Did you know that the human voice is the only pure instrument?
July 12, 2018 10:03 AM   Subscribe

Most of us have shuddered on hearing the sound of our own voice. In fact, not liking the sound of your own voice is so common that there’s a term for it: voice confrontation.

Through their experiments, the late psychologists Phil Holzemann and Clyde Rousey concluded in 1966 that voice confrontation arises not only from a difference in expected frequency, but also a striking revelation that occurs upon the realisation of all that your voice conveys. Not only does it sound different than you expect; through what are called “extra-linguistic cues”, it reveals aspects of your personality that you can only fully perceive upon hearing it from a recording. These include aspects such as your anxiety level, indecision, sadness, anger, and so on.

To quote them, “The disruption and defensive experience are a response to a sudden confrontation with expressive qualities in the voice which the subject had not intended to express and which, until that moment, [s]he was not aware [s]he had expressed.”
posted by Emmy Rae (47 comments total) 39 users marked this as a favorite
 
As someone who was inexplicably unaware for 30 years that they sounded like Fran Drescher, I feel this.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:22 AM on July 12, 2018 [39 favorites]


My voice is an idiot.
posted by Construction Concern at 10:38 AM on July 12, 2018 [10 favorites]


I'm already aware of how much of my emotional state leaks out in my voice, but the difference between how I sound live through my skull and on tape in pitch and resonance alone is as unpleasantly jarring to me as say expecting John Goodman's voice and getting Matthew Broderick. I have given serious thoughts to a voice acting class just to improve how I sound, but it'd be pure vanity.
posted by BrotherCaine at 10:58 AM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


People who know me will confirm I suffer from the opposite of this: I just love to hear myself talk.
posted by each day we work at 11:02 AM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


Did you know that the human voice is the only pure instrument?

What about the Vibraslap? That seems prety damn pure to me.
posted by thelonius at 11:02 AM on July 12, 2018 [15 favorites]


Fascinating. The difference in frequency perception is definitely real and ever since I learned about it seemed to be an adequate explanation about why I disliked recordings of my own voice. Side note: to get an idea of the frequencies you perceive purely through bone-conduction instead of air conduction, plug your ears and speak.

But this idea that I actually [also] hate the content of my voice recordings is a revelation, and matches with my experience. Speaking/singing is a real-time act, chock full of instantaneous choices with the purpose of conveying information. If the voice is recorded, there's no changing it. Whenever I listen to songs I've recorded, my throat tenses up and I subconsciously try to subvocalize along with the recording - my larynx moves along with the pitch, my mouth forms the words. It's like I'm literally trying to speak the recorded words again, maybe with some different choices this time.
posted by smokysunday at 11:09 AM on July 12, 2018 [4 favorites]


I've found this to be strongest with my singing voice. I think I (and others have told me) have a pretty decent singing voice. Not amazing, but competent. But the one I'm hearing and the one other people hear are very different. Mine is much fuller. Much more resonate. While what they hear sounds thin and uncontrolled to my ears. Learning to both accept this and try to adjust accordingly has been a difficult, but worthwhile, project that translates to normal speaking/acting/whatever. It's just never going to sound as natural to me.
posted by downtohisturtles at 11:12 AM on July 12, 2018 [4 favorites]


What about the Vibraslap?

I dunno, you'll have to take it up with Nina Simone.
posted by Emmy Rae at 11:12 AM on July 12, 2018


I hate my voice. I love my sister’s, and my younger daughter’s. I feel conflicted about the fact that nobody can tell the three of us apart by voice.
posted by padraigin at 11:13 AM on July 12, 2018 [11 favorites]


I've just recently waded into the podcasting pool, and honestly editing an hour-long episode of myself in conversation with my cohost is almost existential-terror-inducing. I just get so grindingly aware of every vocal tic that I have, all of which I'm not aware of when I'm actually speaking. I honestly feel like this whole process is some kind of exposure therapy that'll either leave me bulletproof or broken.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 11:13 AM on July 12, 2018 [10 favorites]


