Audio is an experience – in all its forms. Incorporating sound into video is an integral part of media creation, as any knowledgeable video maker would tell you – but not all audio is created equally!
Music is essential; voice-over can elevate any project to new heights. However, mixing the two together is not as simple as slapping them both onto new audio tracks, careful consideration must be taken to ensure both can shine together, without damaging the integrity of either.
Why mix voice-over with music?
So, this may seem like a redundant question, obviously you have voice-over and music on your video project. But the real worthwhile question is what does voice-over add to your content?
Music can have lyrics, sure, but reaching out to audiences through a song or soundtrack can only carry you so far. Meaning can be derived from your chosen song, however when you mix voice-over with music, you are able to outline your messaging more explicitly – with little to no interpretation required.
When you mix voice-over with music, you aren’t restricted to mundane speech with elevator music (unless that’s what you’re looking for!). Such audio can take many forms, bombastic music that incites excitement with a voice of anticipation – to build up a scene or trailer.
Alternatively, voice-over can just elicit flavour to the visual aspect of the content. Further enhancing the sound of the video in a way that blends intrinsically with the music. Voquent, the voice-over casting platform, opted for this approach in their company promo. The audio builds, backing up the voice-over, as both gradually intensify to extract emotion from the viewer.
So, if you are looking to masterfully mix voice-over and music audio to make the perfect video, read on to learn how to do it.
What you need:
Breaking down the essential elements is the best way to understand how to mix voice-over and music for video. Which is an obvious giveaway of the vital ingredients, that are:
- Voice-Over
- Music
- Video
Voice-Over
A quality voice-over audio is a key factor to this puzzle, so getting this first step right is crucial. It doesn’t matter how good the music or video are – a substandard voice-over will tank the project – the bad apple spoils the bunch!
Fortunately, there are top quality multilingual voice-over services available for video content that will take the difficulty out of this step. Of course, you may be wondering why you can’t provide your own voice-over – Its just talking isn’t it? Well, not quite.
A professional vocal talent is a step above an amateur, they have mastered their breathing and speech to provide top notch performances every time. Technically, a non-professional can achieve this too but expect a much longer production time and less refined results.
Music
Another piece of this blog’s focal trifecta! Music is a classic addition to the audio side of many video and filmic media projects. Music lends emotion and sensation to a video to better inform the viewer of the content’s tone.
There are some websites that exist that provide music for commercial, entertainment, and educational video use. Websites like Music for Video are great sources for this kind of music and are able to provide a wide variety to match any requirements. Whether you are looking for movie trailer music, or anything else.
Video
To mix voice-over with music for video requires a video - obviously. While this is self-evident, it is useful to make certain that you video is to as high a calibre as the rest of the production. No one wants to sacrifice the result by nailing everything and realising the video needs reshoots.
The Mixing
First things first, you need some software to edit your audio with, prior to adding it to your video content. There are all kinds of software out there to facilitate this, the most popular among them tend to be Adobe Audition and Audacity – although, the former is a premium service, that comes packaged with the Adobe Creative Suite. As Audacity is free, it’s a worthwhile piece of software to use.
Mixing the voice-over and music together can be tricky, but in essence these are the main steps.
- Open a new project and drop the audio files – voice-over and music track – onto separate audio layers, on the timeline.
- Adjust the various audio levels on each track to ensure that both tracks are intelligible to the listener. The voice-over should be easy to understand, and the music should complement it, without drowning it out.
- Once the audio mix is how you want it, feel free to export the audio from the settings.
- Now you can use your preferred video editing software to import the audio – to complete your film.
Following these steps is the core process, but it doesn’t capture all the nuance necessary to perfect your audio mix. In essence, using your own ear to tweak the audio to perfection is what mixing voice-over and music is all about. Giving a little bit of care and tweaking your mix to your project specifications can enhance the viewership experience, dramatically.