Sound & Music Glossary for Video Editors
This sound design glossary for video editors defines the music and audio terms you meet most when scoring video — tonal sounds, stems, layers, risers, impacts, LUFS, BPM and licensing concepts like royalty-free and Content ID. Each entry is short and practical, built around the way editors actually work in Premiere, Resolve and Final Cut.
A tonal sound has a defined musical pitch and sits in a key, so it blends with music rather than clashing. Drones, pads, melodic risers and key-matched impacts are tonal. Editors use them to add tension or emotion that locks to a track. See the tonal sounds guide.
A non-tonal sound effect has no fixed musical pitch — it reads as noise, texture or impact rather than a note. Whooshes, clicks, foley and many transitions are non-tonal. They work anywhere because they don’t belong to a key, but they won’t carry melody or harmony on their own.
A music stem is an individual layer of a track exported separately — such as drums, bass, or melody — so it can be mixed independently. In Duende kits, stems are the building-block layers provided ready to use; they are not extracted from finished third-party songs.
Layers are the stacked parts that build a cue. The foundation holds low drones, textures and pads; the mid carries rhythmic loops and chord progressions; the top adds melodies and signature phrases. Stacking a few layers — up to around four — lets you shape intensity moment to moment.
One key, or key-matched, means sounds are built largely around a single musical key so they stack and cross-fade without clashing. Duende packs are designed this way by default, letting layers within and across kits combine cleanly while you build and reshape a cue.
A soundtrack kit is a collection of cinematic cues plus their modular building blocks — foundation, mid and top layers, with bonus hits, impacts, risers and transitions. You stack layers to build a cue, then reshape it. Explore the difference between kits, albums and FX.
A drone is a sustained, evolving tone that holds a single pitch or chord underneath a scene. As a foundation layer it builds tension and atmosphere without melody or rhythm, making it ideal for slow reveals, suspense and ambient beds that other layers sit on top of.
A pad is a soft, sustained synth or textural sound that fills harmonic space and adds warmth or mood. Pads sit in the foundation of a mix, smoothing transitions and giving a cue emotional colour without drawing attention away from melody or dialogue.
A riser is a sound that builds in pitch, volume or intensity to create anticipation before a cut, reveal or drop. Tonal risers stay in key so they resolve musically into the next moment, making them a staple for trailers, transitions and montage peaks.
An impact is a short, heavy hit that marks a moment — a cut, title or beat. Impacts deliver weight and punctuation; key-matched impacts stay in tune with the music so they land as part of the score rather than as a separate sound effect.
A braam is a deep, brassy, sustained blast made famous by film trailers. It signals scale, dread or arrival and is often paired with an impact for extra weight. Braams sit low in the mix and carry strong emotional force in cinematic moments.
A stinger is a short, sharp musical accent used to punctuate a moment — a shock, a reveal or a punchline. Brief and attention-grabbing, stingers mark beats in editing without filling space, and key-matched ones blend with the surrounding music.
A whoosh is a sweeping, air-like transition sound that carries the eye and ear across a cut, swipe or camera move. Usually non-tonal, it adds motion and energy to transitions and often precedes an impact to emphasise the arrival of a new shot.
Ducking automatically lowers music volume when another sound — usually dialogue or voiceover — plays, then raises it again afterward. It keeps speech clear without manual fader moves, and most editing software offers it as automatic ducking or sidechain compression.
LUFS (Loudness Units Full Scale) measures perceived loudness over time, the standard used to meet platform targets. YouTube normalises around -14 LUFS integrated. Mixing to a LUFS target keeps your video consistent with others and avoids automatic loudness penalties on streaming and social platforms.
BPM (beats per minute) measures a track’s tempo. Matching BPM lets you sync cuts to the beat and combine loops without timing drift. Duende’s free app tags every sound by key and tempo, so finding layers at the same BPM is fast.
Royalty-free music is licensed with a one-time purchase so you don’t pay recurring royalties per use. With a proper licence from a registered provider it can be used and monetized across projects. Always check the licence scope rather than assuming all uses are covered.
Content ID is YouTube’s automated system that scans uploads and matches them against a database of registered audio and video. A match can trigger a claim, affecting monetization. Using music you’re properly licensed to use — and clearing claims when needed — keeps your video safe.
