Guide to BACKGROUND MUSIC

Background music is basically just the music that goes behind footage like this, where I'm talking or there's other audio that's more important and more prominent than the music itself. Good background music subtly communicates the tone of your video to the viewer, but bad background music can throw everything off. It's like having a white vignette around the entire video. What would you do if I just left this here? Like, what would you do about it? Just kidding, I won't do that to you today, but before we talk about how to find the best background music and how to use it in your video, I wanna start out by talking about where I get my background music. I get all of my background music, along with almost all of the other music and sound effects I use in my videos, from a site called Epidemic Sound, which is basically just a huge online library of music and sound effects. There's a huge variety of tracks available, but it's also very easy to sort through and find exactly what you're looking for. And they also give you the option to download the individual tracks for the music that you choose, which is something that's very useful for background music, which we'll talk about later on in this video. So if you're interested and you wanna check out Epidemic for yourself, there will be an affiliate link in the description where you can get a 30-day free trial. But now we can start talking about how to choose the best background music for your video. And I wanna start out by mentioning something that I think is somewhat obvious, but I still wanna point out in this video, which is just don't use music with lyrics in it. Doing this will essentially result in you having two different voices in your video going at the same time. So your viewer is gonna have to make a deliberate effort to hear what you're trying to say, and no one wants to do that. A lot of tracks, even if they don't have actual lyrics in them, will use distorted, chopped up bits of human voices as part of the instrumental. And it's good to avoid this too if you wanna be really safe. Assuming your viewers are humans, they're really gonna notice other human voices anywhere in your video. So that's why even if it seems like this wouldn't be a problem since they're not actual lyrics, having any amount of human voices used in the background music can potentially be distracting to the viewer. And this is one of the big reasons that Epidemic is my favorite place to get background music is because even if I find a track that I like and it happens to have those human voices used as the instrumental, I can just go into the individual tracks and delete that part of the song. Using a song that's popular as the background music in your video is also something that's really gonna get the viewer's attention and distract them from what you're trying to say. So it's important to make sure that if you find something while you're surfing for background music and you've heard it before, that should be a huge red flag and should be an indication to not use that track. One thing that's not gonna be like a huge red flag or distract the viewer really deliberately from your video, but that's still important to pay attention to is having a consistent beat and tempo in the music that you choose to use. If you want that consistent beat and tempo, it's good to use either hip hop, chill, or lo-fi beats. The keyword here is beats. Beats are intended to just be a very basic, very consistent line of instrumental, which is absolutely perfect for background music. And this is another one of the reasons that I really like to use Epidemic for my background music is because it makes it very easy to navigate to sections with a ton of different options for beats in them to use in your video. And finally, when you're picking out background music for your video, it's also important to think about whether or not it matches the tone and energy of your videos. For example, I don't talk very fast in my videos. I'm not super hyped up in front of the camera. So I try to find music that reflects that. It's not crazy EDM hype-ass music, but it's not super somber and morose either. So when I'm looking for music for my videos, I specify the tempo and energy to try and find a song that really matches with the video I'm making. All of those tips should help you to find background music for your video, but it's also important that you use it properly once you actually have it and are implementing it into your footage. The most important thing here is just to make sure that it's not too loud, no matter how good the track is. It's important for background music to be almost unnoticeable so that it just fades away into the background of your video. If you've lowered the volume significantly and the track is still just a little bit distracting, it's sticking out a bit too much, you can try using a low pass filter. This basically just cuts out everything from the audio except the bass. If you cut out everything but the bass, the background music is basically just gonna be on a lower level of pitches in that audio than your voice is. So they're not gonna be competing for range up here. Your voice is gonna be here and the background music is gonna just be a different thing in the background. And that's one of the many different ways to use a low pass filter. If you wanna learn a bit more about low pass and other filters you can use on your audio, I made a separate video all about modifying your sound effects right up here. There's nothing in this, but did you catch that though? Abruptly cutting out the background music is a very reliable way to indicate that the viewer that something funny or unexpected has happened, even if what you're doing isn't funny or that unexpected like what I just did there. You might think that this effect is cheesy and overused online and you're right, but it works. On a much more subtle level than just cutting out the music, you can change to a different track to indicate a shift in tone or subject of your video. At the end of the day, background music is a subtle indication of the tone of your video. So it's important to select and use it with care and intention. But that's all for today's tutorial. And once again, just check the description if you're interested in Epidemic and there'll be that affiliate link where you can get a 30-day free trial. But that being said, I hope you've enjoyed this video, learned something from it. And if you did, do feel free to show your support by leaving a like on the video, sharing it with your friends, or even subscribing to my channel. I upload two new filmmaking tutorials every single week. But that's all for now. Keep creating and I'll see you in.