u/JustDoodlingAround

I wanted a way to split songs into separate stems (vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano, other) to help my kids learn their instruments by ear. The tools that do this all wanted an account, an upload, and a subscription, and I wasn't keen on sending our music to someone's server just to pull it apart. So I built something that runs entirely on your own machine, and it's turned into a real project.

It's called StemDeck. You drop in a file (MP3, WAV, FLAC, M4A, even an MP4 video) or paste a YouTube or SoundCloud link, and it separates the track locally using Demucs, Meta's open source model. From there you get a browser-based, DAW-style mixer where you can mute and solo any stem, adjust levels, loop a section, and export individual stems or a custom mix. It also detects BPM and key, and has a click track that follows the actual song for practicing.

A few features I'm proud of:

You can paste a whole YouTube playlist and it queues every track. There's a real import queue you can reorder and cancel, and it survives a restart. YouTube and SoundCloud both work, single tracks or playlists.

You can also open it from your phone. Flip on network access and it shows a QR code you scan to reach a proper touch-friendly mobile interface, while the actual processing stays on your computer. Nothing touches the cloud.

It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and there's a Docker image for anyone self-hosting.

It's completely free and open source (Apache-2.0), with no account, no telemetry, and no monetization of any kind, no ads, no subscription, nothing. It's picked up around 2,000 GitHub stars and 13,000+ downloads in about two months, entirely word of mouth.

Honest caveats: it's still alpha, so expect rough edges, and while separation quality is genuinely good for open source, it won't beat the paid cloud services on really dense mixes. For practice, remix prep, and experimenting it holds up really well.

GitHub (downloads and source): https://github.com/stemdeckapp/stemdeck

Happy to answer any questions. I'm the developer.

Because I forgot to order the cables, FML!

EDIT: This seems to be a series of posts,

• 1st episode: The selection
• 2nd episode: The arrival
• 3rd episode: TBD

For new I have empress paraeq , so I would love some advices for a funk/soul/rnb /groove playing style :)

EDIT:

Added to the cart:

• Peterson Strobe Tuner
• Empress Effects Bass Compressor Blue Spk
• MXR M82 Envelope Filter
• MXR M83 Bass Chorus Deluxe

one to go!

Final edit:

The list is completed, thank you all!

• Peterson StroboStomp Mini
• Empress Effects Bass Compressor ( finally ! )
• MXR M280 Vintage Bass Octave
• MXR M82 Bass Envelope Filter
• MXR M83 Bass Chorus Deluxe

Hi everybody,

Short story about Stemdeck, which is an app that started as a small project to help my kid to learn bass and drums :

My kid started learning bass and drums were always asking me to find either bassless or drumless tracks so he could practice, and sometimes it was either annoying to deal with the pauses on the videos, or loop into sections that he wanted to focus, so I kept running into the same problem:

pull up a song they want to learn, try to isolate the bass line, and every tool I found wanted an account, a subscription, or would just upload the audio somewhere. For a song we already own just to practice at home, that always felt like too much friction, on something that should be as easy as possible.

So I spent a few months building something that just runs locally. Drop in a file or paste YouTube/soundcloud link and it splits it into stems, you get a mixer in the browser. Nothing leaves your computer. It's called StemDeck and it's completely free, open source, no account, and I'm not looking to monetize it.

It's still rough around the edges, alpha software, but it works well enough that we use it at home regularly. Thought some people here might find it useful for the same reason.

The Github page for downloading the latest release is https://github.com/stemdeckapp/stemdeck where you can either self host or download the windows /osx native apps.

If you want to check a quick demo, here's one: https://app.supademo.com/demo/cmqh2zdp90ozeqmz3mjqic2tf

Happy to answer any questions and more importantly:

StemDeck is free and does not accept any money, sponsorship, or funding, not from users, not from anyone. this will be forever OpenSource.

Edit: this post is mod approved ❤️

Edit II: Really appreciate the feedback and interaction of people through this post / DM / X and other media channels, As a bass player, you guys have no idea how happy I feel that I could contribute to our community ❤️.

Hi everybody,

A few days ago I got this beauty , which goes beautiful with my custom bass. The only concern that I have is for the moment, is that I’m not sure that for a home player i would need a compressor, and if yes, what would be a good advice to pair with this pedal?

Any advice is appreciated

Edit: nonetheless to say, this is my first pedal, so silly questions will come for sure

I've been noticing a pattern lately where almost every tool that gets popular eventually turns into a subscription. Which is fair, people need to make a living. But I've also been wondering how many genuinely useful things exist out there that are just... free, open source, and not trying to become a startup. So to kickoff the post I 'll start with mine:

I was using Moises to separate audio into stems for practice and occasional remixing, but I got to a point where the subscription wasn't worth it for how little I was using it. I also never felt great about uploading my audio to someone else's server. So I spent a few months building a local alternative.

It's called StemDeck. You drop in an audio file / paste YouTube link and it separates it into vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano and other using Demucs (Meta AI's open-source model), and gives you a browser-based mixer where you can mute, solo, loop a section, and export whatever stems you want. Everything runs on your own machine. No account, no upload, no subscription, completely free. I have no plans to monetize it.

GitHub: https://github.com/stemdeckapp/stemdeck

Would love to know what others have built with the same mindset so please drop yours in the comments :)

Quick intro if you're new here: StemDeck is a free, local audio stem separator. You drop in an MP3 or WAV, it splits the track into vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano, and other stems right on your machine. No account, no upload, no subscription, no usage limits. Open source, runs on Windows and macOS.

This one has been a while in the making. v0.5.0 is a full UI overhaul. The goal was simple: stop looking like a web app and start looking like something you'd actually open next to your DAW.