I can never figure out if this is normal or not because everybody says oh, it's normal to hate your own voice, but I feel like about 30% of my problem with my voice is sounding more shrill than I want to, but the other 70% is like... my voice in general doesn't sound at all like I sound in my head? I can't even figure out how to fix it, but like, am I the only one who doesn't pronounce vowels the same way when talking as I do internally? I'm not even sure I have 100% the same accent in my head, although I'd never be able to articulate exactly how? I don't know who I sound like out loud, but it definitely is not me.
posted by Sequence at 11:15 AM on July 12, 2018 [7 favorites]


After hating my voice for years, I realised I kind of sound like Pam from The Office, so I've been more ok with it recently. I still wish I was deeper and sultry sounding though (I don't think I sound adult enough).
posted by littlesq at 11:20 AM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


My recorded voice always makes me think of a sax with a broken reed, but others have told me they like it. In my head, I'm going for deep and sultry and resonant but in a recording, I think it rasps and is more whispery. It's very disorienting.
posted by emjaybee at 11:25 AM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


I've always found my voice particularly troublesome because, to my ear, it sounds saturated with effete and flamboyant affect. Some of my s's and t's are lisp-y. The tone is far too high for me to avoid being cast in anyone's mind as anything less than one of Scott Thompson's campiest characters. Worse, it jumps when I'm elated, or when I'm anxious.

The problem is not that I'm comfortable expressing self-directed homophobia, so much as that I've been subjected to harassment through homophobic vehicles before, and I'm paranoid that my voice contributes.
posted by constantinescharity at 11:32 AM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


False. The theremin is the only pure instrument.
posted by potrzebie at 11:45 AM on July 12, 2018 [10 favorites]


What about the Vibraslap? That seems prety damn pure to me.

Dude there was a time in the 90s when I refused to listen to bands that didn't use a Vibraslap, which at the time limited me pretty much to Ben Folds Five, Dave Matthews, and Tonic.

I miss the Vibraslap. Now all the cool bands use lots of midi controllers and cellos and whatnot. The kids these days will never the joy of the Vibraslap.
posted by Lutoslawski at 11:45 AM on July 12, 2018 [4 favorites]


I've had the problem of people complementing my voice and not being able to accept it because I don't think it's that special.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:45 AM on July 12, 2018


Being an Irish Brit transplanted to the USA, I feel a strange sense of shame whenever I'm forced to listen to my unstable and hybridized accent.
posted by Morpeth at 11:46 AM on July 12, 2018 [7 favorites]


I think you all sound great.
posted by lauranesson at 11:52 AM on July 12, 2018 [27 favorites]


When I was in fifth grade I was evaluated by a speech therapist (all the kids were) and at first they thought I might need a little help with a slight lisp in my esses. My mom speaks several languages, and they thought it might have been from hearing her Spanish, and it was mild, so they decided it wasn't really necessary.

A couple of months ago, I listened to a twenty minute long interview with me, and not only do I sound high pitched and weird but I can hear a lisp! I think? Some sort of verbal...thing? Whatever it was, I found it offputting and unexpected and now I think a little too much about how I sound to other people.
posted by PussKillian at 11:54 AM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


I sound like stoned Ira Glass. I don’t even smoke weed.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:28 PM on July 12, 2018 [6 favorites]


I call the opposite, where you love the sound of your own voice when you can't hear it, the Open Mic effect or the American Idol effect. I suffer from this big time, which is to say the people stuck in traffic with me suffer from it until they roll their windows up.
posted by mattamatic at 12:29 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


Irie Glass
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:30 PM on July 12, 2018 [7 favorites]


But the one I'm hearing and the one other people hear are very different. Mine is much fuller. Much more resonate. While what they hear sounds thin and uncontrolled to my ears.

here's something that makes this more complicated though - is it your voice you're hearing or the microphone? - you are not hearing your voice - you're hearing an electronic representation of your voice - the mike, the placement of the mike, the room, the pre-amp, and the recording media can all make a big difference in how your voice, or anything else sounds

you'd be surprised at how different a guitar amp sounds just by moving the mike around - the same can be done with your voice, or anything - it can sound thin or thick and resonant, within the range of the sound source - and that's before you get into eq and compression

this is not that simple a subject
posted by pyramid termite at 12:38 PM on July 12, 2018 [9 favorites]


It’s lucky for me that I sound like James Mason.

