How To Sound Design ANY Video In 15 Minutes

0:00You spent hours editing this video. The cuts are clean, the color is dialed, the pacing feels right, but something's off and you can't figure out why. It's the audio. It's always the audio. Sound design is the other half of every great video. It immerses viewers in a your world. It makes them feel some type of way and without it, even the best edit falls flat. I've been editing for 10 years now and I'm going to walk you through the three audio passes I run on every single video. Starting with our foundation, the human voice. If your vocals sound bad, the video will be less engaging. Simple as that. Luckily, we

0:39don't have to be audio experts for this. It's actually as simple as five effects in the same order every time. I'm going to show this in Adobe Premiere, but every effect I'm covering exists in DaVinci, Final Cut, whatever you use. So, here's the vocal chain I use on every video. First, we want to remove

0:56background noise from the vocals. The simplest fix here is a denoise or noise reduction effect, which I set to a subtle amount and it works pretty well. To completely remove all audio below a certain loudness level, you can use a gate and set a decibel threshold to remove any noise below that specific audio level.

1:21The cuts are clean. The cuts are clean. Next, we add some EQ, which allows us to adjust the volume of specific frequency ranges independently. Generally, the human voice sits between 80 and 12,000 hertz, so we can add an equalizer effect and reduce low frequencies below 80 and reduce high frequencies above 12 to around 16K. And by doing this, the equalizer adds clarity to the voice and removes unnecessary noise. The cuts are clean, the color is dialed. The cuts are clean, the color is dialed. I then shape the voice with another equalizer. Here I'm using the parametric EQ starting with the vocal enhancer preset, which

2:04gives my deeper voice a bit more warmth. The cuts are clean. The color is dialed. The cuts are clean. The color is dialed. And then I dial it back to sound a little more subtle. Next, we level the audio with a compressor because when you record someone speaking, their volume fluctuates up and down, but compression makes it more consistent. I use a tube modeled compressor simply finding the lowest decibel level your voice hits. So here it's about -20, -21 and set your threshold there. Nothing happens yet because the ratio is one to one, but set the ratio to two to one, drop the attack and release, then add some output gain

2:44to bring the overall levels back up, and this flattens the loud spikes so that your voice stays a little more consistent and doesn't get too loud or too quiet. The cuts are clean. The color is dialed. The cuts are clean. The color is dialed. After this, I like to use a de-esser, which makes the s's sound less harsh in your voice. So before, s sounds are super sharp. After, s sounds are less sharp. Finally, we add a limiter, which limits how loud the audio can get so that you don't completely destroy your viewers' hearing. So with clean vocals locked in now, we've built a strong connection between the narrator

3:23and the viewer. But to take this to the next level, the viewer needs to feel like they are inside the world that you are showing them. And that's where phase two comes in, sound effects. Every sound effect that makes it into my videos goes through the same five steps that I call shape. First, we source our sounds. People often ask me where I get my music and sound effects, and if you've watched any of my videos, it's probably using Epidemic Sound, who I've also partnered with on this video. Now not only do you get access to a huge sound library, but the quality is what keeps me coming

3:55back. Every sound is crisp, and the music, well, they've got some bangers. [music] Plus, it's all restriction-free, so you don't have to worry about copyright claims. But, what will revolutionize your workflow is their plugin, because it works directly inside Premiere or Resolve. Before this, you would spend 20 minutes searching through folders for the right sound. Now, you just search from inside the plugin, and it's an AI-enhanced search, so I can type aggressive impact [music] or soft whoosh, and get samples that are

4:28spot-on. I mean, that's perfect. And if you don't want to spend time sourcing sounds at all, they have a new feature called Studio that automatically adds a soundtrack to your video for you. It's still in beta, but it's improving fast, and it gives you a solid starting point for your sound design. Editing this video, the cuts are clean. So, if any of this sounds helpful, there's a link in the description below to check out Epidemic Sound. And if you use code Gavin at checkout, you can get 50% off your first 2 months, which is live until August 20th. So, now that we have our raw sounds, we hone them, meaning we

5:04manipulate them into exactly what the moment needs. So, here are a few tricks that I use constantly. First, we've got the pitch shifter. This allows you to drop a sound's pitch to make it deeper,

5:20or push it up to make it brighter and snappier. Another way to adjust pitch is adjusting the speed of the sound. So, if we slow a sound down, it will pitch it down. But, not only that, it also makes the sound last longer and sound slower. Of course, we can also speed up a sound to pitch it up and make it sharper and

5:42faster. High-pass and low-pass filters are handy for adjusting frequencies. High-pass will cut everything below a certain frequency and low-pass cuts everything above. And get creative with what you already have. A whoosh isn't just a whoosh if you cut it on the inflection point, you've got an impact. Reverse that and you've got a riser. So, from one sound you get three

6:10completely different uses. So, honing transforms individual sounds, but amplifying makes those sounds feel bigger. And the trick is layering sounds on top of each other. But not only that, we also want to layer across different frequencies because this helps fill the space. So, for example, take a whoosh by itself. It sounds thin because it's only hitting one part of the frequency spectrum. But if I take that same whoosh and drop a copy down low or a lower frequency and push another copy up high for a higher frequency,

6:47then suddenly the sound fills the room. And you can do this with one sound using a pitch shifter or you can layer different sounds of varying frequencies. [music] So, we want to stack our layers in a way [music] that feels three-dimensional instead of flat. Place is where your sounds needs to be placed in order to be most effective. [music] So, my process here is really simple. Let's say you have a camera shake. The loudest moment of your whoosh should hit the exact frame where the shake is most [music] violent. So, drop the sound in roughly where it belongs, then find the peak of the visual motion, find the peak of the

