adaptive-stem-alignment

Adaptive Stem Alignment Workflow

This skill provides a resilient pattern for audio production that emphasizes incremental verification, fail-fast principles, and adaptive duration handling. Each major step produces verified outputs before proceeding, with explicit strategies for handling stems of different durations.

Overview

Follow these steps in strict order. Each step must complete successfully and pass verification before proceeding to the next:

1. Early timing calculation - Derive section transitions from BPM and duration first
2. Verify reference audio - Validate input file properties and establish target duration
3. Generate and verify each stem individually - One stem at a time with immediate verification
4. Generate drum stem separately - Dedicated drum extension with rhythm patterns
5. Align stem durations - Handle duration mismatches with adaptive extension strategies
6. Apply effects with verification - Process each stem and verify output
7. Export master track - Mix all verified stems
8. Archive and final verification - Package deliverables with comprehensive checks

Key Differences from Standard Workflow

• Incremental verification: Verify each stem immediately after generation, not just at the end
• Fail-fast approach: Stop and report errors at each step rather than accumulating failures
• Early timing: Calculate section transitions before any audio generation
• Separated drums: Drum stem generation is a distinct step with rhythm-specific processing
• Memory-efficient: Process stems individually to avoid large array operations that cause sandbox failures
• Adaptive duration handling: Explicit strategies for mismatched stem durations (zero-padding, looping, crossfade extension)
• Pre-mix alignment: Verify all stems match target duration before mixing

Step 1: Calculate Timing Parameters (Early)

Calculate all timing parameters before generating any audio. This ensures consistent timing across all stems: