Do You Like (Or Hate) Your Voice?

How do you feel about your singing voice?

  • I love my voice!

    Votes: 95 12.4%

  • My voice is o.k., but could be better.

    Votes: 186 24.2%

  • I have mixed feelings about it.

    Votes: 214 27.9%

  • My voice is not so good, but I live with it.

    Votes: 103 13.4%

  • I hate hearing myself on tape. Sometimes I want to quit.

    Votes: 170 22.1%
  • Total voters
    768
I fucking hate my voice,.. maybe I just need to find the right microphone to record with. Or use a pre-amp that adds allot of color.. But with the set-up right now I hate my voice.

But I have to say so, I like my voice more than I did when I just started recording.. And I have made a song where I actually like my voice in but other than that.. I hate my voice..
 
I'm a Christian rock musician. I write lots of songs, I play guitar, I play keys and I play bass. But vocals are sort of along for the ride.

For a long time, I hated my voice. And I still have my days. It's tonal quality is OK-but-not-great, but it's on pitch. Interestingly enough, I've got tons of confidence singing live, but the studio scares the crap out of me. My biggest problem is that when I record a song, I end up wishing it could sound like somebody else when I listen back.

But two people told me things that changed my life.

1. During sound checks before getting ready to sing one night, I was feeling pretty miserable about how my voice sounded. The sound guy, who is also a college vocal instructor and practically an opera-quality baritone, was having none of it.

He pulled me aside and said, "Let me tell you something. You do not have a 'great' voice. It's not opera-quality. But you need to understand something ... that is a compliment. Your voice is on pitch, it's honest as hell, and it's got BUCKETS of passion. That's what people want to hear. They can connect with you. Heck, they want to sing with you. They just get tired of me."

It was a real eye-opener for me ... as great a singer as he is, he also knows there's little to no market for his kind of singing. There's a market for honesty.

2. As we were planning my first CD (coming this summer), I was complaining (again) about my voice to my wife. Finally she said, "When are you going to realize that your VOICE is your best instrument? Not the guitar, not the keys, but your voice. Nobody else can sing your songs the way you can."

I almost lost it. My wife never says anything that specific. Usually it's the usual wife/relative thing: "You sound great." She really smacked me around.

Those two things have made me realize ... I may not be Jon Bon Jovi or Adam Lambert or Luther Vandross, but I'm the best I've got. One way or another, I just gotta make that work.

Maybe what all of us need instead of voice coaches are people who support us.
 
Frustrated with my voice

I'm a noob to the board - Great post - and great to read so many people who wrestle with the same issues. It sounds like there are more frustrated guitarist like me. I've been playing guitar for 25 of my 41 years and starting getting serious about my vocals over the last year or so. First working on cover tunes in my range to entertain friends in the backyard with a few beers, then, after not getting many complaints from my sightly 'oiled' friends, I decided to put some vocals on the mounting digital pile of songs I've been recording. This is when it stopped being so much fun! The six notes that I can project on are getting old and my Auto Tune is gonna get up and walk out! After 3 layers of vocals, its 'big', it's in tune, but it lacks a whole lot of that goose-bump factor. You know, than feeling you get when you work with a great singer carving a great melody out of your well crafted riffs. I used to be in a band with a gold record selling singer, so I know what I'd like to hear, but I ain't even close. So, after reading this board and venting a little, I've decided to plunk down the money and get some vocal lessons to see if this frog might be able to croak more like a prince! :rolleyes:
 
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My voice, and the stage fright are the reasons why I prefer being a song writer.So the answer is...I`m not happy with my voice but I can live with it...
 
singing lessons needed

Me and my girlfriend both aggreed you have a great tone to your voice, you could sing like dave grohl..and we all know how well he's doing, you really need vocal coaching to help you control it, could be very powerful.
 
i feel that my ability to sing tonally well is mostly effected by my mood. Sometimes i can realy get into a song and have alot of fun with it, but the next time i step up to the mic, i have to force myself to spit out the notes.
at times i can get around this by choosing a slower song to warm myself up, but usally i walk away unsatisfied.

i got no training and find it difficult to start at the same place <ie octave, tone, singing voice <cause we got a few voices>> i think this is partially due to me not haveing a 'scale' to judge myself by, im just stumbling in the dark.

i've been told to record myself alot, them you can judge yourself, correct errors and find where you were, this is good advice.

also the words im singing must match my mood, i cant sing a happy song when im down. obviously, so maybe if we picked songs that suited our headspace we could do better.

i cant sing words i dont beleave in, for me this is a moral thing, i wouldnt want to mislead anyone, there are alot of songs that fall into this catagory for me, not the hole songs, usally one line ruins it for me.

personally i think i think too much about it, i know it should be about fun before anything else, but i still get cought up in how it might be judged by the world, not that anyones gunna hear it <hope thats rong>.

so sing lyrics that are true to you, make stupid noises and have fun. and if you really care get lessions before you blow you voice

Peace World
Tremaine
 
The only place my voice sounds halfway decent is on country songs. Corny ones. But I want to be able to sing like Lennon or McCartney. Or a young John Sebastian. Or Don McClean. Or Jason Mraz. Any of 'em, I don't care. I just wanna stop sounding like Mac Davis. It's my own personal torture.

But it's not all bad. I make my living as a guitar teacher. And I love teaching. I use vocalizing along with the playing in lessons as a way to teach ear training, theory, and other things. The fact that my voice is kind of corny helps my guitar students, who tend to be very serious types, to not feel intimidated... to relax and focus on the music.
 
Waits is an awesome singer. Some people are fooled by the dirt, but he can be operatic and melodic, as well as having one of the most versatile vocal stylizing capacities Ive ever heard.
 
I think anyone has the capacity to develop their voice in a way that they can use it musically.
All that is needed is a willingness to ascertain physical limits and the ability to spend long hours experimenting within said physical limits.

I think we tend to expect singing to come more naturally than any other skill and if it doesnt we might say we just dont have it. But we would never say that about almost any other skill.

Neither is range critical to good singing. If you can't cultivate a pleasing tone with one note, being able to sing a bunch of notes won't mean jack.
One way to develop vocals is to take a simple phrase and work on it over and over, till it feels very natural and effortless. Chances are if you can do that , you will find it sounds good when you record it. If not don't despair, singing is unique among instruments, it requires more development of your inner ear, and that can take time. Its like a muscle the more you use it in a focused way the stronger it gets.
 
oh yeah, I used to be really uncomfortable with my voice, but years of using and training it have made it so I can hear what is good about it. I find when i sing well it also feels very natural and easy. I also find I can sing consistently well now, whereas once upon a time I had no vocal skill at all. I definitely dont think i am a virtuoso vocalist, but you ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY DO NOT need to be a virtuoso vocalist for people to enjoy your singing.
 
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you need to be a virtuoso vocalist for people to enjoy your singing.
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I hear ya. The only singer I really enjoy listening to is Pavarotti.



No, I hate opera. No offense, opera dudes.

All a singer needs for me to like them is to be reasonably in tune and in rhythm, and have an expressive voice that suits the song.
 
I'm learning to like my voice again, after about 5 years of totally hating it
recording has actually helped my confidence quite a bit
heres a recording I did ages ago, I apologize for the background noises
 
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