Vocalist.org archive


From:  Dean FH Macy <deanmacy@m...>
Date:  Tue Apr 18, 2000  7:32 am
Subject:  Re: [vocalist-temporary] How do you "hear" yourself?


DANIaka007@a... wrote:

> I was wondering, does anyone know how to "hear" yourself when you sing, so you
> know exactly what you sound like?

You can't. You can never hear yourself the way others can unless you have a
method of recording your voice without adding harmonics caused by room resonance
and sub frequencies and echos from your sounds bouncing off walls and ceilings,
and without the frequency adjustments made by a microphone's electronics and,
this is the real crux of the matter, having the ability of translating the sound
vibrations without using your ears to do it.

The reverse side of this is that no one person listening to you will hear you
the
same way as another person will hear you. Every person who listens (whose brain
translates the vibrations in the air into audible frequencies) hears
differently. You can't just wear headphones to feed your voice back to you
because you can never hear yourself without allowing your mind to translate the
signal generated by your ears. And your mind translates the signal, your voice,
to match the way you think you hear yourself.

But how much does this matter to you? Is it important to know exactly how you
sing? I think not. What is important is your tone, your pitch, your intonation
and your delivery, and watching the faces of those who listen to you. If you
are
singing badly the faces you see will reflect that and if you sing well the faces
will look benign or just happy or smiley.

If all this makes any sense to you I'll be amazed. It was 2 am when I wrote
this
after a 24 hour session of recording. And I'm too tired to retype the whole
thing.

--
Dean FH Macy, Lit.D./Mus.D.
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"Specializing in Management of exceptionally talented youth in Music"
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