EQ, or equalization, is the tool that shapes the tonal balance of your audio. For dialogue, that...
Dialogue usually fights background music in videos because the music track is too busy in the midrange frequencies, or the volume is simply too loud. To fix this, turn the music down significantly and use an EQ to cut the music around 1 kHz by 8 - 10 dB while boosting your dialogue around 2.5 kHz to carve out space for the human voice.
The debate over whether to have background music in your YouTube videos has been going on for well over a decade, and the fact that it's still happening means that creators are using music completely wrong. The fact is, if your viewer is noticing your background music at all, you've already messed up your mix. Background music should be used as exactly that: a background. A room tone replacement. Nothing more.
Keep reading to discover how to stop your background music from acting like a co-star, and start playing the part it's supposed to.
Mistake #1: Choosing the Wrong Music
Yeah, you read that right. You chose the wrong music. Most of the music that's out there is busy. There's often an element of the song that's cutting through the mix in the midrange frequencies and carrying the melody. There's nothing wrong with that, songwriting-wise. But dialogue also lives heavily in those same midrange frequencies, and when you bring in background music with those standout, melody-carrying elements, you create frequency masking and acoustic competition between those elements and the dialogue. That competition gets even worse if your music has vocals. The result? The dialogue gets muddied and swallowed up by the music, even when the volume of that music is turned down.
The solution? Choose boring music. No trumpet solos, no vocals, no loud synths. Choose repetitive music, or find the part of a piece of music where minimal elements are poking through at the midrange, and loop that section.
FUN FACT: Riot Anthem Studio's Bed Head music pack is boring, perfectly loopable, and made for the background of podcasts and talking head videos.
Mistake #2: Turning the Music Up
It's a natural instinct to want to be able to hear the music you put in your videos. After all, you put it there for a reason, right?
Wrong.
Remember what you read earlier: If your viewer notices the background music in your video, you've screwed up the mix. I'm not saying that you need to turn it all the way down, but your background music should be barely noticeable. The key here is subtlety. And don't worry, I've got some general numbers for you.
When I'm mixing a YouTube video, my dialogue usually sits at around -5 dB (remember, YouTube's loudness standards are.... loud). When I use background music, which isn't often, I generally turn my music fader down to about -24 dB. Which sounds insane. But it works, thanks to something called equal-loudness contours (it's sciency and complicated and until I started working on this article I had no clue there was a name for it). The music isn't noticeable when I'm speaking, but it's just loud enough to fill up the empty sound when I'm not talking. It's a sweet spot that I found after a lot of trial and error, and a lot of people yelling at me in the comments.
Mistake #3: Skipping the EQ
Even when lowering the volume by -24 dB, certain parts of a song can still poke through the mix and distract your viewer from the dialogue. That's where EQ comes in. Using EQ to cut out the distracting frequencies from the music and then to boost certain frequencies in the dialogue will allow the dialogue to poke through the mix and keep your audience's attention where it's supposed to be: on the speaker.
On the background music track, I typically cut the 1 kHz frequency by 8 to 10 dB, with a medium-wide band. This cuts the midrange frequencies that tend to get in the way of the dialogue. On the dialogue tracks, I boost at 2.5 kHz, with a medium-wide band, by 3 to 6 dB. This is the frequency range that controls the presence and intelligibility of the human voice.
FUN FACT #2: The presence knob on our plugin, Riot DQ, is dialed in to that 2.5 kHz frequency, so you don't have to worry about remembering the number. You're welcome.
Bonus Mistake: Royalty-Free Subscriptions
I'm not sure when this happened exactly, but every creator under the sun seems to have been roped into some royalty-free music subscription, and a lot of them don't need it. Don't get me wrong, if you make short films or work in audio post on a lot of different kinds of videos (like I do), those subscriptions can be really helpful, especially if they also have sound effects as well as music. But if you're a talking head creator or podcaster? All you need are a few boring tracks in your library that you can use over and over again. Case in point, I once used the same piece of music in every video, publishing weekly, for two years. Nobody said a thing. Nobody noticed.
Plus, there are companies out there (cough cough Riot Anthem Studios) that make music that you can purchase without a subscription. There are even companies who will create a custom track for you to use in your videos for a really affordable rate (COUGH). So don't fall for the hype. You can get the music you need for way less than $200 a year.
Summary and Next Steps
Background music isn't complicated; the know-how just gets buried under the more headline-friendly "should you or shouldn't you" debate. Stop treating your music like a co-star, keep it low, and cut the midrange of the music while boosting it in the dialogue. Easy. Oh, and stop paying $200 a year for music your never going to use.
- Need background music written specifically for that purpose? Grab Bed Head Vol. 1 for $14.99 and own it forever.
- Want an EQ that skips the graph-gazing and teaches you how to mix dialogue with your ears, and not your eyes? Check out Riot DQ.
- Need a custom background track or 1-on-1 audio coaching? Reach out to us here.
