It's All In Your Head!!

Has anyone ever video taped you while you spoke and then when you watched it back you were surprised at how you sounded? You think to yourself, I don't sound like that! Well guess what: You Do!! That's kind of the dilemma I'm in at the moment. Yesterday I heard the final mix down of the 14 tracks I recorded a month ago. The guitars are beautiful, just perfect, and the sound quality is the real deal, and then I hear that thin, bright voice -- MY VOICE! I know I'm no Ana Moura or Norah Jones, but I would give my left pinkie for a little more depth in my voice. When I'm actually singing, I don't hear myself like I do when I hear it played back. I researched it and this is why...

According to Dan Berger, a MadSci Administrator, "when you hear your own voice, it's not being transmitted to your ear in the same way as it is to someone else's ear. When you hear someone else speaking, the sound -- after being shaped by the resonating cavities in the person's head -- travels through the air to your ear, where it is collected and focused onto your eardrum. The eardrum vibrates, vibrations are transferred to the middle ear, and from there to the inner ear where they are converted into electrical signals that travel to your brain. But when you hear yourself speak, most of the sound doesn't pass through your eardrum and may not pass through your middle ear. Instead, the sound is conducted through your skull bones and reaches the ear by direct transfer to either the middle or the inner ear. Furthermore, the sound you hear from your own voice is not shaped by the cavities in your head because it is transmitted directly by the bones of the head and never passes through the air in those cavities."