There is no doubt about it. Most people not only dislike hearing themselves on recording equipment, but they also don’t want to believe what they hear. The unfortunate truth about what you hear on your voicemail, camcorder, or some other form of recording is that that sound is exactly how everyone else recognizes you.
Whether your voice is strident, harsh, throaty, whispery, child-like, too soft, too loud, monotone, nasal or too high-pitched, it most definitely does not correspond with how you hear yourself in your head when you speak. In fact, the majority of people hear their voice in their head to be deeper in pitch than what they hear on the recording.
You recognize your voice by means of your inner ear which is hearing a distortion of your voice. The reason is because it is sound vibrating in the solid and liquid of the brain. When you talk to someone, on the other hand, your voice is being carried through air waves and is not the same sound that you recognize in your head. You also cannot hear it because your voice is being carried away from your ears when you speak.
The good news is that you have a better voice inside of you which I call your ‘real’ voice. Deeper in pitch and warmer in quality, it is sound that, when powered by means of your chest cavity, is very resonant. So much so that you will actually feel your voice vibrating in your mid-torso region.
If your speaking voice is excessively nasal, for example, your voice vibrates but that vibration is in your nasal cavities. If you are very soft-spoken, on the other hand, you will feel no vibration whatsoever because your voice does not have enough power to noticeably vibrate. Maybe you have a throaty sound. What is happening in this case is that your voice is getting stuck in the back of your mouth or throat and just seems to sit there, which is why you may be asked to repeat yourself a lot.
I could list problem after problem which we find with the speaking voice but what is interesting is that once you discover your ‘real’ one, all of those problems go away. There is no one specific exercise for the throaty sound nor one specific exercise for the soft-spoken. When you learn to use your chest cavity as your primary sounding board, the problems disappear and your voice becomes deeper, richer, vibrant.
With voice training, you will no longer hate how you sound when you hear yourself on a recording. In fact, you will be amazed at just how good it is.
The Voice Lady Nancy Daniels offers private, corporate and group workshops in voice and presentation skills as well as Voicing It!, the only video training program on voice improvement. If you would like to see and hear a dramatic change, from childlike to mature, watch Trish's 'Before & After' video clip.