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Voiceover & music for screen recordings: levels that work

Tutorial · 4 min read · Updated July 2026

Short answer: record your voiceover after editing the picture, keep music around 30–40% of voice volume, choose instrumental tracks, and let interaction sounds (clicks, typing) sit just under the voice. Screen videos with layered, controlled audio feel produced; single-layer audio feels like a screencast.

Voiceover: after picture, not during

Narrating while driving the demo gives you "um"-laden audio and mistimed clicks, you're doing two jobs badly. Instead: record the screen silently, edit it (trim, zooms, ramps), then narrate against the finished cut. Your sentences land exactly on the visuals, and a flubbed line costs a ten-second retake instead of a re-record.

Music: the 35% rule

Background music exists to remove silence-discomfort on longer videos, not to be heard. Practical settings: instrumental only (lyrics fight narration), steady energy (no big drops mid-explanation), volume at roughly a third of the voice. If you notice the song while listening to the words, it's too loud.

For sub-60-second social clips with no voiceover, invert the rule: music carries the energy at full volume and the interaction sounds punch through it.

The three-layer mix, in order

  1. Voice, 100%, the reference layer.
  2. Interaction sounds, clicks/typing just below voice; they're texture, not events.
  3. Music, 30–40% of voice, faded in and out at the ends.

In Girato this is two uploads and two sliders: add a voiceover file (plays from clip start) and a music file (auto-loops), set volumes, and the whole mix, including the generated click and typing sounds, renders into the export on your machine.

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