Tool: Extract Audio Stems with Lalal.ai
I stumbled across one of the most incredible tools yesterday. If you’ve never heard of Lalal.ai, you can thank me later. Using the power of AI, this tool will extract the individual tracks (stems) from any audio file. You read that right.. Best part - you can try it out for free and if you love it as much as I do, it’s $30 to extract a LOT of audio.
According to the website, Lalal.ai is “a team of specialists in the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning, mathematical optimization, and digital signal processing. Our goal is to make working with audio and video easier for musicians, sound producers, music engineers, video bloggers, streamers, transcribers, translators, journalists, and many other professionals and creatives.” I think they’ve achieved their goal based on what I was able to do and hear on their site.
The site has a REALLY simple interface. When you first land on the site, there is a big yellow button on the right hand side, with a drop down menu asking you what tracks you’d like to separate. All you need to do is Select a File, choose any audio file on your computer, upload it to the site, and then click play on either track that you’ve extracted. INCREDIBLE.
I tried the tool by uploading an MP3 file of Every Breath You Take by The Police. It took about 45 seconds for the track to upload and my first choices were Vocals and Instrumental. The extraction is really good. Perfect? No. Scary good? Definitely. The free version only allows you to listen to the individual tracks. If you want to download them for use in another project, you’re going to have to fork over a few $$.
The Starter Pack option is $15 (one-time payment). For that, you get 90 minutes of audio tracks that you can download. According to the site FAQs, “There are several stem separation types you can choose from. One separation type is applied at a time, giving you two stems per file. Depending on the selected type, you receive a pair of vocal and instrumental stems, isolated drums + drumless stem, isolated bass + bassless stem, etc. The minutes are deducted from the account by the following formula: Total file length x stem separation type(s) number. For example: File length: 5 minutes; Selected separation types: Drums, Piano and Vocal/Instrumental. Total number of deducted minutes: 5 minutes x 3 stem separation types = 15 minutes.” The Plus Pack option is $30 (one-time payment). For that you get 300 minutes of audio tracks. Super affordable and the technology is basically magic.
I have seen MANY people post questions online about how you can create and/or find song stems for use with students and their projects. THIS IS IT. If your students are working with ANY type of DAW - like Soundtrap - these stems can be imported and then remixed, rearranged, and manipulated in any way the student would like. It is an incredible tool. I strongly recommend that you STOP what you’re doing right now, and take a few minutes to try the site out for yourself. The free version doesn’t require any type of sign-up or login, so just pull the site up, upload your favorite audio file, and hear for yourself.