Fortnightly Furry Musicians Newsletter!

I've had a variation of this question once: How long does it take until you can bear or like your own voice?


The first thing to fathom is: What is it, that do you not like about your voice?
And I can try to come up with a few reasons, which at least concerned me: (I am not adressing anyone in particular here)

1. "My voice isn't special. It's just a run-of-the-mill voice. It's boring."

You are used to hear your own voice on a daily basis and you might think that you must sound like someone else, some idolized entity, to stick out of the mass.
Often you need the opinion of someone else, or just realize, that every voice is unique.
Imagine you visit a friends home, where you never have been before. The first moment of experiencing something or someone always bears some incomparable and unique magic.
Someone who hears your singing for the first time might be totally excited about it. In this matter you should trust others judgements more than your own.

2. "My voice sounds very different when recorded. I swear to god that is not my voice!" ... a common first reaction ... or you just blush. ^^

That is just physics. Du to vibrations and resonances within you body, your head, your skull, and "acoustic short-circuiting". At least the latter you can dodge for demonstrations. Put 2 sheets of cardboard, 2 notebooks or similar right in front of your ears pointing outwards like a barrier. The say something and you might be closer to hearing how other ppl percieve you. If you are able to record your voice - do it, compare it.
In that regard the microphone can also play a role. An amateur home-recording-gear (condenser-mic in the best case) should give you quite a good enough representation, while a real cheap microphone, like from most headsets, can really mangle the signal.

3. You can not project your voice well. Your voice sounds kinda flimsy.

That is very common upon beginners. I am still working on that myself. You should consult a vocal coach or look up some tutorials here. You can also try to imitate classical singing like an opera singer, even if you never intend to sing operas. But therein lies great technique to project your voice the best. You will most likely intuitively drop your tongue to the bottom of your mouth when doing so, which is a good start. Also yawning (loudly) is a very good vocal warmup exercise for exactly this problem. Also you might wanna google #belting.

4. "I always sound somehow off key although I am singing the right notes."

Many people have the tendency to sing a bit flat. I good amount of singing is hearing. Some hear pitches better than others and I think the ear is like a muscle that can be trained. (no guarantees here, I am not an experienced vocal coach.)
I would recommend interval training to anyone who makes music, but singers especially. Also violinists and trombone players need to hear their pitches well, because they have no frets or valves respectively.
Without hearing that you are off key you might only get the subjective perception that something is not quite right and instead of identifying the problem you might just get frustared.
Believe me there, I have experienced this with a good friend and musical duo partner.

Okay, that's what I could think of off the top of my hat

And of course you need patience. The vast majority, if not all singers worked hard to get where they are now.

I really thank you all for the feature here in this post!! ♥♥♥♥
Thank you so much ^w^

I hated my voice until I heard the original vocals for Money by Pink Floyd, on the Classic Albums series. There, they play it back dry, with no delay or reverb and it sounds flat and lifeless, much like my voice did.
So I got an FX unit and felt a lot happier. And that got me over the initial bump.
Now I don't mind hearing my voice dry... Narration and voice acting for a webcomic radio adaptation helped a lot.
But for singing, don't underestimate the effect of adding delay to thicken it

WOW! Thanks for the feature! Really Appericate it! Though you forgot I also have it on Spotify and iTunes You can find the links in my featured journal