I Don't Like The Sound Of My Own Voice!!!

Not liking one’s own voice is what I call the "Redundancy Theory". To convey a message, takes one person. To experience the feeling you’re conveying as the singer, takes at least one other person or more to feel your expression. It takes another person to hear the song and its emotion. Singing is communicating. It does not matter what you think it sounds like. So, when we listen to ourselves sing via a recording, we cannot hear or feel the message since it is redundant to us. That is to say, if you tell a story while it is recorded, the redundancy of recording followed by playback (where you hear yourself on the recording) causes you to not be able to hear the emotion that is actually on the recording.

The only thing one can become good at is criticizing the recording from a technique perspective and making corrections. This still can be difficult because of the fact that we just finished singing it. In other words, we are biased. This is where the value of Vocal Pre-Production and Vocal Production with the right team can be invaluable.

Above, I have described the problem of singer’s not liking what they hear on a recording. It is very important that the singer trust the recording team’s perspective. Virtually every record that does well has great feel. The singers that do well trust their team to know how the recording should feel. If a singer, interferes with the producer’s decisions, and changes the vocals after they’ve been recorded; the result will sound emotionless, as if you were reading the words off a piece of paper (no vibe).

Brad Chapman

www.bradchapmanvocals.com