How to Choose Background Music for Videos With Talking

You finish editing a video, add a song you like, and press play. The opening feels better immediately. Then someone starts talking, and you find yourself turning the music down. A few seconds later, a louder part of the song comes in, and you reach for the volume again.

This can happen in an interview, a cooking tutorial, or a travel video with a voiceover. Choosing music becomes easier when you listen for how it sits beneath the words, instead of deciding from the song’s opening alone.

Get the voice sounding right first

Mute the music and play the video. Can you follow the speaker without straining? If one sentence is much quieter than the others, fix that before adding a background track. Otherwise, you may keep changing the music to work around a problem in the voice recording.

Now bring the music back at a low level. For example, if a cook is explaining when to turn the heat down, that instruction needs to be easy to hear. Try the section on the phone or laptop you expect viewers to use, as well as on your headphones.

You do not need one fixed volume setting for the whole video. A stretch of chopping, stirring, or plating with no speech can give the music more room.

Try a tune that asks for less attention

Music without singing is a useful place to start. When the video already has someone speaking, a second voice singing different words can be distracting. But an instrumental can still get in the way: a busy piano melody or a sharp guitar solo may keep pulling you away from the explanation.

For a relaxed cooking video, try a simple guitar part with light percussion. For a quiet interview, try soft keys with less movement. These are starting points. Play the music under the actual voice before deciding whether that sound works for your video.

Put the sound you want into plain words

Searching for “happy music” can leave you with everything from a gentle acoustic track to a loud party song. Add a little more detail about the video and the sound you want. You do not need to know music theory to say that the drums are too heavy or the melody is too busy.

If you want to make a track from that description, onlymusic.ai lets you enter the idea and choose instrumental music. For a cooking video, you could start with:

Light acoustic guitar and soft percussion for a relaxed cooking video. No singing. Keep the melody simple and the music steady, with no big drum fills or dramatic ending. Someone will be explaining the recipe over the music.

Listen through the result before downloading it into your video editor. If the guitar is too prominent, change that part of the description and try again. A calmer passage later in the track may also work better than its opening.

Leave some moments without music

Background music does not have to run from the first frame to the last. The sound of food hitting a hot pan may be a better opening than a beat. In an interview, a short pause after an important sentence may feel better without a melody filling it.

Try bringing the music in after the opening line. Let it rise a little over a few shots with no talking, then lower it when the speaker returns. Listen to those changes with the picture playing so the volume does not jump abruptly.

If a track still draws too much attention when it is quiet, try another one. You do not have to rescue every song you like. Save the more energetic track for a video that gives it room to be heard.

Listen to the ending before you export

A good track can still sound awkward if the video cuts it off halfway through a phrase. Try a slightly different section of the music, or fade it out under the final shot. Give any last spoken words time to finish before the music disappears.

Watch the finished video once without adjusting anything. Follow what the person is saying. If you keep noticing the song instead, go back to that section. Keep the music file and its source with the project, and check the applicable license before publishing.