Pull a recording apart into six stems, get the chords beat by beat, slow it
down without changing key, and mute the part you are learning. Or skip the
recording and generate a band to play over.
USER GUIDE
RECLUSE STUDIOS
VERSION 0.1.0 // 19 August 2026
Contents
1.
Introduction
2.
Installing and First Launch
3.
Opening a Song
4.
The Main Window
5.
The Stem Mixer
6.
The Chord Chart
7.
The Transport
8.
The Waveform Timeline
9.
Generating Practice Tracks
10.
Refining a Generated Take
11.
Exporting
12.
Audio Settings
13.
Controls Reference
14.
Licensing
15.
Troubleshooting
16.
Specifications
17.
Glossary
1. Introduction
Learning a part off a record means fighting the record. You cannot hear
the bass under the guitar, the solo is too fast to follow, and slowing it
down on most players drops it out of key.
StemScribe pulls the recording apart. It separates the audio into six
independent stems — vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano and everything else —
and works out the chords being played, beat by beat. Then it hands you a
mixer, a chord chart and a transport built for practising rather than
listening: slow it down with the pitch held, loop four bars, mute the part
you are learning and play it yourself.
If you do not have a recording to work from, it will generate one. Describe
a style, or feed it a riff of your own, and it builds a band around it — then
separates and charts that the same way.
Everything stays on your machine
Separation, chord detection and generation all run locally. Your audio is
never uploaded. The only thing that leaves the machine is a licence
activation, and that carries nothing about your music.
Figure 1-1. A loaded session. Transport across the top, the
six-stem mixer under it, the waveform with chord blocks in the middle, and
the chord chart with a guitar diagram at the bottom.
2. Installing and First Launch
Choosing an installer
There are two builds. Pick by the hardware you have:
Build
Download
Use it when
CPU
Smaller
Any modern PC. Analysis works, it just takes longer.
CUDA
Larger
You have a supported NVIDIA graphics card. Analysis is several times faster.
If you are not sure, take the CPU build. It works everywhere, and you can
switch later.
Installing
Run the installer and follow the prompts, then launch
STEMSCRIBE DESKTOP from the Start menu or the desktop
shortcut.
Windows will warn on an unsigned build with a blue "Windows protected your
PC" box. Click More info, then Run anyway.
A checksum is published next to the download if you want to verify what you
got first.
The first launch takes a few extra seconds while the analysis engine
starts. Later launches do not. If the very first thing you do is open a
file, that wait is folded into the analysis.
3. Opening a Song
Click OPEN AUDIO... in the middle of the
window.
Choose a file. WAV, MP3, FLAC, M4A and OGG all work.
Wait for analysis. Progress is reported in the footer.
When it finishes, the mixer, waveform and chord chart load
automatically.
How long it takes
Hardware
Typical
CUDA GPU
30 to 60 seconds for a normal song.
CPU
About a minute per 45 seconds of audio.
Both chord charts — guitar-only and full-harmony — are worked out during
that one pass, so switching between them later is instant.
Figure 3-1. The starting screen. Open a file at the top, or
build a practice track in the Generate panel underneath.
4. The Main Window
Once a file loads, the window is four bands stacked down the screen.
Area
What it is for
Transport bar
Play, rewind, speed, pitch, loop, click, and the export buttons.
Stem mixer
One strip per stem — level, mute, solo.
Waveform timeline
Seek, zoom, set loop points, and see the chords laid out in time.
Chord chart
Every chord with its bar and beat, plus a guitar or piano diagram and the capo hint.
The header
Button
What it does
Gear
Audio device settings (section 12).
DK / LT
Switches between the dark and parchment themes.
?
Opens the in-app quick reference.
LICENSE
Activation (section 14).
NEW in the transport bar returns you to the
starting screen so you can open another file or generate a track.
5. The Stem Mixer
One strip per stem: vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano and
other. Anything that is not one of the first five — horns,
strings, synths, percussion — lands in "other".
Control
What it does
Knob
That stem's level. Double-click to return it to the default.
M
Mutes the stem.
S
Solos it. Soloing anything mutes everything not soloed.
