Once You Learn To Sing You Never Stop Talking

There have been a number of articles that have come out in the past couple of years on why we hate the sound of our own voices.

I think a lot of this depends on several things: the time of day (my voice is deeper in the mornings before breakfast), higher mid-day, then lower in the evenings.

I probably would do my best singing in the mornings, preferably in a vocal booth.

When I was taking singing lessons in the 90s, one of my instructors would just have me yell, as if I was trying to get someone's attention. He'd have me say “Hey!!!”,  as if I were yelling out the window. This is very effective in taking the voice out of the head and into the chest, using the diaphragm. This is very important in getting a good vocal tone,  but it's not necessarily the way we use our voices when we speak, because it is supported by shallow breathing, and in places where sometimes there is not much talking.

The speaking voice and singing voice merge at a narrow area on Venn diagram, and within the narrow range for most people, typically within the range of a fifth. Most of us should be able to do an octave, and can take some training to do that, but is doable. Few people can go beyond that, and certainly not the 10th that the Star-Spangled Banner requires. Everyone has a voice that has a sweet spot, so keys are also very important in singing, and is the reason why you might not reach an octave or even a 10th.

I used to do lots of singing on my own song demos and enjoyed doing it, but never considered myself to be a singer per se, and I probably "mute" my voice by writing mostly instrumentals. But someone has to do it at some point: If you're going to write songs that's a part of the job. David Bowie realized this in the beginning, and even when he got older he still complained about having to sing, as he never really enjoyed it. I think what he experienced was that the frequency bands can be adjusted in the studio which gives you the feedback necessary to create a good vocal tone. But it does take time, and people probably aren't willing to put in the effort. But if they did, more of us would be singing all the time, and probably would be reflected in our speaking voices.

Microphones and equalization are very important, even if those equalization settings are wrong for your voice. I found that there's a certain frequency band that makes my voice work in the way that I like it to work, such as the "telephone voice" or the quality of an old tape recorder. But we don't exist in the world where our voices are being EQ’d as we speak, unfortunately,  as the speaking voice is always a kind of music if we allow it to be and feel comfortable with it. I realized that people come to like the sound of their voice, and then they never stop talking.