Hating your own voice is like hating any part of your body. Learning to accept and love the uniqueness of your voice means learning to love the uniqueness of you - it makes a huge difference to how you express yourself. Want to know more about how to fall in love your voice? read on...
Why you can hate the sound of your voice and what to do about it.
Over the past couple of decades, I have given 100's of singing classes and I would say that about 90% of those who arrived at their first class didn't like their voice when they heard it played back in a recording (I admit this was true for me too when I was learning). But considering that recording yourself is such a fabulous way to observe what you need to work on to enhance your voice, it's a shame to react to what we hear in a negative way rather than a curious one. It's a shame that people give up on singing before giving themselves a chance - such are the conditions that many have on how their own voice should sound. So, I encourage you to stick around and not to throw in the towel too soon because there are a couple of reasons why you may dislike that initial sound and many more reasons why it's great to carry on learning how to sing!
Firstly, you are hearing your voice in a different way to how you normally hear it naturally (from the inside and outside of your body) and secondly, you have yet to learn techniques to improve the resonance and uncover the best in your voice and finally - the reasons to carry on? That could take up a whole blog, but in a nutshell - it is healthy, joyful, confidence building, enjoyable, fun, and healing for your body, mind and spirit.
There is a deeper dimension to explore with regards to self-acceptance and self-love here too and it will make a difference to how you approach singing or speaking and how you express yourself in all areas of your life.
You see, there is a beautiful voice within everyone and it comes from the inner most of our being. Your voice voices your unique essence and it is the apparatus that allows you to do so. If there are conditions on how your voice sounds, you may be denying that uniqueness and instead, compare or judge your voice to a standard that is constantly shifting depending on fashion or popularity.
I have taught singers who had lost their confidence and were about to give up, or conversely, some who were in overdrive to try and change their natural voice to one that they liked the sound of, which is rather like trying to change your body to be the perfect shape. Both prove to be false when that soulful inner voice is reconnected to.
The thing is we all have conditions on what our voice should be - we often strive for perfection and when we feel it's not perfect, we either withdraw or go into lots of effort to improve ourselves.
What is a PERFECT body? What is a perfect voice? Who judges that and why are we comparing in the first place?
If you are going to perform a certain genre of music and you want a specific sound, there are specific vocal techniques that you can learn. If you speak publicly, you may want to practice more inflection, improve tone and timbre and learn how to bring more resonance and power into your voice to capture people's attention - that is something you can do - there's nothing wrong with that, but how you really feel about your own voice and expression is something that can't be learned. It's a shift in mindset and belief about yourself.
When you withdraw or go into effort, you are coming from a place of need rather than a place of confidence. Need isn't a good foundation - it may motivate but it motivates from an inner poverty rather than an inner richness.
This blog is going to address this further dimension by reconnecting to the richness within you where your unique, beautiful voice and whole body instrument, express naturally and freely.
Reconnect to the beauty within you and allow your voice to follow
What does it mean to reconnect to the beauty within you?
It means being still, present and being aware of the space within you. You don’t have to try because it’s already there and just waiting for you to be aware of it. We are all aware of this from time to time but there are so many distractions in life that we end up emphasising what is outside of ourselves to the detriment of what is within us. When you reconnect to yourself you can express from that space and the voice, that delicate and amazing instrument, will express with a different vibrational quality that feels absolutely gorgeous in the whole body (by whole body I mean the physical, mental, and emotional aspects as one expression).
Conditions on how your voice SHOULD sound is like tying a noose around your neck and strangling the joy out of your expression.
Let’s discover how to appreciate the beauty of your own voice, the whole body instrument, and your unique expression so you can sing and communicate with confidence and joy by observing what needs to be let go of....
Comparison
I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s. Autotune didn’t exist and we didn’t really miss it because nobody worried about slight pitch variances. Many popular singers of that era didn’t really have what we now consider to be ‘good’ voices, but they expressed themselves with confidence and created a sound that people enjoyed (think back to the punk, ska and new romantic bands of the 80's). Of course, talented singers have always been top of the charts too, but you couldn't compare Ian Dury and the Blockheads with Donna Summer. You just liked one kind of sound or the other - or perhaps both.
Over the years, production methods have evolved to the point where we never hear bum notes unless we are watching a live gig in a small venue. Our ears have become conditioned to hear music and voices that have been passed through software that iron out every crease and fluctuation in pitch that could possibly disturb us. Not only that. With the advent of social media, people have found clever ways of expressing themselves to grab people's attention and our voices have become a means to an end.