This is the fastest way to isolate what you are working on. Mute the guitar
and you have a backing track to play over. Solo the bass and you can hear
exactly what it is doing under everything else.
Separation is very good, not perfect. A loud guitar will leave a trace in
the "other" stem, and a piano playing in the guitar's register can bleed
across. Expect a ghost, not a clean room.
6. The Chord Chart
The chart lists every detected chord with the bar, beat and time it lands
on. Click any row to jump there in the song. The speaker icon on the right
plays that chord on its own, so you can check the chart against your own ear
before trusting it.
Guitar only, or full harmony
Two charts are computed when the file is analysed, and the toggle above the
chart switches between them instantly.
Chart
Read from
Best for
Guitar only
The separated guitar stem.
Guitarists. It follows what a guitarist actually plays, with fewer
false chords dragged in from bass lines. This is the default.
Full harmony
The whole mix.
Richer context, and better for keys. It will name extensions a
guitarist would ignore.
A useful habit: learn a new progression in full harmony to
catch the passing chords, then switch back to guitar only for
the shapes you will actually play.
Chord diagrams
The panel on the right draws the selected chord as a guitar fingering or a
piano keyboard.
Guitar comes from a voicing table, so an unusual chord
may have no shape to draw.
Piano is worked out from the notes themselves, so it
always draws something.
If the guitar diagram is blank, switch to piano — the chord is real, it
just has no common shape.
Capo hint
When a capo would make the chart easier to play, a suggestion appears
underneath it. It follows the chart you are looking at, so it updates when you
transpose.
7. The Transport
Control
Range
What it does
PLAY / PAUSE
—
Start and stop.
|<
—
Back to the start of the song.
LOOP
on / off
Repeat the section between the two timeline handles.
CLICK
on / off
Metronome on the detected beat, with its own level slider.
SPD
0.50× – 1.50×
Playback speed. Pitch is held, so half speed is still in the original key. Double-click to return to 1.00×.
PIT
−12 – +12 st
Transpose. The chord chart transposes with the audio.
E / E♭ / D
—
One-press transposes for the common guitar tunings.
MASTER
slider
Overall output level.
Pitch-locked slowdown is the point of the speed control. At 0.7× a fast
solo becomes playable and every note is still where you expect it on the
neck.
Setting a loop
Press LOOP.
Drag the two handles on the waveform timeline to the start and end of
the section.
Leave BAR SNAP on so the handles land on bar
lines. Hold Alt while dragging to place one freely.
Count-in
Start playback from a stop with the click on and you get a four-beat
count-in, so you are not scrambling to come in on the first bar.
8. The Waveform Timeline
The whole track, with the chord blocks laid over it and a bar grid drawn
from the detected beats. It is how you move around the song.
Action
How
Seek
Click anywhere on the waveform.
Zoom
Scroll the wheel over it — it zooms toward the pointer. Or use − and +.
Fit the whole song
FIT.
Set a loop
Drag the two handles.
Loop off the bar
Hold Alt while dragging a handle.
The bar and beat readout follows the detected beats rather than the
nominal tempo number, so it stays right even when the displayed tempo looks
a couple of BPM off — which happens most on generated tracks.
9. Generating Practice Tracks
Instead of opening a file you can have StemScribe build one. Use the
GENERATE PRACTICE TRACK panel on the starting screen,
or press NEW to get back to it.
Whatever it generates is then separated and charted exactly like a file you
opened — same mixer, same chord chart, same transport. The point is to mute
the stem you play and play it yourself, live, over the rest.
Pick a mode at the top of the panel. There are three.
Prompt
Describe what you want and a full band is built from the description alone
— for example, "slow blues shuffle, dirty electric guitar, drums and
bass." You get up to 300 characters. Then set:
Setting
Choices
KEY
C, D♭, D, E♭, E, F, G♭, G, A♭, A, B♭, B
MODE
major or minor
TEMPO
40 to 240 BPM
LENGTH
0:30, 1:00, 1:30 or 2:00
METER
4/4, 3/4, 2/4, 6/8, 5/4 or 7/8
Then press GENERATE TRACK. Prompts that name a
style, a mood and the instruments work best; a bare genre gives you a bare
result.
