Split a drum loop into kick, snare and cymbals

How to split a loop#

1. Drop the audio file on the box above, or open seance and press Load audio. WAV, MP3, FLAC and OGG all work.
2. Open Stems, leave Split the drum kit ticked and press Separate. To split only part of the file, drag across the waveform first.
3. The rack fills with four stems: harmonic, kick, snare and cymbals. Each has its own level, solo and mute, and they play in time with each other.
4. Save any stem as a 24-bit WAV, or open it as the working audio to slice or measure it.

Without the tick you get two stems instead: harmonic and percussive.

How good the stems are#

seance separates with signal processing, not a trained model: it splits what holds steady over time from what spikes across the spectrum, then sorts the spikes into kick, snare and cymbals by their sound. Every build measures the result on a synthetic groove whose true parts are known. Higher is cleaner:

In practice: the snare and the kick come out usable on their own, and the cymbals are good in a mix but not clean when soloed. Low notes that play together with the kick can end up in the kick stem. It works best on drum loops and breaks; on a full song, the percussive stem carries more than the drums.

What stays on your computer#

Everything. The file is decoded by your browser, the separation runs in a background thread of the page, and the WAVs are made there too. A long file takes seconds to minutes, and the page stays usable while it works.