Music, free sources, and staying out of trouble
Okay. You've got a video that's the right length, with clean titles, and it plays fine without sound. Now some of you want music under it. Let's talk about that.
I'll tell you up front: this is not my strongest area. I know enough to keep you out of trouble, and that's about the ceiling of what I know. I'm not going to pretend I fully understand music licensing law, because I don't, and anybody who tells you they do in a two-hour community ed class is overselling themselves. What I can give you is what's worked for me and where I stay cautious.
Why you can't just use the song you love
You cannot pull a song off Spotify or YouTube and drop it under your grandpa's video, even for something you'll only show at Thanksgiving. I know that feels ridiculous for a family project nobody's charging money for. Doesn't matter. Using copyrighted music without permission is using it without permission, full stop, whether you monetize it or not. If you ever plan to post the video anywhere public — YouTube, Facebook, wherever — a copyright claim can get the audio muted or the whole video taken down. I've seen it happen to people in past classes. Frustrating, and avoidable.
So we use music that's built for this.
Free sources I actually use
There are sites that host music specifically licensed for free use, sometimes with a requirement that you credit the artist in your video description, sometimes not even that. I use YouTube's own Audio Library the most, mainly because it's simple and I already understand the terms. There are other free-music sites out there too — I'd tell you to search "royalty-free music for personal video" and read the terms on whatever comes up, every time, because terms change and I don't want to hand you a specific outside site and have it be different by the time you get home.
Here's the thing about terms. Read them each time, even on a site you've used before. "Free" can mean free for personal use only. It can mean free with attribution. It can mean free until they change their mind about a track and pull it. I don't fully trust any of it long-term, which is why I don't build a video around a song I love — I pick something that fits and move on.
How to actually add it, practically
Download the track to your computer, into the same project folder where you're keeping everything else — you already know how I feel about labeling folders, so put it right next to your clips and titles, not buried in Downloads where you'll lose it.
Drag it onto an audio track below your video clips. Most editors give you a separate lane for music so it doesn't just replace your interview audio.
Turn it down. Way down, probably more than feels natural at first. Your grandma's voice or your dad's laugh needs to sit on top of the music, not compete with it. I usually get the music audio low enough that if someone in the room is half paying attention, they don't consciously notice it's there. That's the point. Background music that announces itself is doing the wrong job.
Fade it in at the start and out at the end rather than starting and stopping it hard. Most editors have a simple fade tool right on the audio clip. It's a small thing but it's the difference between something that feels made and something that feels slapped together.
A preference of mine
I mostly skip music entirely on interview-style videos. I like it this way, that's just me — when Grandma's actually talking, I don't want anything competing with her voice, even quietly. I'll use music on transition sections, old photo montages, that kind of thing, where there's no dialogue to protect. But once someone starts talking, I usually let the music drop out or fade way down. Other people in this class disagree with me on that and that's fine. It's your video.
The box I still haven't opened
I'll tell you something. I've got a box of my own kids' baby videos sitting in a closet, and I have not touched it in about three years. I know exactly how to do everything I'm teaching you. I've done it for other people's families more than once. And I still haven't sat down and done it for my own kids, because starting is its own kind of hard, even when you know the steps cold. So if you're sitting on a pile of footage feeling like you should've done this months ago — I'm right there with you. Doesn't make either of us bad at this. Just makes us busy, or maybe a little afraid of what we'll feel watching it.
Anyway. Music's the last real technical piece. After this it's mostly finishing touches and getting the thing exported so people can actually watch it.
Before next time: if you want music in your project, go find one or two tracks from a free-use library and get them saved into your project folder. Don't place them yet — just have them ready.