Open source app for musicians: StemKit splits YouTube songs into audio tracks for playing along
Guitarists and other musicians have probably run into this: You want to play or sing along with your favorite song, but how do you get the existing guitar track out? Or maybe you have a recording with your band and want to remove your own guitar track so you can play it again yourself.
Until now, there have been a few apps with built-in AI that can isolate the various instrument and vocal tracks, but in most cases, you either have to pay for them or they only work online.
On smartphones, there's the Moises app, but first, you have to create a separate account, and the whole thing also runs on a credit system. Once those credits are used up, you have to pay for the features. And not exactly cheaply: the Pro version costs around €25 per month—that's more than a premium Netflix subscription—no thanks!
Fortunately, there's a good alternative, at least on the desktop: StemKit by user danielravina. The software is available for free on GitHub and splits songs—just like the paid apps—into isolated audio channels, such as separate tracks for vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano, and more.
Everything happens locally on the PC, with no account, no API keys, and no need for particularly powerful AI hardware. I tested it on a small Core Ultra 5 125H in the Minix Elite EU512-AI mini PC (our review), and it ran fast enough. At the same time, all songs, searches, and other data remain private and local. The only exception is an installation ping, which is sent so the developer can keep track of how many people are using the app.
The interface includes a search bar. From there, you can search YouTube directly for songs or simply paste the YouTube URL of the song you want. The song is then split into its individual components. On my mini PC (which isn't particularly powerful, see review), this took about 2.5 minutes; on more powerful hardware, it's faster.
And just like that, you can play along with the song, mute individual tracks or let them play on their own, and adjust the volume of each track individually (for example, turning down the guitar).
The app isn't completely flawless, though: The algorithm seems to separate vocals and drums very well, but guitars can be a bit more difficult. In the song "Heartless Bastards - Only For You," for example, we had separate tracks for vocals, drums, and bass. However, the two guitars (rhythm and lead guitar) were combined into a single "Other" track, even though both guitars start playing together relatively early in the song. It's possible this will be improved in the future. For now, version 0.1.23 is available, and considering that, the software is already running surprisingly smoothly.
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