Audio is half the video. Most creators obsess over the visuals and treat audio as an afterthought. Get your audio right and your videos will feel more professional, more engaging, and more watchable without changing anything else.

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Background Music

Music sets the mood of your entire video before the viewer has even processed what they are watching. The wrong music can make a serious clip feel cheap or a motivational clip feel flat.

A few rules:

• Match the music to the mood of your content. High energy clips need high energy music. Emotional clips need something softer. Do not put upbeat trap music over a heartfelt moment

• Keep it low. Music should sit underneath the commentary and clip audio, not compete with it. If the viewer can hear the music more than the content something is wrong

• Avoid music with lyrics. Lyrics clash with captions and commentary and make everything harder to follow

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Audio Levels

Getting your levels right is one of the most overlooked parts of editing.

• Background music should sit around -20 to -15 dB. Present but not dominant

• Clip/Speaker volume should sit around -12 to -6 dB. Loud and clear
  
  

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Removing Background Noise

If your clip has any background hiss or unwanted ambient noise, clean it up before you do anything else. A full walkthrough on this is covered in its own dedicated lesson which we have already gone through.

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Where to Find Music

The easiest way to find music that works for your niche is to look at what other faceless Shorts creators are already using. Here is how to find it:

• Check the audio box on their Short. YouTube sometimes shows the song name directly on the video

• If it is not listed, download the Short, run it through Ultimate Vocal Remover to isolate the background music, drag the audio file into Chrome, and use the Shazam extension to identify it

• Check the comments. People ask for song names all the time and creators or other viewers often reply with the answer
  
  

Good audio does not get noticed. Bad audio always does. Get it right and your viewers will never think about it, which is exactly the goal.