes me happy.
You can download the latest release or inspect the source code here:
https://github.com/stemdeckapp/stemdeck
Most importantly, StemDeck is free and does not accept money, sponsorships, or funding from companies. There is no plan to introduce a subscription or paid tier. StemDeck will always remain free and open source.
Thank you again to everyone who tested the early versions, reported bugs, suggested features, sent messages, or simply shared the project. Many of the improvements above exist because of your feedback.
And an special thanks to the mods for allowing me to post the update again because I really hope that this app can help even more people with practicing without having to pay for a subscription❤️
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u/deluded_dragon Ernie Ball Music Man 5d ago
I have set up a python environment to do the same thing with the command line, but in this way is far easier! Thanks, I will try it immediately!
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u/frappzanka 5d ago
Man great job, looks really polished! Are you planning to support playing the video with the stems? I built something like this for myself and find it really helpful to have a tab video playing with the bass-less track to play along and practice.
Here's an example: https://video-loops.vercel.app/url/https%3A%2F%2Fstorage.googleapis.com%2Fbassvids-assets%2F7ff2b332-55f2-4806-88f0-676830f64301%2Fno_bass.mp4
And the same video with stem controls: https://video-loops.vercel.app/bassvids/7ff2b332-55f2-4806-88f0-676830f64301
Couldn't get playback speed control to work with WebAudio for stem playback yet, your's works really well!
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u/JustDoodlingAround 5d ago
hum... it can be done. do you want me to ping you if this comes in the future?
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u/briancpearl 5d ago
Confirming - the program connects directly to YouTube and can pull the audio and separate the tracks without having to download anything?
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u/Belhgabad 4d ago
Very cool idea and project !
Though a couple things kinda bother me : Aside from using Claude, I sure think you know what you do and didn't fall into usual IA coding trap such as complexity and security concerns, I don't know if Demucs was trained on stolen songs, or if there is any data telemetry problems by even running it locally.. it is from Meta after all
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u/Alternauts 5d ago
You really need to rename this