Set Your Voice Free: How to Get the Singing or Speaking Voice You Want

by Roger Love

I strongly recommend that you get out your smartphone and record each of the tests and exercises we do here. Why record? The voice that other people hear doesn’t sound like the one you hear when you speak and sing because you’re feeling the vibrations in your tissues and bones and hearing sounds as they bounce around the “cave” of your body. Your own voice rings and vibrates inside you. But a listener hears only what emerges into the air, and that version of your voice may seem stripped down or flat compared with the richness you feel yourself producing. On top of that, sound traveling away from you actually sounds different from sound traveling toward you. Because of the gap between our inner perception and the listener’s, it helps many students to give themselves an “objective” ear by recording some of the exercises they do.