Your voice sounds different to others than it does to you - how does [famous singer]'s voice sound to him/her?

It's something I've mostly been thinking about when high, but I think it's a pretty good question. Like, Neil Young obviously knows what his voice sounds like to others, since he's heard his own recordings, but he must hear his voice differently than the recording of it (because of the skull reverb effect thing that makes your voice seem strange when you hear a recording of it). Do you ever wonder what a famous singer's voice sounds like to the singer? Would it be possible to reproduce the voice the singer hears by adding some kind of effects?

John Lennon famously hated the sound of his voice.

John Lennon otm

I think about this a fair bit cause I'm a halfway decent mimic & impressionists fascinate me. How do I know I'm doing it right when I hear my voice differently to how I hear external voices?

Xp lol yep

Bowie: "I never though my voice was really much good on any level"
Dusty Springfield hated her voice so much that when she recorded she'd ask the producer to turn the backing track up loud enough so that she couldn't hear herself.

because of the skull reverb effect thing

Robert Plant specifically makes reference to this when talking about his singing voice. He always thought his voice sounded OK in his head, but thin and reedy when recorded and played back to him.

Robert plant otm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkm0IfBzTuk
From 3 minutes onwards.

xp haha, but then you can't help but want to know what Plant's voice sounds like to himself. Also, it makes you wonder how much singers control their sound - maybe Neil Young thought his voice sounded pretty normal until he heard it recorded.

xp

He always thought his voice sounded OK in his head

To answer the thread question, Plant thought his voice sounded "full and rich" in his head.

That answers the question, thanks. But raises the new question, what would it be like to hear the Robert Plant's voice as he hears it? Would it make Zeppelin better or worse? And is there an inherent "communication breakdown" in all vocal music since there's this difference between how singer/audience hears the voice?

"Skull" shd be an eq setting

Also, does Kate Bushs voice sound full and rich in her head? Maybe it has more of a "kick" inside...

wins, couldn't agree more

How awesome must robert plant sound inside his own head.

Like, we all dig Immigrant song, but he must be all - yeah, but you shoulda heard it in me head first!

Just by chance, when I was in 7th grade, I met Klaus Meine shopping in Water Tower Place shopping - fairly short dude wearing a leather fringe jacket with a hot model on each arm. My friend I was with even had a Blackout cassette, that got autographed. You know what? He talked kinda like he sang. I'll bet he sounds great 'in his head.'

man he must have taken forever to finish sentences then

haha

but don't we all find our voice ok from inside and strange and unfamiliar when listened to on a recording?
― it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Sunday, April 12, 2015 1:03 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah it's really the rest of us who have this disconnect. professional singers are always hearing their voices played back and performing with a vocal monitor right in front of them onstage. i'd imagine for a lot of them their on-record voice is kind of what they 'hear' now when they sing or at least they have a really refined sense of what other people hear instead of just the sound in their head.

this would be a great concept for a Pearl Jam bootleg series — Live from Eddie's Cochleae, State College, Pennsylvania, 9/26/18: A True Binaural Experience. someday inner ear recordings will be the gold standard for audiophiles, with several ghoulish consequences: bootleggers kidnap Dave Matthews and implant him with unauthorized cochlear microphones; Rhino exhumes Elvis's corpse and 'remasters' his greatest hits from inside his skull for their award-winning Enter the Crown box set; Amanda Palmer gives her fans 24/7 access to her sonic headspace for a $2,000/month subscription. I see this as a net positive for the human race.

I remember MES being interviewed by Radio 1 around the time of Hex Enduction Hour. He said: "I still cringe at the sound of my own voice."