Do You Like (Or Hate) Your Voice?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jack Russell
  • Start date Start date

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 hate my voice as well and feel your pain, but something thats important to remember is that having a great voice isnt necesarilly important. Many of the "greats" or more popular artists of revent time have been mediocre singers. Take Springsteen for example. As long as you are a good songwriter and/or musician, and can somewhat carry a tune poeple will look past your voice and focus on the music. Its not the ideal set up, but it works. Also, you can use "real singers" and add them as many musicians do.
 
I'm after spending a small fortune on equipment to start playing live gigs only a few weeks ago, and now my voice is driving me nuts after only a couple of gigs...aaagghhhhhh!!!

Why now?????
 
thread is still going? well here is my first post then!

I actually have the opposite problem of many here. I used to like my voice, but friends and family were lukewarm in response to my singing on some demos and live. After awhile I realized what they avoided telling me for fear of hurting my feelings: I suck.

It wasn't all bad-- I sounded ok on some tapes, but I had terrible consistency and often sounded awful. After 15 years of singing off and on, mostly on my own home studio projects (I am primarily a guitar player), I have improved marginally. I still pretty much suck though. With a lot of takes, doubling and creative mixing and processing, I can get the vocals to sound pretty good, but my raw voice is pretty lame.

Lately I have decided to take some lessons, because I can see I am not going to quit singing on my little projects, so why not try to improve? If it doesn't work, ah well, then f#@k it, I'll live. I have never systematically practiced-- just practiced songs until I could get them passably onto tape. Well, let me revise that: I have spent a few hours here and there singing scales and arpeggios in a half-hearted attempt at improvement. Who knows, maybe it helped, and I would suck even worse if not for that.

Fun to see there are so many other musicians with vocal issues similar to mine.
 
Hello, my name is bilbomarks and I'm an alcoho... err new to this forum and hate my voice. Hate I think is not a strong enough word. I Despise it with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns.

Mostly when I try to sing low or lower like this I truly hate my voice. Possibly because that is not in my range. I tried to find the lowest note on a guitar I can sing and it's the 5th fret on the low E string. Even then i feel like i'm forcing and my throat feels a bit sore after I try that. A more comfortable lowest low is the 7th fret on the low E string.

When I belt out, though, and start to break up like a nice tube amp, a la lennon on twist and shout/yer blues, is the only time I don't absolutely curse my vox.
 
bilbomarks said:
Hate I think is not a strong enough word. I Despise it with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns.

Mostly when I try to sing low or lower like this I truly hate my voice.
Click to expand...

Is it you singing in this clip ? If it is, I can't see why you dislike your voice. On this song, I like it. It's laconic, but with character and certainly holds the tune well.
 
I hate my voice. It's absolutely useless.

I wish it were better so that I'd have the option at least sometimes to put vocals to the songs I make...
 
I feel that I can sing other's people music well, depending on the music. I have kind of a Brad Delp (of Boston). Kind of a high voice (I have a mid to high male voice--not quite horse jockey when I talk, but definitely boyish. On the phone I can pass for twenty years younger than my current 41).

My own lyrics are a complete wreck. I'd rather read Hiter's autobiography than read my own lyrics. It's that bad (and for those of you who ever read Hitler's autobiography, you know it's horribly written, let alone the nasty subject matter).

Well, reading my own lyrics, hearing my voice on tape. All bad, bad, bad.

The only thing I sang that I ever liked was when I was trying to act silly while singing (with a fake British accent) "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth."

Go figure.

However, I have a firm belief that every person has an excellent voice inside of them that just needs to release the emotion and find the right kind of music.

A long time ago I thought, "the singers are overrated. It's so easy to just hold a mic and sing. The other players have to actually learn how to play their instruments, and they spend years learning how to find the right notes to link from their minds to their instruments, but a singer can easily sing the note."

Now I know that while finding the right proper note isn't exactly too challenging, releasing that emotion is extremely challenging.

When you release all that emotion through your voice, you're risking a lot. But if you can do it, you've got gold.
 
grimtraveller said:
Is it you singing in this clip ? If it is, I can't see why you dislike your voice. On this song, I like it. It's laconic, but with character and certainly holds the tune well.
Click to expand...

If that were my voice I wouldn't hate it. :(
 
MikeSknabriaf said:
I
However, I have a firm belief that every person has an excellent voice inside of them that just needs to release the emotion and find the right kind of music.
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You wouldn't say that if you heard my mate Chandra sing !!:D
 
i'm not very satisfied with mine, every now and then i don't think its that bad, and i'm sure it will have to do, but wouldn't mind something else sometimes that's for sure!:):D
 
I have to admit I like my voice.