Not at all - and I emphasise this - like the bastard offspring of John Major and Dwayne Dibley.
posted by Segundus at 12:46 PM on July 12, 2018 [6 favorites]


I wonder how many stage actors experience these types of things. I'm not a theater person (anymore) but my job still requires me to project, enunciate, and control my pitch over multiple hours per day, and I think it's helped me to, I guess, normalize what I think is coming out of my mouth with what IS actually coming out of my mouth?

My main perceptual failure is that I think my actual range as a singer is not as wide as it seems to me while I'm doing the singing. I've had to edit recordings of myself a fair amount, and I got over the surreality pretty quick, but with singing, it happened a couple of times where I thought I'd done pretty well after the performance, but then listening to it I just seemed to drone more than I felt like I had. Seeing others do karaoke reassures me that I'm probably not unique on that score.

But it really seems to be only singing. My mimicry of famous voices seems to be pretty accurate nearly every time, if the frequency with which I'm asked, parlor-trick-style, to do impressions is any indication. Of course, I rarely attempt those voices that I know I can't quite do, and on those occasions when I have, I've been fortunate to get honest "Not quite!" feedback. I guess that's also a symptom of a generally accurate self-voice-assessment. (Contrast this with the large number of people THAT YOU KNOW—this is not me boasting—who think they do a great Brando or Walken or whatever but, do not.)

Well, singing, and my S's. I definitely have a blind spot about my S's; I often worry that I have a bit of a Sylvester the Cat thing going on, but then I listen to myself and I don't hear it, but I keep worrying anyway. Stuff like that is tough to get honest feedback on from friends, family, even acquaintances.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 1:22 PM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


I had to listen to a long recording of myself last year, and it was horribly disconcerting - because I sounded exactly like my sister. So much so my brain insisted it was my sister, somehow saying the words that had come out my mouth. It was *so weird*
posted by stillnocturnal at 1:26 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


Wouldn‘t it be cool if we could all sound the way we sound in our head? (Internally, I‘m Blues, but it comes out sounding all Country.)
posted by The Toad at 1:58 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


Both my parents were English majors and we lived in a English mixed working/middle class peri-urban area. I was effectively homeschooled in Received Pronunciation - "You will NOT grow up speaking like this rabble". I wish I had a UK working class accent like from inner Portsmouth.
posted by unearthed at 2:17 PM on July 12, 2018


As someone who was inexplicably unaware for 30 years that they sounded like Fran Drescher, I feel this.

ME TOO.

I have a looooooooooong list of people who can't stand my voice and have expressed complaints about it in the last few years. It feels near constant these days. Whatever is irritating the fuck out of them, I don't hear it. I don't particularly like my voice on a recording either but seriously, I don't think I'm Drescher/Vowell/Sedaris level of pitch either. I have paid large amounts of money for vocal coaching and am still getting "well, it's better, BUT when you're upset you get high pitched and...."

I'm sorry you can tell I'm upset! I am trying to @$%^^@$ hide it as hard as I can try! I'm sorry I'm not genuinely happy and perky for you so that you are pleased with me as a human being! But the more complaints I hear, the less happy-dappy-doo I can be here! The more you complain, the more I get stressed and afraid to speak at all!

YOUR MESSAGE HAS BEEN RECEIVED. I KNOW MY VOICE IS AWFUL. YOU DON'T LIKE IT WHEN I TRY TO FIX IT OR AM "FAKE" EITHER. I'M SORRY DONALD'S DREAM VOICE PILLS DON'T EXIST, BECAUSE NOTHING I DO CAN PLEASE YOU.