7:24audio waveform, and drag to line them up. It takes 10 seconds and is the difference between pro and amateur sound. The environment of a scene is full of sounds you don't see visually, but something would feel missing if they were gone. And this is what separates a scene that feels real from one that feels staged. So, for an outdoor shot like this, we could add birds chirping, wind rustling through the trees, and maybe a stream of water. And that's already much better. In a city, it should be kind of the opposite. Layer in traffic, some distant voices, and an ambient drone that shows that the place

8:01feels alive. And these sounds that exist in your environment are diegetic sounds. Sounds that would actually exist in the world that you're showing. And having these is something that viewers generally don't notice when they are there, but if they're missing, then the audience knows. Now, when you're adding these, add them subtly, make them low volume underneath your main sound effects and dialogue, because usually you're not trying to make them heard, you're just trying to make the space feel a bit more real. And like we talked about before, if we have a voice speaking, we can also cut out certain frequencies to make the sound [music] effects a little bit more

8:34subtle. Starting with our foundations, the human voice. Starting with our foundations, the human voice. So, that's shape. We source, we hone, we amplify, we place, and we fix the environment. Now, let's get on to pass three, music. I think about music in three parts. First is choosing [music] the right track. And this starts with the story that you're trying to tell, because music carries emotion before any words are said. So, if a track fights your story, then your edits just won't land. So, for example, if you're telling a fond childhood memory, maybe look for nostalgic or dreamy vibes. A search term you could use for this is ambient synth

9:12pads. [music] [crying] And that just fits really well. For your typical documentary or educational content, the pros reach for marimbas or pizzicato strings. And there's a [music] reason for that. Those instruments sit in a frequency range that doesn't compete with voice overs. And they're also emotionally neutral, which keeps the viewer focused on what's being said. So, before you even start looking for music, ask what the vibe is that you need to convey, ask what the viewer should feel, and then search around that vibe instead of browsing aimlessly. Once you have tracks that fit the vibe, you need to make them fit your video. And here are three

9:54techniques that I use to do that. So, remember how the human voice sits in the mid frequencies? Well, most editors, including the old me, would just lower the volume of the music when someone's talking. They're half of every great video. But a better move, in addition to lowering the volume, is to add an equalizer to the music track and cut the

10:14mid frequencies where the voice sits. Sound design is the other half of every great video. It immerses viewers [music] in a your world. And now the music keeps its vibe, but the voice cuts through clean. And it sounds way more professional than just lowering the volume. The second technique is to transition between tracks. Now, putting two songs back-to-back almost never sounded good for me before I learned this. So, here's that trick. To make it feel seamless, find the last big beat of your track, cut it, and reverse [music]

10:44it. And then drag that reversed beat to the start of your track, and you get a natural riser that leads perfectly into the new song. But something's off. Then keyframe a quick volume fade between the two, and the cut becomes invisible. The color is dialed, the pacing feels right. But something's off. Just like that. The third technique is to adjust your track length. So, when a track is too long or too short for your visual, the fast way is to just use the AI music remixer to do it for [music] you. It's not perfect, but it does the job for you, and it takes like 5 seconds. And finally, the

11:19polish. The final touches that make everything feel cohesive. So, one thing I really like using is reverb for dramatic endings. In your world. [music] So, if you want a a to fade out with that cinematic echo, then you can add a studio reverb to the end of the clip and crank up the decay and the wetness.

11:39viewers in [music] your world. It immerses viewers in your world. And if you want this effect on a single clip without affecting the whole track, you can just cut the end of the song, nest it in its own sequence, extend the nested clip with an adjustment layer, and then apply the reverb there. And crank up the decay and wet. [music]

12:07viewers in your world. The last thing that I sometimes do that allows you to control all of your different music tracks at once is to use submix routing. So, once all your music is laid in, you can route every music track to a single submix track, and this gives you one master volume control for all your music. Plus, you can apply any effects you want to all of those different music tracks at once. So, we could add an equalizer that carves out the vocal space across all of the tracks, and it's way faster than EQ'ing each individual track. And the mix sounds more cohesive because every track

12:42is being treated the same way. So, the final mix, once you've done all three passes, vocals, sound effects, and music, your video is 10 times better than it was before. But, there are two bonus tricks I want to show you. So, the first is to layer sound effects between [music] song transitions. Although we already covered creating natural risers from the song itself, we can also use other risers, swells, or suck backs to further ease into a song. Sound design

13:06is the other half of every great video. It immerses viewers, and we can use the same sounds in reverse to get out of a song into silence. Sound design is the other half of every great video. It immerses viewers in your [music] world.

13:26And this is especially powerful if you want to emphasize a quiet moment. And to wrap a song up impactfully, we can drop an impact, slam, or a hit on the final beat, and make sure that reverb is applied, and we get a really dramatic effect here. The second trick is panning, and this one's really cool. So, when your visual movement goes from one side of the screen to the other, you can use panning to make the sound move with it. Now, in Premiere, if you set the pan to -100, that means the sound will be on the left

13:59side. It'll come out of the left side of my speakers, the left side of your headset, and when it's at zero, then it's in the middle. It comes out of both sides. And then at +100, it comes out on the right. So, if we set a keyframe at -100 when the subject is on the left, and then a keyframe at 100 when it's on the right, now the audio physically travels across the viewer's ears same way the visual

14:22travels across their eyes. So, that's it. Sound design is one of the things that most editors completely neglect, which means putting in the work here is the quickest way to make your videos stand out. And again, Epidemic Sound makes 90% of what we covered today possible. So, if you want to check it out, you can use the link in the description below, and don't forget to use code Gavin to get 50% off your first 2 months before August 20th. And if you want to take your editing one step further, I made a video on what separates videos that people can't stop watching and videos that people click

14:54off of in seconds, and you can check that out right here.