The folder nobody can use
Your track is finished and the mix engineer asks for stems. You export what you have, put it in a zip file and send it off. Two days later the email comes back with four questions. Which of these twenty-four files is the lead vocal? Why do they not all start at the same point? What is the tempo? And is the limiter on your mix bus already baked in? You lose an afternoon to re-exporting, and the recipient loses two days to waiting.
That is not bad luck and it says nothing about your music. It says the delivery was not designed. The moment your work leaves your computer, it is only worth what someone else can reconstruct from it. That goes for a mix engineer, a mastering engineer, a remixer, and perhaps most often for yourself two years from now.
What you will learn in this chapter
- You determine per recipient what belongs in the package, instead of sending everything along by default.
- You export stems that start from one common start point, share the same length and line up correctly without further explanation.
- You decide deliberately what does and does not end up in the stems, and you verify that decision with a sum test.
- You write a notes file with the technical, musical and content details the recipient would otherwise have to guess.
- You record credits and contact details at the moment you still have them right.
- You distinguish between an active session and an archive, and you test whether that archive can actually be restored.
Who this chapter is for
For anyone who ever sends files to someone else or receives them: producers working with a mix engineer, mix engineers delivering to mastering, and independent producers who do everything themselves and still need an archive. You do not need expensive software. A DAW that can export, storage space and a project finished enough to deliver are sufficient. Any terms you are missing can be found in the free intro lessons of the earlier modules.
The core idea in one paragraph
A delivery is an answer to a question, and that question comes from the recipient. What you deliver therefore follows from the brief, not from whatever happens to sit in your project. Within that, three principles carry this entire chapter: everything starts at the same point, everything is usable on its own, and everything you cannot hear is written down in text beside it. In the next lessons you build that up: first the package, then the stems, then the notes and credits, and finally the archive that will still be useful to you in five years.