Seriously, I am just trying not to speak or communicate IRL any more. Hence why I am being bitchy on the Internet today because I just had to be told AGAIN today how awful I am when I talk, and more of that topic is coming at me again tomorrow.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:29 PM on July 12, 2018 [8 favorites]


...Is it weird to say that I really like my voice? It doesn't sound like I think it does, of course, but I still think (and have been told by others) that it's a very pleasant voice. Ever since I got over the shock of it not sounding like what I thought it should, I've been quite happy with it.

Why do I feel uncomfortable saying this, like I just bragged about something? It's not like it's anything I had much to do with?

On preview: well, now I feel even more uncomfortable : (
posted by widdershins at 2:33 PM on July 12, 2018 [9 favorites]


I hate the sound of my own voice - but so does everyone else, so I assume I've got a pretty accurate measure of what it sounds like.
posted by parm at 2:47 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


I've had compliments on my voice but to my ear I sound like a smarmy FM announcer trying to eat the mic and be all breathy...
posted by jim in austin at 3:14 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


I had an interesting conundrum occur to me recently.

I donated my voice to this programme that aims to synthesise voices for people who lose their own, and to be able to get as close as possible to their original voice (funded, in fact, by JK Rowling in memory of her mother, who died of MS). So, if you have, for example, MS or MND, you can go into the studio and record your voice - which might already be growing weak at this point - and they’ll ‘heal’ it by blending in sounds from some of the voice bank recordings that are similar to yours in accent, tone, etc. So that if and when you lose your voice completely, you can have a synthesised voice that is as close as possible to your own. Brilliant.

To donate your voice, you go in and spend about an hour recording sentences, which between them include all the sounds they might need.

When you arrive they tell you that one benefit of donating your voice is that, should you ever be unfortunate enough to lose your own voice, they’ll have it in the bank already. Great. But then it occurred to me - it would be a match for my voice as heard by other people. I would be left sitting there listening to a voice synthesiser speaking to everyone in the voice I only ever heard back when I heard recordings of myself. Excruciating!

So then I wondered: If they were able, somehow, to recreate my voice as I heard it inside my head, would I go for that (which would restore my own sense of identity, but leave everyone who knew me thinking “Ooh, we’ll have to get used to penguin pie’s new voice”) or for the voice that sounded seamless and identical to the rest of the world, but painfully weird to me?!

Hopefully I’ll never need either but it’s such an interesting question about voice and identity.
posted by penguin pie at 3:51 PM on July 12, 2018 [22 favorites]


I think CheesesOfBrazil is on to something regarding actors having a different experience of this (or at least, my experience has been different, as an actor). I've had to come to grips with my voice as one of the tools of my trade. Having worked extensively with it, I'm now pretty neutral-to-pleased when I hear it in recordings. But that's after putting a lot of analytical work and mechanical practice into it.

One weird thing I've discovered is that listening to my own voice on a long form recording like a podcast tends to knock me out like a sleeping pill.
posted by merriment at 5:39 PM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


Yeah, I was a radio jock a long time ago and I'm okay with my voice.

What I have trouble with is watching myself speak, pretty much for the reasons discussed in the article.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 6:24 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


"Not at all - and I emphasise this - like the bastard offspring of John Major and Dwayne Dibley."

"Dwayne Dibley?! Who's Dwayne Dibley?"

Seriously though. My mom has a bit of a raspy voice that one of my sisters inherited and I, apparently also.

My Dad Mr. Booming Thunderlungs of Cigaretteville, on the other hand. I honestly know fewer people who have such a deep voice. I have no idea how/why.

But damnit, I hate my voice. And the worst part, maybe what they talk about the affects in the article above is that not only do I sound weird because the *pitch* is off, but... It's not a slur, but a weird mumbliness that I don't hear myself. Like my mouth, or rather, between the gums and lips, is full of, IDK. Puffy Corn Snacks.

I hazard that's a nasal effect, because if not - where is the tasty yum of PUFFY CORN SNACKS, DAMNIT?
posted by symbioid at 6:33 PM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


Nuh-uh. The sound a a big pine tree makes in a breeze is the most pure instrument.

Second is that sound a stream makes as it flows over a bed of stones. Bend down close.

