You know how your own voice sounds different in your head than it sounds to to other people? Like when you hear a recording of yourself and say “Whoa, that’s not what I sound like!” Yeah, it’s kind of like that.
25 thoughts on “In My Head, Though, I’m Roaring”
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Ferocious.
Okay, I can’t actually hear it right now, but I assume it is fierce.
Also, boop.
You have to cover your ears it is such a roar.
You weren’t kidding. 😉
I’ll have to remember to play it for the cats when I go to my parents’ this weekend and see if they react.
I don’t know what this little munchkin is saying but my cat Mia was sleeping next to me and she immediately got up and headbutted and rubber against my iPad trying to comfort the kitten. She stopped as soon as I turned off the video.
That’s so sweet! Good kitty.
Awwww. So sweet!
Adorable.
How adorable! That is quite a delectable little snuggle puss. AND ferocious.
My Siamese, Lady, just turned her head slightly at the noise and glared at me to shut the noise maker off.
What a sweet little baby!
Off-topic: I actually know why we sound different to ourselves in recording playback.
Why?
Ooh ooh! I know! In recording playback, you’re only hearing your voice via air conduction. When speaking you’re also hearing it via bone conduction (vibrations in your skull that stimulate the hair cells in the inner ear, which in turn stimulate the hearing nerve). If you plug your ears and talk, you’re mostly hearing yourself via bone conduction.
—your friendly Cutetropolis audiologist 😀
Soccersue is correct!
—your friendly Cutetropolis dialect designer/coach
Dear Cutetropolis audiologists and dialect designer/coachs: I cringe whenever I hear my recorded voice. How I can make it (change the way I speak / modify with audio technology) to sound more like how I hear it?
The first thing is to understand that the playback quality of your recorded voice depends on the quality of the microphone, of the recording medium, and of the speakers/headphones you hear your voice on. If you heard your recorded voice in professional Voice Over conditions, you’d recognize it as something much more like the voice you hear when you speak.
The second thing is, if you’re truly unhappy with your vocal quality, find a first-class professional speaking voice teacher to help you learn how to expand your vocal range in a completely healthy, unstrained manner.
This takes dedication, just like learning a new sport or learning a musical instrument. It is physical work like a sport. And your voice, and all the anatomy and anatomical workings that support it, is a musical instrument.
My advice is, unless you are willing to put in the time, effort, and money it takes to master a new skill, that you recognize that you are the only one cringing, and there’s not a darn thing wrong with your voice that wouldn’t be “cured” by better playback devices. (Whenever I heard my outgoing message on my old answering machine, I used to wonder who that six-year-old was. It was me. I was in my thirties.)
If you really want to go on the voice lesson adventure (which can be great fun and very gratifying, as well as serious work), try finding a voice teacher/coach via the Voice and Speech Trainers Association http://www.vasta.org. Look for the “Find a Voice Pro” menu and search by your state or region.
This voice lesson adventure sounds great. This would have saved me a lot of struggle with my parents when I was a kid.
They badly wanted me to take singing lessons, but I have an annoying, window cracking high pitched voice, so at the age of 8 when my parents were first contacted by my music teachers about it, I just did not feel the desire to become an opera singer. Some voice and speech training could have been a good compromise to keep everyone happy. It would be still useful to learn to lower my voice to sound like the serious adult that I am.
@Ricky’s Mom: Thank you for the detailed reply!
I’m the only one cringing apparently. My gf actually complemented on my voice the other day, and I thought “really?”, because I just did some test recording for a podcast, and thought I sounded like a teenager. Will look into the technical aspects you mentioned, as I was using very basic equipment.
It’s amazing how much of difference those things make. I was watching Civilizations on PBS, and was surprised the narrator is Liev Schreiber. He does not sound like his character Ray Donovan, and he sounds much older…
I can definitely benefit from training though. Recently at a mediation seminar, the instructor commented on the noticeable differences in my voice after just 10 minutes of full diaphragmatic breathing, that instead of high, weak, and tense, it sounded low, strong, and relaxed.
And thank you for that link. I will look into it. Not so much for speaking as for singing. As a child I used to sing every day with my sister. But recently when I tried to sing, people just 20 feet away from me couldn’t hear how bad it was 🙂
Woah. Maternal instincts activated!
Meowternal 😉
Exactly.
He or she needs to join forces with Hangry Otter!
They would be a dynamic duo of cuteness.
Little one looks much like my long-lost Madeleine must have done as a kitten. I adopted Maddie when she was 4 and always regretted missing her kitten days.
I feel your pain, kitten!