iWork '09: The Missing Manual

Making Noise: Sounds and Soundtracks

You can add sound—music, narration, or sound effects—to a Keynote presentation in three different ways: as a soundtrack for the entire show, as a song or sound effect for a single slide, or as voiceover narration for an auto-playing slideshow. This section focuses on the first two types: adding soundtrack and audio files to your slideshow. For details about recording narration for recorded slideshows, see Recorded Slideshows.

The sound files you add to your slides can be single iTunes or GarageBand songs (which don’t have to be actual songs—they can be just sounds), a whole playlist, or one or more audio files you have in a folder on your hard drive. Keynote understands a wide range of sound files, including MP3, AIFF, AAC, and others.

Adding a Soundtrack

A Keynote soundtrack starts playing right from the first slide, and plays through all the slides for as long as the song or playlist lasts. Since a soundtrack affects the whole Keynote document, it doesn’t matter which slide you choose when you set it up.

Start by preparing the soundtrack. If you’re using more than one song or sound file, assemble them in an iTunes playlist. If your soundtrack consists of a single song or sound file, it doesn’t have to be in iTunes—but having it there does make it easier to insert. Then:

1. Open the Document Inspector and click its Audio tab.

   If your soundtrack is in iTunes or GarageBand, open the Media Browser and choose the Audio tab—or, in the Document Inspector, ...