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How to duck music under dialogue.

Background music should sit under the speech and come back up when the talking stops. This is called ducking. Doing it by hand means four keyframes for every piece of speech; Premiere Pro can do it for you.

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1. By hand: keyframes on the volume line

Add keyframes to the volume line on the music clip with the Pen tool (P) or by Cmd/Ctrl-clicking: one just before the speech, one just after, then pull the two points between them down. For short videos this is the most controlled way.

2. Essential Sound: Ducking

Premiere Pro can generate these keyframes itself.

  1. Tag the speechSelect the speech clips and tag them as Dialogue in the Essential Sound panel.
  2. Tag the musicSelect the music clip and tag it as Music.
  3. Turn on DuckingTick the Ducking box; make sure the dialogue icon is selected under Duck against.
  4. Adjust and generateDuck Amount sets how much the music drops, Fades sets how long the transition takes. Press Generate Keyframes.

If you cut or move the speech afterwards, the keyframes stay where they were; press Generate Keyframes again.

3. With Sylba: no tagging

Auto music ducking in Studio › Audio does not ask you to tag clips one by one: it finds the speech on the other audio tracks itself.

  1. Select the music clipSelect the music you want to duck on the timeline.
  2. Studio › Audio › Auto music duckingThe speech source is picked automatically; you can choose it yourself if you prefer.
  3. Amount and fade timeSet how many dB the music drops and how long the fade takes.
  4. ApplyVolume keyframes are written to the music; you can still adjust them by hand.

How much should you duck?

For music under speech, a drop of 10 to 15 dB works in most videos. If the fade is too short the music sounds like it is pumping; too long and the start of the speech gets buried. A fade under half a second is a good starting point.

Which way should you choose?

With one or two pieces of speech, manual keyframes are enough. In a long video, Essential Sound's Ducking or auto music ducking turns minutes into seconds. Whichever you use, listen to the result once from start to finish.

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