Maybe. Someday. We'll learn to speak that language. Then let's compare again. SSssssssssssshhhhhhhhp.
posted by Twang at 7:42 PM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


I don't mind my recorded voice, though I do usually think "who is that sarcastic woman?" for a sec before I realize that it's me.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 8:48 PM on July 12, 2018 [4 favorites]


I'm off my game of late, with everything going on in my life, but the year-plus I recently spent recording myself singing and continually working on improving it really helped with this. I went from feeling less than confident about my voice to feeling fairly confident about how it sounds when played back. I do the thing you describe, too, though, smokysunday, where even if I'm not subvocalizing as I listen to myself played back, I can feel my vocal cords buzz a little, as if I'm doing it in some subconscious way. Interesting to know I'm not the only one!
posted by limeonaire at 9:47 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


The vocal buzz is interesting in that it's also a lot like playing guitar for me. I don't need to hear myself play necessarily. I can tell if I'm playing the right thing or at least am harmonizing in key just based on the way the strings vibrate under my fingers. But that's a direct translation. That buzz produces a certain sound to my ears that will be pretty much the same sound others hear. Whereas the buzz in my vocal chords don't match. So maybe when speaking or singing I'm paying more attention to my internal vocal vibrations and forgetting to listen to my ears.
posted by downtohisturtles at 10:39 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


Being an Irish Brit transplanted to the USA, I feel a strange sense of shame whenever I'm forced to listen to my unstable and hybridized accent.

Strange sense of shame is the British national pastime (along with queuing). I’ll bet you sound awesome!

It’s lucky for me that I sound like James Mason.

Whom I cannot hear without thinking of Eddie Izzard’s God voice.
posted by Celsius1414 at 7:05 AM on July 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


I don't mind my recorded voice, though I do usually think "who is that sarcastic woman?" for a sec before I realize that it's me.

Yes, this. I think my speaking voice sounds fine and I'm used to listening to it (I make private amateur audiobooks for myself and have since I was a child) but when I hear myself in recorded conversation with others, I sound much more sarcastic and condescending outside my head than inside it. It is the opposite of intentional! It's just something my voice apparently does and I'm not sure how to stop it.

It does explain why I spent my whole childhood getting in trouble for "talking back" while being baffled as to what exactly I had done to upset people.
posted by darchildre at 11:35 AM on July 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


I've heard my own recorded voice enough to get over the surprise of how I sound to others. I can tell you one thing though - a decent microphone/recording/playback setup is a lot less unflattering than an old portable cassette deck. (feel old yet?)

Also, getting up close to the microphone allows me to take advantage of the proximity effect to record something that sounds even nearer to what I hear inside my head.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:55 PM on July 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


when I hear myself in recorded conversation with others, I sound much more sarcastic and condescending outside my head than inside it

I just had a !! moment reading this. I think this happens to me too, and I hear condescension in my mom's voice sometimes (which is very similar to mine) that I know she doesn't intend. Holy cow, this explains a lot. Sometimes when I'm the slightest bit off from "perfectly happy and pleasant" - not unhappy, but just neutral - my tone of voice apparently carries something I wish it didn't. I wonder how much of the perception is some generalized misogyny; like, as a woman I should be perfectly pleasant and compliant at all times and neutrality is read as noncompliance. But some of it may be my voice and the "extra-linguistic cues" mentioned in the article. Very interesting to think about.

I also hate hate hate my nasally Midwestern/Buffalo accent. It's the thing that makes me cringe most when I hear my recorded voice.
posted by misskaz at 4:11 PM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


Now that I think about it, I've had a lot of people say that they thought I was kinda bitchy when hey first met me, but realized I was a big softie once they got to know me. Maybe the sarcastic voice has something to do with that. Though, I'm also a total smartass a lot of the time, so I can't really say it's all unintentional...
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 3:42 AM on July 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


I first saw this hilarious "Hearing Your Singing Voice On A Recording For The First Time" QPark video on the FB wall of a friend who regularly gets minor lead roles in musicals, so...even people we think of as really good, have experienced the horror.
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 9:50 PM on July 14, 2018


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