The main reason is that when you speak or sing normally, your voice echoes through your own body, which changes the way it sounds. When you hear a recording, you are not hearing your voice through your own body anymore. You are hearing it through the air, just like everyone else hears it.
When recorded, you might hear your voice sound shallower than you're used to. This is because the recordings are not affected by the internal resonance and bone conduction that affects how your voice sounds. However, the way your voice sounds on recordings is the way people perceive it in real life.
The recorded voice, in comparison, can sound thinner and higher pitched, which many find cringeworthy. There's a second reason hearing a recording of your voice can be so disconcerting. It really is a new voice – one that exposes a difference between your self-perception and reality.
When you listen to a recording of yourself speaking, the bone-conducted pathway that you consider part of your “normal” voice is eliminated, and you hear only the air-conducted component in unfamiliar isolation. You can experience the reverse effect by putting in earplugs so you hear only bone-conducted vibrations.
The main problem, is that you're singing very nasally (lots of airflow through your nose cavity). When singing, imagine the sound is coming from a bit lower down in your throat rather than it coming through a "hole between your eyes".
No. No one's voice sounds to them like it does on a recording or to everyone else. The primary reason for this is that when you speak or sing, you are hearing your voice conducted through your body, and this sound is slightly lower in pitch than the sound carried through the air to a microphone or listener.
There is no right or wrong answer to this question – it simply depends on the individual. Some singers love the sound of their own voice, while others find it difficult to listen to themselves sing.
You are hearing what your voice actually sounds like to other people. This is typically somewhat different from the way it sounds to you. This is because you hear the sound resonating through your head bones and sinuses, and other people do not hear that.
While it's normal to hate your voice when you hear it, it doesn't have to always be that way. There are things you can do to either adjust your voice or your perception of it. While it's possible they won't get you to the point of loving your voice, you can at least work towards making it bearable to listen to.
In psychology, voice confrontation, which is related to self-confrontation, is the phenomenon of a person not liking the sound of their own voice.
Yet for those who believe they “can't help it” when they find some voices more irritating than others, science suggests they may in fact be right. Responses in the amygdala (emotion processing part of the brain) that correlate with acoustic features and rating of unpleasantness.
First of all, the volume of your voice is reflected off the hard and smooth surfaces of the bathroom, so it doesn't fade as quickly as it would in an open space. Secondly, as the sound bounces around the shower, creating reverb – your voice 'hangs' in the air longer than usual, giving it an embellished, rich sound.
There's a lot to learn when you listen to world-class singers. All the elements of style: Vowel color, rhythmic phrasing, diphthongs, and vibrato. Plus musical vocabulary — melodic variation and licks. When you're first learning any skill, it's all about imitation.
We hear the music track, as well as our own voice in the headphones. A good sound guy will work with you to adjust the mix (the volume of the different tracks) for your needs. For example, if you need help with rhythm, the drums might be turned up louder.
To know if you can sing, try taking an online tone-deaf test to see if you struggle with pitch, tone, and rhythm. You can also try asking a friend or family member you trust to listen to your singing voice and give you their honest opinion.
Truth be told, we all sound a little bit different to other people than we think we do. Vocal coach Chris Beatty explains that the issue is we get a preview of what our voice sounds like coming up the side of our face, directly into our ears. Along with that comes some inner vibration in the ear and head.
Some pitches of sound will not be heard as loudly as others. That changes the sound quality. Generally, when we hear our voices on a recording, our voices sound higher in pitch than what we hear in our head. It is those higher pitches that are boosted in the ear canal during normal air conduction hearing.
It's a common phenomenon among singers and vocalists to feel like they don't quite sound the way they want to when they hear their own voice. This feeling of dissatisfaction with one's own singing or speaking voice is often referred to as “voice shame,” and it can be incredibly difficult for singers who experience it.
Singing is partly innate, and partly a learnt skill. You can be born with vocal tracts that are physiologically sized and shaped to give your voice a more pleasing sound, naturally pathing the way to becoming a singer. But controlling and configuring your vocal muscles in order to sing well is a learnt skill.
If a singer is singing correctly, the voice should not tire. Singing should feel good. If it does not, then your body is giving you a signal that something is not right with the way you are producing sound. A singer should never feel fatigue after a voice lesson.
This phenomenon is called autophonia. This feeling can be explained by the presence of a foreign body in the external auditory canal: a hearing aid or ear mould (in the case of a behind-the-ear hearing aid) that blocks some of the vibrations of the voice.
People are bad at recognizing their own voice
One study, during which people were played recordings of their own voices, found that just 38% of people were able to identify their own voice immediately. “When we hear our own voice in a recording, it can often feel surprising and disappointing,” Birchall says.