Why sounding good when you sing can sound so bad.

A number of years ago I realized that my job as a voice coach could be narrowed down to one simple task: helping my clients make new sounds.

If someone left a session with me and made a sound that they had never made before, or didn’t know was possible,  then I could consider my job well done.

Now that may sound like I’m giving myself an easy pass, but I know from experience that it’s a lot trickier than it sounds. People come to voice coaching with the desire to sound different, but when they are confronted with actual sound of change, it can be so unfamiliar and so disruptive that they quickly run back to the sounds that feel are most safe and familiar.

And I get it. This is scary stuff. It’s your voice.

There are years of conditioning and a whole lot of identity wrapped up in these sounds and even though in theory you may want more, the experience itself can be confusing at best.

But there is a truth here that is quite profound: Once you’ve made the sound… you know the sound. And once you know the sound, you can make it again.

It’s as simple as that.

Except, it’s not.

Because there is a good chance you won’t like the sound upon first listen. 😂

There is a good chance you’ll look at me with a scrunched up face and ask “Did that sound good?” while thinking to yourself “That sounded SO bad.”

See, when you sing, or use your voice for that matter, there is a conditioned feedback loop around what you feel and hear as you make the sound. Based on your life experiences, you’ll to want to assign the binary of good and bad to what you hear and feel. This conditioning is more pronounced in singing than it is speaking because the sound is sustained and the body and ear have more time to collect info. Read: pass judgement. This is also one of the many reasons singing can feel so vulnerable, in that the sound is very literally exposed.

But while this conditioning is quite normal, it is essentially problematic because… what is a good sound? What is a bad sound? Ask 10 different people and you’ll get 10 different answers.

I don’t claim to have the answer, but what I do know based on 1000’s of hours of experience is when a singer makes a sound that is more free and more easy in their body, listeners always agree that their voice sounds better. Eventually, the singer does, too.

Conversely, when a singer realizes a sound is uncomfortable or difficult in their body, listeners agree that the sound is worse. But, often to the singer, this is the most familiar sound.

Are you following me here?

That’s why sounding good can sound so bad… at first, to the singer making the new sound.

New and different, can often sound wrong, but one of the gifts of having a great coach is being guided through that which is new. From there, you can ask yourself, how does this feel in my body? What happens if I make that sound again?

If you get that far, there’s a good chance you’ll unscrunch your face and ask me “Are you sure?”

And I’ll say, “Let’s try it again.”

Then,  if I'm doing my job, take you somewhere else, new. 😄