Recipe: a 15 to 30 second teaser for Reels, Shorts and TikTok from your own stems, with free tools

What you get: one vertical video, 15 to 30 seconds long, built around the best moment of your track, that you can post to Reels, Shorts and TikTok.

What it costs: about two hours and $0. Audacity is free and open source and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux (Audacity); Shotcut is "a free, open source, cross-platform video editor" (Shotcut).

The one rule: the teaser is not the song shortened. It is the hook with the parts rearranged so it lands in the first two seconds. Stems are what let you do that.

The steps

1. Pick the moment (15 minutes, free). Listen through and mark the eight to sixteen bars people would hum afterwards. Usually the chorus or the drop, sometimes a strange intro sound.

2. Rebuild it from stems (30 minutes, free). Load the stems into Audacity at bar 1. Start with the most recognisable element alone (vocal hook, lead line), then bring the drums and bass in. Cut a clean ending on a downbeat, or loop the last bar so the clip can repeat without a bump. Export WAV.

3. Check the loudness by ear on a phone (10 minutes, free). Phone speakers lose the low end; if the hook disappears, raise the mid-range element, not the master.

4. Make the picture (30 minutes, free). In Shotcut, set a vertical 9:16 project. Use studio footage, a performance clip, a waveform or simply the cover art with slow motion. Put the track title and your name on screen as text, since many people watch with the sound off.

5. Cut to the beat (20 minutes, free). Line edits up with the downbeats from step 2. Keep it between 15 and 30 seconds; it is a teaser, even though YouTube now counts square or vertical videos up to three minutes as Shorts (YouTube Help).

6. Export and post natively (10 minutes, free). One vertical export, uploaded separately to each app rather than reposted with another app's watermark. Add a link to the full song in the caption or bio.

Rights notes

• Use only stems you control. If a producer, a co-writer or a sample is in the track, the teaser carries them too. Clear it the way you cleared the release.
• Upload your own audio, not a library sound, if you want the clip to point at your release. How the platforms license music and pay for it is a separate question, covered in our guide to TikTok and Reels music rights.
• Keep the project file and stems with the release folder, so you can prove the audio is yours if a claim ever lands on the clip.

What we think

A short clip made from stems beats a clip of the mastered song because you can choose the order: hook first, build second. Two hours once, then reuse the Audacity and Shotcut projects as templates for the next single.