3 Free Audio Tricks You Need to Try in Final Cut Pro

Let's once again cut out the fluff and jump straight in: three free audio tricks that punch way above their weight.

Trick 1: The hold frame reverb ending

You want your song to end at a specific spot, but cutting it dead sounds abrupt, fading it out sounds like a fade-out, and hunting for a section of the actual ending that lines up with your beat doesn't always work either. Try this instead.

Go to the beat you want to be the end (usually the beat where your video cuts), move a frame or two past it, and press Shift H to create a hold frame. Extend the hold a bit, then press Option Right Bracket to trim off everything after. Right now your audio just stops dead. Here's the effect: search the effects browser for Cathedral 2 and apply it to the music. Suddenly there's audio ringing through that previously silent section.

One problem: the cathedral reverb is now on the whole song. So press Control A on the music to open the audio animation editor, expand it with the dropdown, and set two keyframes right around the ending beat with Option K. Pull the section BEFORE the keyframes down to nothing, so the cathedral only kicks in from the ending onward. Play it back: a clean beat, then a gorgeous echo that gradually rings your song out, almost like the track was written to end right there. Tune it by adjusting the effect level and the distance between your keyframes.

Trick 2: EQ sweeping your voice

A solid way to clean up voice audio. Add Channel EQ from the effects browser to your voice track, open it from the inspector, and press Analyzer so you can see your voice's waveform as it plays.

Grab one of the four frequency bells at the top (color doesn't matter) and narrow its bandwidth by pushing the sides in. Then set up a listening loop: Command L turns on loop playback, and Shift and question mark plays a few seconds around your playhead on repeat. Now sweep the bell back and forth across the spectrum until you hear frequencies that just sound off: loud, harsh, annoying resonances.

Found one? Lower that bell to around -6 to -10 dB. Keep the bandwidth narrow: cut a wide band and you're carving out chunks of your actual voice, which gets noticeable fast. Sweep again, cut the next offender, repeat as needed. Bonus: the same technique in reverse can BOOST frequencies where your voice sounds good.

Trick 3: The low pass transition

An audio transition that signals a shot change way better than a lame volume fade. Add the AULowpass effect to your music and open its parameters in the inspector.

A few seconds before your cut, swing the cutoff frequency slider all the way right and hit the keyframe button (that's your "no effect" starting point). At the cut, lower it to around 400 Hz. A few seconds later, lower it more, and by the end, slide it fully left. What you're doing: progressively stripping away frequencies from the top down until only the lowest rumble remains, so the music sinks underwater and dissolves instead of just getting quieter.

Three tricks, zero dollars. Your music endings, voice tracks, and transitions all just leveled up. Have a great rest of your day!