Our desire to be better and better at singing, presenting and speaking, has led to a standard of talent that would have been mind-blowing during that era. People can do the most amazing things with their voices and the many TV singing competitions have cemented that standard and created a competitive environment for singers where you can feel utterly useless if you can’t do the same riffs as Beyonce, let alone have a pitch wobble.
I'm not saying that it is bad to be a good singer, just that comparison can stop us from enjoying our voices and expressing ourselves freely if we let it.
If there is anything about your voice that you don’t like, you can improve your tone, range and power with technique and practice, but your voice may never sound how YOU want it to sound - so stop comparing it with others, let go of the criticism and judgement and just shine!
How do you let go of comparison and start embracing the uniqueness of your natural voice?
You start shifting the emphasis from your voice (as a separate part of yourself) and onto your whole body. This may mean that you will need to reconnect to yourself before you begin any practice and consider the way the voice works and appreciate the delicate beauty of your own voice. Considering the whole body instrument in this way stops the criticism in the head from taking over. It gives you space to begin a journey of self-discovery and to uncover a voice with purpose and unique qualities that you can fall in love with.
Holistic vocal coaching is all about connection with your WHOLE BODY instrument and how it expresses in all areas of your life. It attunes you to yourself so that your voice is yours.
How to tune your whole body instrument
If you’ve ever tinkled away at an old piano that hasn’t been tuned for a few years, I’m sure you’ve heard (and winced) at the uncomfortable flat notes that just sound 'wrong'.
I grew up playing the piano and a piano tuner would come regularly to our home. I loved to watch the tuner patiently twiddling and listening to each note against his tuning fork. Each and every note on that piano had to be tuned and he worked so patiently and lovingly, it seemed. Pianos don’t stay in tune if you move them or if they are in a room that has fluctuating temperatures or levels of humidity, In other words they need care. But what of the human body? it is also affected by environmental and energetic changes. The way we live, eat, relate, move, and work all has an effect on the body. And inversely, the way we treat our body has an effect on how we live, eat, relate, move and work - it goes both ways - in fact it's kind of spherical in that whatever we do, it has an effect. The first rule of tuning your body then, is to observe how you are living and be more caring towards yourself.
And to observe, we need to be more present and connected within ourselves. One of the reasons why you hate your own voice, is because you don’t connect to your voice regularly, if at all. There is much to appreciate, for example; the intricate workings of your vocal cords, how they come together when air passes through, how they stretch when we raise the pitch of our voices or how delicate they are when we speak gently. You won't be able to treat your voice as a separate entity to the rest of your body when you reconnect to it in this way. If you don't appreciate the miracle of your body and voice, it's rather like that piano tuner coming along with no understanding of the workings of the instrument at all - where would they begin?
First - tune your body instrument by reconnecting to it.
Understanding the way your voice creates sound and the part your body plays as a whole instrument is quite humbling and you may get a sense of this amazing biological machine that you may have previously taken for granted. A five to ten minute inward focus on your breath and body is sufficient to reconnect to it. This tuning in is possible when we breathe as gently as possible (not soft or slow but tenderly towards yourself). This feeling of tenderness and gentleness tunes your whole body into a frequency that is self-loving. From this space, your voice will produce an authentic, soulful and healing quality that will provide the perfect foundation for singing or speaking with joy. It helps you to truly enjoy your voice without judgement or comparison. The technique will follow and take care of the physical sound.
Focus on different parts of your body, release the tension, breathe that gentleness into every part of your whole body instrument. Each in-breath is a confirmation of your commitment to the attunement and each out-breath is your commitment to express your joy and light to the world. This is soul-full singing - how can you hate that?
Maintaining the attunement
Consistency is not always and easy part of life but the way you live, which also has an effect on how your body stays tuned, plays a big part in how you express yourself and, as the voice is a big part of our expression, how you feel about your own voice. Changes in life habits, although fairly simple to initiate, can be harder to commit to, so can we make it easier?
It’s obvious that late nights, fast food, alcohol, too much coffee and sugar etc. are all detrimental to the body instrument, but more detrimental than any of those substances is critical inner dialogue and reacting harshly to yourself. I like to think that above everything else, self-acceptance and self-love are the main ingredients to tuning your body instrument and loving your voice. However, self-care is a part of that and creating rituals for tuning into yourself daily, is self caring. In fact, when you're attuned regularly, treating your body with disdain or neglecting it will just feel out of alignment. You’ll find it easier and quite natural to create healthier and more caring habits for yourself than ever before.
