[crate]

PRODUCT DESIGNSTRATEGYINTERACTION DESIGNWIREFRAMING & PROTOTYPING

Separate stems. Anywhere, anytime.

[crate] is in beta and set to launch in the last quarter of 2026. It came out of two things I care about, technology and music.

[crate] is a lightweight stem-splitting app and a good example of an idea going from 0 to 1. Import a song and pull out its vocals, drums, bass or instrumental in a few taps. Professional music tools are bloated and slow to learn, so [crate] does one job: get clean stems fast.

[crate] music library app

ROLE

I love music, and I've tried more than once to make my own or to pull apart favorite songs and see how they were put together. So when the idea for [crate] came up, I knew straight away it was a tool I'd use.

With the purpose clear, I went to my whiteboard and sketched an interface for a lightweight desktop app. The point of [crate] is to remove the complexity of traditional music production software, and the interface I wanted was stripped back enough that I could go from sketches straight to a working prototype. I built it with Claude Code and React + Vite, using Apple's Liquid Glass design language.

[crate] early whiteboard sketches

[crate] IN ACTION

When you drop in a track, [crate] splits it with two audio separation models, Demucs and SAM Audio, running on PyTorch. Stem separation has mostly lived inside dense DAWs and pro audio suites built for producers. [crate] treats it as a utility anyone can use, not a workstation.

For Musicians & performers: Pull a backing track by removing vocals, or isolate a single instrument to learn a part by ear. Great for rehearsing, transcribing or building practice loops.

For DJs & producers: Source clean acapellas and instrumentals for remixing, mashups and sampling without hunting down official stems that may not exist.

For Singers & vocal coaches: Generate instant karaoke versions of any song or isolate a reference vocal to study phrasing, breath and technique.

For Content creators: Strip vocals to use instrumentals as royalty-friendlier background beds or pull specific elements for video edits and transitions.

For Educators & students: Break a recording into its components to teach arrangement, demonstrate how a mix is layered or let students focus on one instrument at a time.

For Curious listeners: Hear how a favorite track is constructed, what the bassline is really doing, how the vocals sit alone purely for the joy of it.