Music
Music carries pace
A track sets tempo and expectation. Choose it for the rhythm of the edit, then cut to it — not the other way round.
Sound and music for short-form video
Sound is half the video, and the half most people rush
Viewers tolerate imperfect pictures and rarely tolerate poor audio. These guides cover the three decisions that matter: what music carries the edit, how the voice is recorded, and how the mix survives a phone speaker.
- Choose music by tempo, not by taste
- Record a usable voiceover in an untreated room
- Set levels that work on small speakers
Where to start
Fix the voice before you choose the music
The most common audio problem in short-form video is a voice recorded too far from a microphone and then buried under a music track chosen to hide it. Solve the voice first and everything else becomes easier.
Once the voice is clean, music becomes a pacing tool rather than a cover-up, and levels become predictable because you are balancing two clear elements instead of fighting a muddy one.
The three jobs
Music, voice and levels
Each has one clear job. When one of them is doing two jobs, the mix sounds wrong and nobody can say why.
Voice
The voice carries meaning
Everything the viewer must understand arrives through speech. Distance, room reflections and background noise are the three things to control.
Levels
Levels carry clarity
Phone speakers cannot reproduce low frequencies. A mix that works on headphones can still sound thin and unclear on a phone.
Before you record
Nine audio checks that take two minutes
Run through this before every recording session, whether you are filming or recording voice separately.
- Microphone connected and selected in the app
- Input level tested with a spoken sentence
- Background hum identified and switched off
- Air conditioning and fans paused
- Phone notifications and vibrations disabled
- Soft surfaces nearby to reduce reflections
- Windscreen fitted for outdoor recording
- Headphones connected for monitoring
- Ambient sound recorded for fifteen seconds
Music choices
Matching a track to the job it has to do
The same video can work with several kinds of track. What matters is the tempo and how much space the music leaves for the voice.
| Track character | Tempo | Leaves room for voice | Use it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Percussive, minimal | Fast | Yes, little melodic content | Talking clips, tutorials, quick demonstrations |
| Warm acoustic | Medium | Partly, in the mid range | Process videos, calm explanations |
| Ambient pad | Slow | Yes, occupies the low and high ends | Openings, quiet moments, product detail |
| Full arrangement | Any | No, competes with speech | Montages and sections without dialogue |
| Rhythmic bed with a drop | Medium to fast | Only with careful ducking | Reveals and before-and-after sequences |
Room treatment
The cheapest acoustic improvement is a soft surface
Untreated rooms sound hollow because hard surfaces reflect the voice back into the microphone a fraction of a second later. The result is a boxy quality that cannot be removed afterwards without damaging the recording.
You do not need foam panels. A duvet behind the speaker, a rug on a hard floor, a bookshelf and recording from the middle of the room rather than close to a wall will remove most of it.
- Record in the middle of the room, away from walls
- Place a soft surface behind the microphone or the speaker
- Keep the microphone closer rather than turning the gain up
- Switch off anything that hums, including fridges and fans
Audio questions
The questions we answer most often
Why does my video sound fine on headphones and bad on a phone?
Phone speakers reproduce very little low frequency content and are physically small. A mix balanced on headphones often carries too much bass and too little presence in the voice range, which is why it sounds thin and unclear on a phone.
How loud should the voice be compared with the music?
The voice should sit clearly above the music at all times. A practical starting point is around eight to twelve decibels of difference during speech, with the music rising in the gaps.
Can I fix a recording made in a noisy room?
Steady noise such as a fan can be reduced if you recorded ambient sound separately. Speech from a busy street or a crowded cafe is very difficult to rescue, so re-recording is usually faster.
Is it better to record the voice during filming or afterwards?
Recording during filming keeps the performance natural, but recording afterwards gives better sound quality and the freedom to correct the script. Many creators do both and use the separate recording as the main track.
How long should the music intro be?
Short. In vertical video, viewers decide within a few seconds, so the voice or a strong visual should arrive almost immediately and the music should support it rather than delay it.
Guides
Audio guides
Read them in order: music, voice, then levels. Each ends with a short checklist you can use in the next edit.
Music
Choosing Music That Fits the Edit
Tempo, space and structure: how to pick a track that supports the video instead of competing with it.
Voiceover
Recording Clean Voiceover at Home
Distance, room and level: the three variables that decide whether a home recording is usable.
Mixing
Mixing Levels for Phone Speakers
Why a mix that sounds good on headphones fails on a phone, and the level decisions that fix it.
Feedback
Send us a clip that sounds wrong
Describe what you hear and how it was recorded. We answer every message and often turn the answer into a published example.