Song Anatomy

[AmericanGUY 4,609]

what are the different parts of a song? i see parts like "stems" and "chords" used a lot but i have no idea what they all mean  can someone explain 

[FfFfFfFF 56,342]

8 minutes ago, AmericanGUY said:

what are the different parts of a song? i see parts like "stems" and "chords" used a lot but i have no idea what they all mean  can someone explain 

The stems include: the vocals, the synth-pad, the additional elements, the beat, the drums etc. 

About the chords I don't know either. 

[JustaMonster 4,909]

33 minutes ago, AmericanGUY said:

what are the different parts of a song? i see parts like "stems" and "chords" used a lot but i have no idea what they all mean  can someone explain 

Ok well Music theory can get a little complicated and I doubt I can do it justice but I can explain the basics. In music there are things called scales which are a series of individual notes that follow one another. For examples do re me fa so la ti do is a scale called the major scale and it is what most of western music is built around. A chord is just multiple notes of a scale played at the same time. So if you played the "do" "me" "so" notes of the scale at the same time you would get a major chord. There is also something called a "key" which is based off of a scale. So for example if a song is in the key of C you would usually only play notes from the C major scale, there are exceptions to this though where you can play notes not in the scale but still have it sound good. These are just the very basics of music theory.

A stem is just sort of a section of a song. So for example you would usually have a stem for the kick drum, the snare, guitars, and other different sections of the song

. 

These for example are stems for MJH that I downloaded and basically they are just parts of the song that have been split up into different audio files so you can share them with other people.  (MJH has a lot more than Just Dance which only has 7 )