What changed in the interface

The mixer and waveform lanes now sit side by side in a proper two-column layout. Rows fill the full height dynamically, so there's no black gap when a track has fewer stems. Non-extracted stems are grayed out in both the mixer and the waveform, which makes the separation result immediately readable.

The transport info moved to the footer: album art, title, time position, stem count, all always visible while a track is running. Below that is a full-width scrub bar. When nothing is loaded, the footer shows a decorative waveform placeholder instead of an empty shell.

Export Mix works now

This was broken in a subtle way. If you had all 6 stems selected, no mix file was produced at all and the export silently failed. That's fixed. You can now export your current stem mix as WAV or MP3 directly from the footer. File names are clean underscores, no spaces, no special characters.

A few smaller things worth knowing

The footer waveform used to pull from the first available stem, which on an instrumental section meant a flat line. It now uses the full reconstructed mix, so what you see matches what you hear.

Tag search with autocomplete: type # in the library search box and a dropdown shows up to 8 matching suggestions. The library sidebar got new sections too: Recent, Stem Collections, Tags, and Favorites, with subfolder nesting via drag-and-drop.

The analysis panel now includes a Dynamic Range score with a label (Compressed / Moderate / High / Wide), Tempo Stability as a percentage, and a Key Confidence meter.

The website

I'm a father building this in the time I can find between everything else. To get a website up without it taking three weekends, I used AI to help put it together. It's live at stemdeck.app. Not perfect, but it's real and it's there, and it means the project has a proper home.

If something breaks in 0.5.0, please open an issue. Every report goes directly into the next cycle.

Download on GitHub: https://github.com/stemdeckapp/stemdeck/releases/tag/v0.5.0-alpha.1

Quick intro if you're new here: StemDeck is a free, local audio stem separator. You drop in an MP3 or WAV, it splits the track into vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano, and other stems right on your machine. No account, no upload, no subscription, no usage limits. Open source, runs on Windows and macOS.

This one has been a while in the making. v0.5.0 is a full UI overhaul. The goal was simple: stop looking like a web app and start looking like something you'd actually open next to your DAW.

What changed in the interface

The mixer and waveform lanes now sit side by side in a proper two-column layout. Rows fill the full height dynamically, so there's no black gap when a track has fewer stems. Non-extracted stems are grayed out in both the mixer and the waveform, which makes the separation result immediately readable.

The transport info moved to the footer: album art, title, time position, stem count, all always visible while a track is running. Below that is a full-width scrub bar. When nothing is loaded, the footer shows a decorative waveform placeholder instead of an empty shell.

Export Mix works now

This was broken in a subtle way. If you had all 6 stems selected, no mix file was produced at all and the export silently failed. That's fixed. You can now export your current stem mix as WAV or MP3 directly from the footer. File names are clean underscores, no spaces, no special characters.

A few smaller things worth knowing

The footer waveform used to pull from the first available stem, which on an instrumental section meant a flat line. It now uses the full reconstructed mix, so what you see matches what you hear.

Tag search with autocomplete: type # in the library search box and a dropdown shows up to 8 matching suggestions. The library sidebar got new sections too: Recent, Stem Collections, Tags, and Favorites, with subfolder nesting via drag-and-drop.

The analysis panel now includes a Dynamic Range score with a label (Compressed / Moderate / High / Wide), Tempo Stability as a percentage, and a Key Confidence meter.

The website

I'm a father building this in the time I can find between everything else. To get a website up without it taking three weekends, I used AI to help put it together. It's live at stemdeck.app. Not perfect, but it's real and it's there, and it means the project has a proper home.

If something breaks in 0.5.0, please open an issue. Every report goes directly into the next cycle.

Download on GitHub: https://github.com/stemdeckapp/stemdeck/releases/tag/v0.5.0-alpha.1

Hey everyone,

I’ve been working on an open-source project called StemDeck where today I believe I finally reached a nice milestone for the project:

StemDeck now supports native Windows and macOS clients were main goal was reducing setup friction and making the app easier to run outside Linux/dev-focused environments.

While im still actively improving the project any feedback is very welcome especially around:

• UX/UI
• performance
• workflow
• stability on different systems

GitHub and latest release that I'm realy proud of :)

Also I'm not sure what other comunities or resources I could share this tool ,so any guidance on that would be more than welcome too

Edit:

Corrent link for the latest alpha release: Release v0.4.0-alpha.1 · stemdeckapp/stemdeck

I’ve been building StemDeck, a free and open-source alternative to tools like Moises for separating YouTube tracks into stems.

You paste a YouTube URL, choose which stems to extract, and the app generates isolated tracks like vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano, and others. The interface is designed more like a lightweight DAW, with waveform views, mixer controls, stem-level VU meters, mute/solo-style toggles, and per-stem downloads.

It’s still early alpha, but the core workflow is working and I’d love feedback from people interested in music tools, remixing, practice, audio analysis, or open-source AI apps.

Repo: https://github.com/thcp/stemdeck

Main stack includes Python/FastAPI, Demucs, yt-dlp, FFmpeg, and a custom browser UI.

Feedback, bug reports, and ideas are welcome.

Took a while to complete but this beauty is my first bass that I ever made :)

Components:

• Wood
  • Wenge
  • African Mahogany
• Pickups
  • Bartolini BD 5 C BC B
  • Bartolini BD 5 C BC T
• Preamp
  • Bartolini NTMB+F 3-Band Bass Preamp
• Knobs
  • Schaller - Strat knob 6,0 mm
• Locks
  • Schaller - M4 90
• Bridge
  • Schaller - 3D-5

I'm so proud of the sound of this guy, I honestly can't believe that I was able to build something like this.