Music Beds and Ducking With Volume Pins

Music under a voice does a job: it sets a mood, fills silence, and tells the listener "this is a produced piece." It also competes with every word. The trick is to have it full when nobody is talking and well out of the way when somebody is.

First, rights. The music has to be yours to use: something you made, something you licensed, or a track whose license plainly covers your use. "I found it on YouTube" is not a license. If you need a bed fast, you can make an original one in MusicStudio and check that service's terms for your use. The songwriting module's copyright basics lesson covers the rules.

Why not just turn the music down?

You could set the music track 15 dB lower for the whole piece. Then it is too quiet in the intro, between sentences and at the end, which is exactly where it carries the piece. SoundStudio's help puts it plainly: ducking keeps the music full when nobody is talking.

The level of a track over time is its volume envelope. Flat at the top is the track as it is. Each duck bends the line down for a stretch, with a ramp in and a ramp out. In SoundStudio the envelope is drawn as an orange line over the waveform, and you shape it with Volume Pins.

How far under?

SoundStudio's help gives a typical duck of 10 to 18 dB under a voice. The theory page's radio spot recipe (#t-radio) puts music 15 to 20 dB under the voice. Those agree more than they differ. Where you land depends on the music:

• Sparse instrumental (a soft pad, a slow guitar): 10 to 12 dB of duck may be plenty.
• Busy music with drums: 15 to 18 dB.
• Music with singing: avoid it under speech. Two sets of words fight, and the listener loses both. If you must, duck 20 dB or more.

Test on the worst speaker you own: a phone, a laptop. If you can follow every word there with music running, you're there. If you have to strain, duck deeper.

Set up the tracks

1. Import your finished voice file and the music file.
2. Click the music in the Files list. Press + Track (under the waveform, left of Sel) and pick Empty track. The music becomes Track 1 and the empty one Track 2, each drawn as a lane on one timeline.
3. To start the voice a beat into the music, copy it onto the empty track: click the voice in the Files list, press Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C, click the Track 2 lane, put the playhead at about 2 seconds and press Ctrl+V. On empty space the clip is placed there and nothing moves. (If the voice should start at zero, skip the empty track and pick the voice file in + Track instead.)
4. Each lane has M (mute), S (solo) and a volume slider from -30 to +10 dB. Leave the voice at 0. Start the music lane around -6 so the bed is not blasting during the open.

The track you are editing gets a colored frame and an "Editing Track N" badge. Every tool works on that track only. Check the badge before you press anything.

Make the pins

Click the music lane so the badge says you are editing it. Volume Pins are in the Tools tab. Make them any of these ways:

• While listening: press Play, press B where the voice starts and N where it stops. Each B and N pair makes a pin. Mark Start and Mark End buttons do the same.
• From a selection: select a stretch and click Add Pin from Selection.
• From the voice: open Suggest pins from the voice, pick the voice track, and click Suggest Pins. It proposes gray, dashed pins over each stretch of talking. They do nothing until you Accept each one, or Accept All Suggestions. Preview on a suggestion lets you hear it first.

Suggest Pins is the fast route for a long voice track. Short pauses inside a sentence stay inside one pin (the Join pauses under setting), so the music does not bob up between every few words.

Shape one pin, copy to all

Click a pin to pick it, then set:

• Level: -60 to +12 dB. Start at -15.
• Ramp in and Ramp out: 0 to 10,000 ms. The help suggests 200 to 500 ms in and 600 to 1,500 ms out under speech. Music usually comes back slower than it goes down.
• Curve: Smooth (S-curve) is the default and right for nearly all ducking. Quick, then settle gets the music out of the way fast when a voice starts hard. Extra smooth suits long ramps on exposed music like solo piano.

Then click Copy to all pins on that pin. Every pin gets the same level, ramps and curve; their times stay put.

If a duck still sounds abrupt, the help's advice is to lengthen the ramp before changing the curve: try doubling the Ramp in.

Hear it, then apply it

Tick Hear pins while playing and play the whole thing. Preview In and Preview Out play just the edges of a pin, which is quicker for fine-tuning. Drag pins on the bar along the bottom of the waveform if a timing is off: white ends move Start or End, thin ends set a ramp, the middle moves the whole pin.

When it sounds right, press Apply Pins. That writes them into the music track's audio as one Undo step. Until you do, the pins are only a preview: Export writes what is in the audio, and the Export box says in red when pins are not applied.

Fades at the ends

The music also needs a clean start and finish. On the music track, select the first second or two and press Fade In in the Tools tab. At the end, either let the music run a few seconds past the last word and select the last 2 to 4 seconds for Fade Out, or end on a natural musical ending if the track has one. A bed that just stops mid-bar sounds like the power went out.

Export with Mix all tracks ticked (it is, when you have tracks) to get one mixed file, with mute, solo and track volume counted.