Should You Add Music To Your Talking Head Video?

Let’s talk about the power of a music soundtrack in video and when to use it to enhance the audience’s experience.

It might sound cynical, but it’s essentially a shortcut to manipulating the audience's emotions. Like an applause sign in a live recording or canned laughter, it signposts how an audience should interpret the video.

Music creates a context for what you’re watching.

Why Is Music Important in Videos?

Emotional Manipulation

Music is a powerful tool for emotional manipulation. It can tell the audience when to feel happy, sad, tense, or excited. This emotional guidance can be crucial for storytelling in videos.

Pacing

Music can also control the pacing of a video. It can create moments for the audience to sit up and enjoy the show or slow things down to ensure they pay attention to important details. These techniques effectively create a dynamic viewing experience that engages the audience.

Here’s an exercise you can do: re-soundtrack the opening titles of something like The Sopranos to see how it changes your feelings about the show. Open two YouTube tabs, one visual and one music, and press play (muting the visual one). Or, if you can’t be bothered, imagine The Sopranos with the Benny Hill chase theme—you’ll get what I mean.

What Makes Sound More Crucial Than Video?

It's often said that sound is more important than video in videos. Is this true? Let’s bring it back to basics—something we can all relate to. Think about the last time you were having a conversation on a video call, and the sound glitched or cut out when the other person was speaking.

Now, think about when the video glitched.

Which one did you notice more? Which instance pulled your focus away from the conversation? Essentially, which one is more annoying?

How to Use Music to Influence Your Audience

You can make people feel excited by playing a high-tempo track loudly during fast-paced scenes, creating nostalgia by linking certain sounds to a particular moment in time or building suspense by subtly playing a plucked-string arrangement in the background.

You can even go against the grain and choose something that’s the opposite of what you imagine it should be. The gunfight in John Woo’s Face/Off is a decent example of this juxtaposition technique. Use this technique to catch your audience off-guard and surprise them.

So, should you put music on your talking head?

If you’re trying to elicit an emotion, think about the emotion you want to foster in your audience and build towards that.

If truth is the most crucial factor, consider whether adding music is the right choice for this video. As we have considered, audiences don’t like having their emotions manipulated, especially in content where truth and trust are crucial, such as documentaries, news, and online apologies.