If you keep reminding yourself WHY you are tuning in and what it is that you’re tuning into, You’ll realise that this isn’t just a singing exercise, it’s a whole transformational life hack that gets to the root of anxiety, stress, low self-worth, emotional overwhelm and physical problems such as exhaustion, lack of focus and insomnia (to name a few). You are building a relationship of love with your body instrument. That relationship gets more powerful and results in a wiser and more intuitive expression more often. The more fitness built with that true kind of relationship, the stronger it gets and it affects all of your relationships positively.
Loving your voice
There are many exercises to help you to pitch, create resonance, build agility and/or give more power to your voice. If you would like to learn more from the holistic foundation as described in this blog, you might find it helpful to begin by trying out the exercises in my free video, “Holistic Vocal Warm-Ups” Just click on the button at the end of this blog to watch it.
You’ll discover that learning a combination of breath, palate elevation, flexibility and releasing tension in your jaw/face and listening and recording yourself with discerning observation rather than critical judgement, all help you to accept your natural, unique and beautiful voice.
For example; sometimes we can sing a little sharp (a little higher than the desired pitch) due to too much air or tension/force, or a little flat (just below the desired pitch) due to poor posture, not elevating the roof of the mouth or simply not having enough air. All this can be solved with practice.
Rather than hating your voice, how about falling in love with it?
I imagine that after reading this blog you feel a little closer to your voice and body instrument and how its miraculous workings deserves appreciation, respect and love. When you express yourself with that wholeness and tune into your voice and body instrument more frequently, it won’t be long before you really do fall in love with your voice and yourself!
So - if you’re wondering why you hate the sound of your own voice, ask yourself another question, ‘What can I love about my voice and how would this change the way I express myself?
Falling in love with your voice means falling in love with yourself (we’re one whole instrument).
What difference does that make?
Well, this is how it has changed my life and how it has supported my clients:
I used to hate the sound of my voice and had a pretty low opinion of myself in general. I had no real sense of purpose and I got anxious about the smallest things. I craved recognition as a substitute for the love I didn't feel, and I used my voice to get it. The better I sang, the more recognition, and this made me a slave to perfection. Oh yes, and if it wasn't perfect I would be super hard on myself. My body was communicating this abuse with lower back pain, throat problems (tonsillitis and laryngitis). I also suffered in my family and romantic relationships and had recurring financial difficulties.
Could all of this be blamed on hating my voice?
Hating my voice was just a symptom of not ever feeling good enough. If everything is energy, how could I have expressed myself confidently? (in relationships or work)
Your voice, your expression, your body and life are inseparable. My whole expression was affected so how could I have possibly loved my voice or loved life?
I still have a tendency to be hard on myself. I have to be consistent with the gentle movements I make during my day to stay present and remain both delicate and powerful when I express myself in relationships, at work, through songs etc.
The relationship with my own voice has improved. I express myself with a focus on energetic integrity which has strengthened my relationships and I feel more connected to myself and to others. The superficiality, need, conditional expectations and impositions have all fallen away. In their place is connection, enrichment and joy.
I let go of the need to be perfect - perfection doesn't exist and I feel it's arrogance lifted from the tense shoulders it used to weigh heavily on.
Instead I feel humble....
Perhaps something I didn’t realise would be a big change in my life was being in awe of my body and my voice. Appreciating the beauty that is within myself and all of us. How simple to reconnect to that truth - it is pure joy. Letting go of the need to be ‘good’ at something and just allowing the attunement is a beautiful surrender.
I am more articulate, more engaged, and less likely to stay in the shadows missing opportunities to be of service in my life. I feel confident about my voice and my working life has improved as well as my finances.
People who I’ve worked with have also noticed less anxiety in their lives and are able to focus in presence more consistently. They tend to be more self-caring towards themselves.
Next Steps
As a singer, I used to be obsessed with ‘making it’ I got pretty close to making that dream a reality (but that’s another story). However, discovering my own voice changed my direction totally. I performed less in venues that weren't supportive to me and instead, I began to open up to new opportunities that were more aligned to how I now feel about my voice such as coaching and writing soul-full songs. I love the healing nature of the voice and supporting others to heal with theirs.
Where might your voice lead you and will you let it pave the way?
A final word (or few)....
Don’t allow your thoughts to indulge in hateful criticism of your voice - it’s a trick to turn you away from the most transformative journey you will make towards your own body and with it, true self-love and all that it brings to your life such as joy, love and enrichment.
If you would like to know more, sign up below and choose from three Holistic Vocal Coaching video courses that will help you to practice, discover your authentic voice and manage anxiety. Click below for free access!