I used to be self-conscious about it, but it took for this to happen for it to change:

In grade 12, I used to sing in the worship team at my church. My friend did sound for the church. One day, on a school trip, he put in a tape, and played it while we were all in the bus. I recognized the song, and realized it was one that we sang in church. I asked him who the band was, and he told me it was the worship team from last Sunday and that it was me singing.

I had never actually heard my singing voice from someone elses perspective before. And since then, I've liked my voice. I'm still shy about it in some circumstances (like, if someone randomly asks me to sing), but I do have confidence in knowing that I have a good voice.
 
That's great that you like your voice.

Once I had to sing a Christmas song in front of about 900 people. It was a trio and I had a long verse I had to sing. I was super nervous and practiced a lot in the car.

I thought, "I can sing this pretty well," and then later when I watched the video tape I thought, "man, I look like a cheezy lounge singer but sound much worse."
 
most people dont like the sound of their own voices...john lennon didn't like the sound of his...so that makes me feel better because his voice was awesome...I'm a good singer, I have good pitch but I do suffer from allergies and acid reflux which can greatly affect my voice on certain days...I love to sing so having these ailments can be extremely frustrating...
 
Yea, I dont really feel comfortable with the sound of my voice. But I do get compliments on my singing. I went for my first vocal lesson last night after singing for most of my life.....The coach said I had great tone, but needed to work on my technique. So there is always room to improve.
 
The thing is that the voice is such a powerful tool to use in conveying music. A good friend of mine said once "it's one thing to sing o.k., it's another to SELL the tune." That's the big step, once you get the pitch, dynamics, and technique all down, then you must make it "musical" and put out the emotion. ONce more with feeling!

This is why some singers with bad technique and poor pitch control are able to sing with great emotion, and pull it all off.

So for songwriters, like myself, you might as well use what god gave you. It is a tool right there inside you 24/7. Plus your voice can't just up and quit, then walk out of band practice over a hissy fit.:eek:
 
You Like (Or Hate) Your Voice?

I just started writing, playing singing and recording after 30 years of doing other stuff. I like to compare my voice to a garden thats been neglected for thirty years. In other words there are flowers in there but I am going to have to do a lot of work before I will be able to appreciate the. Or I can drink lots of whiskey and smoke more cigarettes and hope for the best. I also as someone who is pretty eclectic in what I listen to think that a voice is in the ears of the listener. And besides most of what I hear in commercial music tells me that studio engineers in recording studios are just as dangerous to society as some other scoundrels we know.
 
I have a weird relationship with my voice. With decent monitoring, I usually don't have problems pitching, unless if there are lots of tricky jumps, for which I feel very fortunate, but I don't really like the character of my voice. The main problem is that my default voice is rather characterless, and I've yet to discover a way of characterising it that I'd really like and want to develop and build upon. I've tried to emulate countless singers that I like, which I can do quite well, but only when singing along to their songs - when it comes to singing my own material, I seem to be unable to capitalise on that energy or even the manner of singing. Fortunately, some people like my voice and compliment my ability to make it sit well in my songs, which obviously encourages me to keep trying to get better.

In the past, I also tried hard to develop a growl/scream type of death metal vocal made famous by Chuck Schuldiner of Death (above, I'm referring to standard pop/rock vocal) but I just don't seem to have it in me. I realise that Schuldiner is the Freddy Mercury of death metal if you will, but I never even came close, so I gave up hope on that one.
 
I don't suppose I really love OR hate my own voice. It just... is. I have gotten used to hearing my recorded voice played back, and that's a good thing.
 
I spent over a year saving money to buy a digital recorder to promote myself as a singer. Not a good idea. We wanted to reach for the ‘big dream’ because we have always had money problems(we own a farm). Clint Black went to Nashville with 10 million in financial backing-most people do not make money by sending demo’s to Nashville. Jo Dee Messina went to Nashville with $500 in her pocket, she said if she knew how much talent was in Nashville she would not have gone there.

After a year of laying down tracks, I took one of my songs to a songwriters association meeting. They were arguing about demos, and that they are supposed to be rough because they are a work in progress, not 24 track digital that someone spent a fortune on in the studio. When I played my demo, the guy jumped out of his seat and yelled-“That’s what I’m talking about!!!!! You didn’t even use a good demo singer!!! Oh, that wasn’t you was it?” For the only time in my life that I can remember, the next day I would not answer people when they said hello to me. It took me a full day to recover. I began to remember what people had said to me about my singing, I had completely lost all of my confidence.

I have had some of the best situations I can remember since starting this 'home recording', and by far, some of the worst.
misterbill
 
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