From Your Riff
Feed it something you played and it builds a band in the spirit of it.
Choose an audio file of your own playing — WAV, MP3, FLAC, AIF or
AIFF.
Describe the band you want built around it.
Set REINVENT: low stays close to your riff, high
treats it as a loose starting point.
Your riff fixes the key, tempo and meter, so only length is offered.
Your Riff → Song
Your riff becomes part of a longer piece — the band leads into it and
carries on around it. PLACE IN SONG puts the riff at
the Intro, the Middle or the
Outro.
The generation component
Generation needs a component that is not part of the base install. The
first time you use it, the app says so and offers to fetch it. It is several
gigabytes and takes a few minutes, and you only do it once.
Separating and charting a file needs none of this. If you only ever open
recordings, you never have to download it.
10. Refining a Generated Take
Once a generated take loads, a REFINE THIS TAKE bar
appears under the transport.
Control
What it does
Edit the description
Change the wording of what you asked for.
REGENERATE
Tries again with the same seed and settings, so the result stays in the same family.
REVERT
Steps back to the previous take, so you can compare and keep the one you prefer.
A small wording change nudges the take. A wholesale rewrite makes a very
different one.
Refining holds the structure but not always the key. If a new take comes
back in a different key or with a different feel from the one you liked,
REVERT and make a smaller edit. Revert is one level
— it steps back to the take before this one, not through the whole
history.
11. Exporting
The chord chart as a PDF
EXPORT PDF saves the chart you are looking at. It
reflects the chart mode you have selected — guitar-only or full-harmony — and
any transposition you have applied, so what you print is what you have been
playing along to.
The PDF contains a diagram legend for every unique chord in the song,
followed by a bar-and-beat grid with the chords in position. It is named
automatically from the song.
Generated stems
For generated tracks only, SAVE STEMS copies the
mix and the separated stems to a folder you choose, as WAV.
SAVE STEMS is not offered for files you opened
yourself. StemScribe will separate someone else's recording so you can
learn from it; it will not hand you the pieces as files.
12. Audio Settings
The gear icon in the header opens the audio device panel: output device,
sample rate and buffer size. Changes take effect immediately.
If you get clicks or dropouts during playback, raise the buffer size. If
the app is silent, this is the first place to look — check the output device
is the one you are actually listening through.
13. Controls Reference
Transport bar
Control
Range
Notes
PLAY / PAUSE
—
Four-beat count-in from a stop when CLICK is on.
|<
—
Return to the start.
LOOP
on / off
Repeat between the timeline handles.
CLICK
on / off
Metronome, with its own level.
SPD
0.50× – 1.50×
Pitch-locked. Double-click resets.
PIT
−12 – +12 st
Chart transposes with it.
E / E♭ / D
—
Tuning shortcuts.
MASTER
slider
Output level.
NEW
—
Back to the starting screen.
SAVE STEMS
—
Generated tracks only.
EXPORT PDF
—
The current chord chart.
Mixer
Control
What it does
Knob
Stem level. Double-click to reset.
M
Mute.
S
Solo. Mutes everything not soloed.
Chart and timeline
Control
What it does
FULL HARMONY
Switches between the guitar-only and full-harmony charts.
GUITAR / PIANO
Which diagram to draw for the selected chord.
Speaker icon
Auditions that chord on its own.
CAPO
Shows the capo suggestion for the current chart.
BAR SNAP
Loop handles land on bar lines. Alt-drag overrides.
− / FIT / +
Zoom out, fit the song, zoom in.
Mouse
Action
How
Seek
Click the waveform.
Jump to a chord
Click its row in the chart.
Zoom
Scroll over the waveform.
Reset a knob or slider
Double-click it.
Free loop placement
Alt-drag a loop handle.
Figure 13-1. The parchment theme. The
DK/LT button in the header
switches between them.
14. Licensing
StemScribe Desktop runs for 3 days from first launch without a licence. The
footer shows how many days remain. The trial is fully featured — nothing is
held back and nothing is watermarked.
Activating
Click LICENSE in the header.
Enter the email address your licence was issued to, and your serial.
