{
 "slug": "sfx-vocabulary",
 "name": "Which sound for which event",
 "category": "sound",
 "group": "Hook and effects",
 "media": [
  "video"
 ],
 "checked": "2026-11-13",
 "effect": "Each kind of event gets a sound the viewer already understands.",
 "use_when": "Placing sound effects on an edit.",
 "phrase": "a whoosh on the zoom, an impact as the title lands, a soft tick on each counted number",
 "pitfalls": [
  {
   "text": "A stricter rule from one creator of coded ads: whooshes only for movement, a pop or a tick for a cut or a morph, no dings, bells or typing sounds, and never the same sample twice at the same pitch.",
   "evidence": "practitioner",
   "source": "Director Chair notes on Motion graphics with Claude (Rourke Heath) (the sound rules of his free skill)"
  },
  {
   "text": "One effect per visual event at most. An effect on every caption is the style of a few references, not a default.",
   "evidence": "practitioner",
   "source": "Director Chair field notes on editing"
  }
 ],
 "per_model": [],
 "external_refs": [],
 "licensed": [],
 "site_names": [],
 "related": [
  "sound-hook",
  "sfx-on-the-peak",
  "word-drop"
 ],
 "rights": "own-work",
 "evidence": "practitioner",
 "source": {
  "url": null,
  "note": "The pairs come from the Director Chair hook framework (our 2026 synthesis of @marco.thecreative's TikTok series, OpusClip's hook formulas, a Brandefy article, Meta retention research and a Gemini research report), in our own words"
 },
 "body": "## The usual pairs\n\n| Sound | Event |\n|---|---|\n| Whoosh | a zoom, text sliding in |\n| Riser | tension before a reveal |\n| Click and impact | text or an object appearing |\n| Ding | a right answer, good news |\n| Cash register | money, a price |\n| Camera shutter | a scene change, before and after |\n| Shock | a pattern interrupt |\n| Buzzer | a mistake, a myth debunked |\n\nFrom a creator's TikTok series, collected in our hook framework. Pairs to start from, not rules.",
 "shown_with": null,
 "url": "https://directorchair.ai/sound/sfx-vocabulary",
 "markdown": "https://directorchair.ai/sound/sfx-vocabulary.md",
 "prompts": {
  "chat": "Give me a sound brief: what to record or pick, where it sits on the timeline, the levels, and what to check before export, for a short video about [your product], for [your audience]. The technique is which sound for which event: each kind of event gets a sound the viewer already understands. How it works: a whoosh on the zoom, an impact as the title lands, a soft tick on each counted number. It is right for: placing sound effects on an edit. A stricter rule from one creator of coded ads: whooshes only for movement, a pop or a tick for a cut or a morph, no dings, bells or typing sounds, and never the same sample twice at the same pitch. One effect per visual event at most. Be concrete: numbers, seconds and settings, no theory. Ask me one question first if something you need is missing."
 },
 "licence": {
  "code": "MIT",
  "text": "CC BY 4.0",
  "third_party": "Clips and card texts inside a \"licensed\" block belong to their makers and are shown with permission and credit."
 }
}