Press ACTIVATE.
The footer changes to LICENSED. You do this once
per computer. Activation needs an internet connection; nothing else does.
Figure 14-1. The LICENSE panel. Email
and serial go in, ACTIVATE confirms, and
DEACTIVATE releases the seat again.
Moving to another computer
One licence covers three machines. To free a seat, open the
LICENSE panel on the machine you have finished with
and press DEACTIVATE. The seat is available
immediately.
Deactivate before you wipe, sell or retire a computer. Recovering
a seat from a machine you no longer have means going through support.
If the trial expires
The app locks and shows the activation screen. Nothing you have made is
lost — activate and it opens up again.
Privacy
Activation sends only what is needed to issue your licence. No audio, no
stems and nothing about what you have been working on ever leaves your
machine.
15. Troubleshooting
Symptom
What to do
Analysis is slow
Use the CUDA build if you have a supported NVIDIA card, and close other GPU-heavy apps while it runs. On CPU, about a minute per 45 seconds of audio is normal, not a fault.
A chord looks wrong
Audition it with the speaker icon first. Then try the other chart — guitar-only and full-harmony often disagree, and one of them is usually right. Separation is not perfect, and a bleeding stem can mislead the detector.
The guitar diagram is blank
That chord has no entry in the voicing table. Switch to PIANO — the chord is real, it just has no common shape.
Loop handles feel jumpy
That is BAR SNAP doing its job. Hold Alt while dragging when you need a boundary that is not on a bar line.
No sound
Check MASTER and the stem levels — a stray solo will mute everything else. Then open audio settings and confirm the output device. Also check no other app has exclusive control of your interface.
Clicks or dropouts
Raise the buffer size in audio settings.
The tempo number looks a couple of BPM off
Most common on generated tracks. The bar and beat readout follows the detected beats, not that number, so your position in the song is still right.
A generated track is in the wrong key
Transpose it with PIT — the chart follows. If the mode is wrong, major where you wanted minor, the take missed the prompt; refine with a clearer description.
A refined take drifted
REVERT and make a smaller edit to the description. Big rewrites make big changes.
Generation weights will not download
Check the connection and that you have several gigabytes of free disk space.
SAVE STEMS is missing
It is offered for generated tracks only, not for files you opened.
The app is locked
The 3-day trial has ended. Activate in the LICENSE panel.
16. Specifications
Product
StemScribe Desktop
Version
0.1.0
Type
Desktop application. No DAW required.
System
Windows 64-bit. CPU and CUDA builds.
Stems
Six — vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano, other
Chord charts
Two per song — guitar-only and full-harmony — both computed in one pass
Opens
WAV, MP3, FLAC, M4A, OGG
Riff input
WAV, MP3, FLAC, AIF, AIFF
Speed
0.50× to 1.50×, pitch locked
Transpose
−12 to +12 semitones, chart follows
Generation
Three modes; 40–240 BPM; 0:30 to 2:00; 4/4, 3/4, 2/4, 6/8, 5/4, 7/8; prompts to 300 characters
Exports
Chord chart as PDF; generated stems as WAV
Network
Activation and the one-time generation download. Audio is never uploaded.
Trial
3 days, fully featured
Seats
3 computers per licence
17. Glossary
Bar snap
Making loop handles land on bar lines rather than anywhere.
Capo
A clamp across the guitar neck that raises the pitch of every string, letting you play easier shapes in a hard key.
Count-in
The four clicks before playback starts, so you know when to come in.
Full harmony
The chord chart read from the whole mix rather than the guitar stem alone.
Meter
The time signature — how many beats are in a bar.
Pitch-locked
Changing playback speed without changing key.
Prompt
The written description you give the generator.
Riff
A short phrase of your own playing, used as the seed for a generated track.
Seed
The starting number behind a generated take. Reusing it keeps a regenerated take in the same family.
Semitone
One fret on a guitar; one key on a piano.
Solo
Hearing one stem by muting all the others.
Stem
One instrument or voice, separated out of a finished mix.
Voicing
Which notes of a chord you play, and where. The guitar diagram draws one common voicing per chord.
